Claude Plugins for Business (2026): What They Are and Where They Run

Claude plugins: the short answer

A Claude plugin is one install that bundles skills, connectors and sub-agents, so Claude shows up already set up for a job, like sales, finance or legal work. As of September 2026, plugins are on every paid Claude plan (Pro, Max, Team, Enterprise) at no extra charge. They run in Claude chat, Cowork and Claude Code. Two things just changed: Salesforce in Claude launched in beta on September 15, and a developer portal for submitting plugins to Claude's directory opened on September 25.

Everything below is from Anthropic's help center, release notes, launch posts and pricing page, read on September 27, 2026.

What a Claude plugin actually is

Three building blocks, one package:

• Skills: the instructions for how to do a specific job your way. The written checklist you'd give a new hire.
• Connectors: the pipes into your tools. Google Drive, Gmail, Slack, DocuSign, Salesforce, and many more.
• Sub-agents: helpers Claude can hand parts of a bigger task to.

Before plugins, you wired each of those up by hand. A plugin ships them together, so Anthropic's help center puts it as "a ready-to-go setup from your first conversation instead of configuring each piece yourself." In Claude Code, a plugin can also carry commands, hooks, agents and language servers, which matters to developers and not much to anyone else.

If you've read my posts on Claude connectors or how to use Claude Skills, a plugin is those two things with a bow on them.

Where Claude plugins run

Plugins you add are saved to your account, not your laptop, so they follow you across all three. One detail for IT: in Cowork, connectors reach your services through Anthropic's cloud, not your local network. A custom connector has to point at a server that's reachable from the public internet. More on Cowork itself in Claude Cowork.

What Claude plugins cost

Nothing on top of the plan. Anthropic's help center says "Plugins are available to all paid plans (Pro, Max, Team, Enterprise)," and the pricing page has no plugin line item. The ladder, as of September 27, 2026:

• Free: $0. Can connect apps and tools, but plugins aren't included.
• Pro: $20 a month, or $17 a month billed annually.
• Max: from $100 a month.
• Team: standard seats $20 a seat billed annually, $25 monthly.
• Enterprise: $20 a seat plus usage at API rates.

Two costs that aren't zero. First, what a plugin does draws from the same usage pool as everything else you do in Claude, so a plugin that runs long tasks spends your limits faster. Second, a partner plugin can need the partner's product. Salesforce in Claude assumes you run Salesforce. Anthropic publishes no price for the plugins themselves, no fee for the developer portal and no revenue share for developers. The plan-by-plan breakdown is on Claude AI pricing.

How to install one

1. In Claude, open Customize in the left sidebar. (In Cowork, open the Cowork tab first.)
2. Go to the Plugins tab, then Discover.
3. Pick a plugin and click Add.
4. Type "/" or click "+" in a conversation to see the skills it brought with it.

Where they come from: Anthropic adds a Knowledge Work marketplace by default, and you can add its Financial Services, Legal and Life Sciences marketplaces, or any GitHub repo (public GitLab and Bitbucket repos work too). The help center says the library covers sales, finance, legal, marketing, HR, engineering, design, operations and data analysis. There's also a plugin called Plugin Create that walks you through building your own.

The Salesforce plugin (beta since September 15)

This is the first big partner plugin, and it shows where this is heading. Salesforce in Claude brings a seller's accounts, opportunities and pipeline into Claude with 37 pre-built sales skills, plus Salesforce and Slack connectors. What it does, per Anthropic's launch post:

• A morning brief: today's meetings, deals closing soon, at-risk opportunities, unread threads. On Fridays it wraps the week and drafts an update for the seller's manager.
• Call prep from Salesforce, Slack and email, including stakeholders who aren't in the CRM yet.
• Deal review against the team's sales method, with a draft business case and close plan.
• After each call, a follow-up email, a Slack summary and draft CRM updates.
• An interactive pipeline dashboard you can share with leadership.

The guardrails are the part I'd show a sales manager. Claude reads only what the seller's Salesforce permissions allow, and by default it asks the seller to approve each change before writing it. Anthropic says 7,000 Salesforce sellers use it. Availability is narrower than the plugin list suggests: beta on all paid Claude plans, but only for organizations Salesforce approves through its beta sign-up, with an admin requesting access through AgentExchange.

The Plugin Developer Portal (September 25)

If you or a vendor you work with builds tools, this is the new front door. Per Anthropic's announcement:

• Open to developers on paid Claude plans.
• Two ways in: point it at a single remote MCP server, or submit a GitHub repo containing a plugin bundle.
• Every submission is validated and safety-scanned automatically. You see review status and recommended changes, and you choose when to publish once approved.
• Live plugins get analytics: installs by product surface and version, listing views, and the searches that led people to the listing.

Anthropic also says one discovery experience for plugins will roll out across Claude and Claude Code over the coming weeks, and existing skills, connectors and plugins in the directory don't need changes. For an owner, the practical meaning is simple: the software you already pay for is going to show up in Claude as a plugin, and it's worth asking your vendors when.

Team and Enterprise: sharing and control

• Sharing: once an owner turns it on, members can share a plugin they built with specific colleagues (Team and Enterprise) or with groups (Enterprise only). Recipients can use it but not edit it. Plugins added from a marketplace can't be shared.
• Publish to org: a member can submit a plugin to the organization's library, offered as available to install, installed by default, or required. Owners can require review first.
• Security scanning: Enterprise plans can turn on skill and plugin scanning (beta since August 6, 2026), which blocks plugins with malicious content and flags risky ones.

A caution Anthropic prints itself: a plugin's local MCP server runs on your computer "with the same permissions as any other program you run." Install from sources you trust, and on Team, decide who's allowed to publish before someone publishes.

What an owner can do with plugins this week

1. Install one Anthropic-built plugin for the job that eats your week. Sales, finance or operations. Run it on real work for five days before adding a second.
2. If you run Salesforce, get on the beta. Your admin requests access through AgentExchange. Start with the morning brief; it runs on a schedule and shows you quickly whether the rest is worth rolling out.
3. Turn the process you keep re-explaining into your own plugin. Plugin Create walks you through it. On Team, publish it to the org so everyone runs the same version.
4. Ask your software vendors about their Claude plugin. The portal opened September 25, and the directory is where their plugin will show up.

My take: plugins matter less for what's in the directory today and more for what they fix, which is the setup. Most teams I work with don't fail at Claude because the model is weak. They fail because nobody wired the tools, wrote the skills or decided who can publish what. That wiring is the Claude for Small Business install I do, from $4,500 in about two weeks: connectors, a skill pack and training, set up once for the whole team.