The company announced Wednesday that web search is now available for paid US users in a “feature preview,” and to enable it, users need to toggle web search on in their profile. Anthropic’s product lead for Claude, Scott White, told The Verge the the company plans to expand to free users and more countries in the “next couple of weeks.”

What sets Anthropic’s web search feature apart is that it is automatic. Rather than requiring users to manually select a web search on a given query (as with OpenAI’s ChatGPT), Claude decides on its own whether fetching web data would improve an answer.

Anthropic noted that web search is available today in preview for paid Claude users within the US, with access for free users and other countries "coming soon." To try it, go to your settings, switch the web search toggle to "on," and start chatting with Claude 3.7 Sonnet. It will access the web when needed based on your query.