# Claude vs Shadow

Claude records 1,253,439,413 monthly visits with +23.8% month-over-month growth and Freemium pricing. Shadow records 17,796 monthly visits with -4.4% growth and Freemium pricing.

| Metric | [Claude](https://openaitools.app/tool/claude-2) | [Shadow](https://openaitools.app/tool/shadow) |
| :--- | :--- | :--- |
| Website URL | https://claude.ai | https://www.shadow.do |
| Categories | AI Assistant, AI Chatbot, AI API, AI Copilot | AI Meeting Assistant, AI Transcription, AI Note Taker, AI Summarizer |
| Pricing Model | Freemium | Freemium |
| Monthly Visits | 1,253,439,413 | 17,796 |
| MoM Growth Rate | +23.8% | -4.4% |
| Primary Market | United States | United States |
| Direct Visits | 903,031,935 | 7,167 |
| Review Score | 4.8 | 4.3 |
| Saved Count | 78 | 1 |
| Supported Platforms | Website | Website |

## Claude

Claude is Anthropic's flagship AI assistant, renowned among software engineers, writers, and enterprise analysts for its natural prose, low hallucination rates, and sustained agentic execution. While the legacy directory slug still references 2023's 'Claude 2', both the Claude 2 and Claude 3/3.5/3.7 generations have been fully retired. As of late 2026, claude.ai runs on the Claude 5.5 generation—led by Claude Opus 5.5 (released September 2026), Claude Sonnet 5.5 for rapid everyday tasks and coding, and Claude Haiku 5.5—supporting up to a 1-million-token context window, 128K output tokens, and adaptive extended thinking.

Inside the web, desktop, and mobile apps, Claude functions as a full production workspace rather than a simple chat box. Users organize persistent knowledge bases with custom instructions in Projects, render and edit live React applications, SVGs, mermaid diagrams, and formatted slide decks side-by-side in Artifacts, and connect external SaaS tools via the open Model Context Protocol (MCP) and native web search. Paid subscribers also gain access to Claude Code—Anthropic's terminal and IDE agent capable of autonomous multi-file engineering across entire codebases—and Claude Cowork for collaborative enterprise task execution.

Anthropic structures Claude's 2026 pricing around compute capacity and team governance. The Free tier offers daily access to Sonnet 5.5, while Claude Pro ($20/month or $17/month billed annually) unlocks Opus 5.5, extended thinking, Projects, and entry-level Claude Code access. Heavy individual builders can upgrade to Claude Max at $100/month (5x Pro capacity) or $200/month (20x Pro capacity), while organizations can mix Team Standard seats ($20/seat/month annual) and Team Premium seats ($100/seat/month annual with 5x capacity and full Claude Code access) or adopt usage-based Enterprise contracts with audit logs and SCIM.

**Pricing & Plans:** Free tier ($0); Claude Pro at $20/mo ($17/mo billed annually at $200/yr); Claude Max at $100/mo (5x Pro usage) or $200/mo (20x Pro usage); Team Standard at $25/seat/mo ($20/mo annual) and Team Premium at $125/seat/mo ($100/mo annual); Enterprise from $20/seat/mo + API usage.

- **Claude 5.5 Model Family & Adaptive Thinking:** Combines frontier Claude Opus 5.5 and high-speed Sonnet 5.5 with configurable extended thinking, up to 1M-token context windows, and 128K-token outputs.
- **Claude Code & Claude Cowork Included on Paid Plans:** Pro, Max, and Team Premium plans bundle Claude Code for autonomous command-line software engineering, test execution, and repository-wide refactoring.
- **Interactive Artifacts & Document Generation:** Renders live interactive web apps, visualizations, spreadsheets, and formatted PowerPoint decks in a dedicated workspace panel alongside the chat.
- **Projects & Model Context Protocol (MCP):** Grounds conversations in shared project knowledge bases and connects directly to local filesystems, GitHub, Slack, and internal databases via MCP.
- **Constitutional AI Safety & Enterprise Governance:** Trained on Anthropic's updated 2026 Constitution with strict privacy guarantees, SSO, SCIM provisioning, and HIPAA-ready healthcare configurations.

**Strengths:** Top-tier coding, bug-fixing, and agentic planning performance powered by Claude Opus 5.5 and Sonnet 5.5; Natural, nuanced writing style that avoids the repetitive clichés common in competing LLMs; Claude Max ($100/mo 5x and $200/mo 20x) and mixed Team Standard/Premium seats provide clear scaling for heavy Claude Code users; Open Model Context Protocol (MCP) ecosystem enables deep, standardized connections to local tools and enterprise data

**Limitations:** No native photorealistic image or video generation inside claude.ai (limited to SVGs, code charts, and diagrams); Free tier does not include Claude Code and hits 5-hour rolling message limits quickly during long-context chats; Pro users ($20/mo) who rely heavily on Opus 5.5 or Claude Code can still exhaust their 5-hour rolling window and require Max ($100/mo)

[Profile (Markdown)](https://openaitools.app/tool/claude-2.md)

## Shadow

Shadow starts from a complaint many knowledge workers share about meeting assistants: the bot that joins your call, the note-taker that locks your history behind a subscription, and the data that leaves your machine for someone else's servers. Shadow's answer is a native Mac app that operates entirely in the background. It has no bot that joins the meeting, auto-detects when a call begins, records and transcribes it locally, and stops on its own when the call ends. Speaker identification is done in real time, so transcripts arrive labelled with who said what.

The output is deliberately portable. Every meeting is written to your Mac as Markdown — transcripts, notes, and Skill results — with every call and every person linked into a knowledge base. You can open the folder as an Obsidian vault, sync it with iCloud Drive or Google Drive, search it with Spotlight, or point any AI agent at it. Shadow emphasises that there is a built-in advantage: because agents read the raw files rather than a connector's filtered view, tools like Claude, Codex, or OpenClaw get the complete context.

Between calls, Shadow is more than a note-taker. Press a keyboard shortcut on any screen and it can see what you're looking at, hear what you say, or read selected text, then run an Action Skill to produce an email, a set of notes, or code. Skills are just prompts you can edit or write from scratch, and a webhook can forward results to Zapier, n8n, or Make. The privacy stance is equally concrete: transcription is local, audio does not leave the device, meeting content is never used for model training, and you choose which Skills are allowed to call AI at all.

**Pricing & Plans:** Shadow is free to start, and the developer's stated policy is that every meeting is saved to your Mac as Markdown with no history limit on any plan — you keep the files even if you stop paying. For current paid tiers, check the pricing page inside the app.

- **Bot-free auto recording:** Shadow detects when a call starts, records automatically, and stops at the end — no bot in the meeting, nothing to remember to press.
- **On-device transcription:** Transcription runs on your Mac, with real-time speaker identification so you always know who said what.
- **Markdown you own:** Every call is saved as a clean .md file locally, openable as an Obsidian vault, backed up with iCloud or Drive, or searchable by Spotlight.
- **Meeting and Action Skills:** Run prompts on a completed call (notes, BANT, follow-ups, summaries) plus shortcut-driven actions on your screen between meetings.
- **Webhooks and automation:** A webhook pushes transcripts and Skill results into Zapier, n8n, or Make so meetings feed your existing workflows.

**Strengths:** No bot joins your call, so meetings stay natural; Local, on-device transcription with no history limits; Meetings stored as portable Markdown that works with Obsidian and AI agents; Flexible Skills you can edit or write from scratch

**Limitations:** Mac-only — there is no Windows or web app; Local-first storage means you manage your own folder, sync, and backups; By design it records without a bot, so you are responsible for getting consent from other participants; Skill output quality still depends on prompt craft, though Skills ship with sensible defaults

[Profile (Markdown)](https://openaitools.app/tool/shadow.md)

## Frequently Asked Questions

### How do Claude and Shadow compare in monthly traffic?

Claude has 1,253,439,413 monthly visits, while Shadow has 17,796. Traffic estimates describe audience size, not product quality.

### How do their growth rates compare?

Claude has a month-over-month growth rate of +23.8%; Shadow has -4.4%.

### How does pricing compare?

Claude: Freemium. Free tier ($0); Claude Pro at $20/mo ($17/mo billed annually at $200/yr); Claude Max at $100/mo (5x Pro usage) or $200/mo (20x Pro usage); Team Standard at $25/seat/mo ($20/mo annual) and Team Premium at $125/seat/mo ($100/mo annual); Enterprise from $20/seat/mo + API usage. Shadow: Freemium. Shadow is free to start, and the developer's stated policy is that every meeting is saved to your Mac as Markdown with no history limit on any plan — you keep the files even if you stop paying. For current paid tiers, check the pricing page inside the app.

## Alternatives

| # | Tool Name | Monthly Visits | MoM Growth Rate | Pricing Model | Summary | Profile (Markdown) |
| :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- |
| 1 | [ChatGPT](https://openaitools.app/tool/chatgpt-4) | 6,048,022,723 | +2.2% | Freemium | Stronger multimodal voice capabilities and reasoning models, but less refined inline artifact generation and agentic coding. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/chatgpt-4.md) |
| 2 | [Google Gemini](https://openaitools.app/tool/gemini-gemini-advanced) | 2,637,398,242 | -0.1% | Freemium | Massive context window and deep Google Workspace integration, but less nuanced creative writing and coding control. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/gemini-gemini-advanced.md) |
| 3 | [DeepSeek](https://openaitools.app/tool/deepseek) | 372,761,591 | +4.3% | Freemium | Significantly lower API costs and powerful open-weight reasoning models, but a less polished consumer chat workspace. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/deepseek.md) |
| 4 | [Grok](https://openaitools.app/tool/grok) | 203,846,050 | -0.8% | Freemium | Real-time access to live social media data and rapid image generation, but less reliable for technical coding tasks. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/grok.md) |
| 5 | [Notion](https://openaitools.app/tool/t) | 173,441,670 | +0.1% | Freemium | Unified document management and structured database workflows with built-in AI, but less powerful standalone LLM reasoning. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/t.md) |
| 6 | [Perplexity](https://openaitools.app/tool/perplexity-ai) | 88,310,223 | -3.7% | Freemium | Superior real-time web search with verifiable inline citations, but less capable at complex multi-file coding and artifact creation. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/perplexity-ai.md) |
| 7 | [Cursor](https://openaitools.app/tool/cursor) | 23,297,751 | +8.4% | Freemium | Dedicated AI-first code editor built for multi-file software engineering, but lacks general-purpose writing and analytical projects. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/cursor.md) |
| 8 | [Kimi AI](https://openaitools.app/tool/kimi-chat) | 19,632,261 | -23.4% | Free | Exceptional long-context document analysis and multi-step research, but lacks Claude's polished interactive coding artifacts. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/kimi-chat.md) |
| 9 | [Manus](https://openaitools.app/tool/manus) | 19,195,779 | -1.7% | Free Trial | Fully autonomous agent executing complex multi-step web tasks, but less suited for conversational brainstorming and iterative writing. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/manus.md) |
| 10 | [Otter AI](https://openaitools.app/tool/otter-ai) | 7,360,981 | +9.6% | Freemium | AI meeting agent that transcribes, summarises, and turns every conversation into searchable knowledge | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/otter-ai.md) |

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Source: https://openaitools.app/compare/claude-2-vs-shadow

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