What's the cheapest way to run Claude Cowork always-on?

The two-paragraph answer

The cheapest dollar-cost option is your existing laptop or desktop, kept plugged in — about $5 to $10 per month in electricity, zero up-front. The catch is uptime: home computers run at 85 to 95 percent uptime in real conditions because of OS updates, residential power and internet outages, and the inevitable forgotten lid-close. If those gaps are tolerable, this is the cheapest path. If they aren't, you need to spend more.

The cheapest reliable option is a DIY Windows VPS at Kamatera or Vultr — about $14 to $18 per month for a 4 GB RAM spec — but you do all the setup yourself (about 2 hours). For someone who values that 2 hours at more than $50, a managed cloud desktop like Standby at $29 per month wins on net cost. Linux VPSes do not work, regardless of how cheap they are: Claude Desktop has no Linux build.

The five real options

Below is the full list, with prices verified as of May 2026. The "TCO 3yr" column is the total cost over 36 months — including hardware purchase, electricity, and your time at $50/hour.

A few notes that turn the table into actual decisions:

• The home-laptop and mini-PC paths only beat the cloud paths if you're actually OK with 90-95 percent uptime. If your Cowork workflow is just "occasional research help," fine. If it's "scheduled overnight runs that must complete," you need 99.5 percent or better.
• The Mac mini M1 used at ~$300 has the lowest 3-year TCO of any reliable option, by a wide margin. It also has the best perf-per-watt of anything on this table. If you're optimizing for raw dollars and don't mind eBay-grade hardware, this is the right answer.
• The DIY Windows VPS is cheapest monthly but loses on TCO once you account for your setup time. If you've already done it once and have your own image, your setup time drops to ~30 min and the math swings back in DIY's favor.
• Standby trades pure dollars for hands-off operation. Whether that's worth $29/mo depends entirely on your willingness to be your own sysadmin.

The free path — keep your laptop on

If you already own a laptop and you're willing to leave it plugged in, this is the lowest-dollar option that exists. Steps:

1. Plug the laptop in and leave it lid-open on a desk somewhere with good Wi-Fi.
2. Set the OS power policy to "never sleep" while plugged in. On Windows: Power Options → Change plan settings → "Never" for sleep and display. On Mac: System Settings → Battery → "Prevent automatic sleeping when display is off." On Mac, also run caffeinate -d in Terminal as a belt-and-suspenders.
3. Install Claude Desktop and add it to startup so it relaunches after reboots. Sign into your Anthropic account.
4. Pair Dispatch from your phone (Settings → Dispatch → Pair a new desktop, scan the QR code).
5. Walk away.

Cost: just electricity. A modern laptop idles at about 8–15 watts, peaks at 50–90 watts under load. Average usage at 25 watts and U.S. average residential rate ($0.16/kWh) = roughly $3/month. Older laptops with worse power management can run higher.

Why the uptime suffers: Windows Update auto-restarts at 3 AM on its own schedule (you can defer but rarely fully disable). Wi-Fi drops happen. Power blips happen. Closing the lid by accident happens. Running the cat happens. Realistic uptime: 85–92 percent. For one to three Dispatch interactions per day during waking hours, fine. For overnight Cowork runs, frustrating.

The "buy a small computer" path — used Mac mini or Windows mini-PC

One step up from "use what you have" is buying a small dedicated machine. The economics here are surprisingly strong because you only pay for the hardware once. Two paths:

Used Mac mini M1 or M2 (recommended)

Mac mini M1 (2020) sells for about $300–400 used as of 2026. M2 (2023) is $400–500 used. Both run Cowork and Dispatch perfectly. Idle power is 7 watts, peak 30 watts — meaningfully cheaper to run than any other option. macOS Updates are easier to control than Windows Updates. You can install Caffeine (a free menu-bar app) to prevent sleep.

The hidden cost: Apple ID lock-out. If the mini was sold without being properly de-registered from iCloud, it can lock to the previous owner's account. Buy from a reputable seller and confirm it's been factory-reset before purchase.

New Windows mini-PC

Beelink, Minisforum, and ASUS NUC produce Windows 11 Pro mini-PCs at $250–400 with specs that match or exceed the Mac mini for Cowork purposes. The trade-off is Windows Update annoyance and worse perf-per-watt.

Either way, your TCO over 3 years is roughly $400–600 — meaningfully less than $1,000+ for any cloud-managed option. The price you pay is being your own sysadmin: when something breaks at 2 AM, you fix it.

The DIY cloud path — Windows VPS at Kamatera or Vultr

For users without spare hardware (or who don't want to be in the hardware game at all), the cheapest cloud path is a raw Windows VPS. As of 2026 the realistic baseline:

• Kamatera Windows Server 2022 — 2 vCPU / 4 GB RAM / 60 GB SSD: about $14/month. Hourly billing means you can spin up to test, then commit. Good US-East and EU-Central regions.
• Vultr Windows VPS — similar specs at $16/month. Slightly cleaner API if you want to automate.
• Contabo Windows VPS — cheapest sticker price ($8.50/mo) but bills full-month upfront with no hourly option, and provisioning takes 12–48 hours. Not recommended for new users.

Setup time, honestly: 2 hours your first time. You install Claude Desktop, set the power policy, configure auto-launch, set up RDP access from your phone (Microsoft Remote Desktop on iOS/Android), pair Dispatch, and verify the whole flow. Once you've done it once you can repeat in 30 minutes.

Three-year monthly cost: ~$500. With your own time at $50/hour for 2 hours setup, TCO is closer to $600–750. Still cheaper than any managed option, but the monthly margin is small enough that a managed service often wins on convenience.

The managed path — Standby at $29/month

Disclosure: this guide is published by Standby. Below is the unvarnished pitch — including weaknesses.

Standby is a managed Windows cloud desktop pre-configured for Claude Desktop, Cowork, and Dispatch. We provision the VM, install everything, set the power policy, configure auto-launch, and email you the credentials. Total time from purchase to working Cowork: about 10 minutes. You sign in with your own Anthropic account — we never resell Claude.

Cost reality: $29/month is ~2x the cheapest DIY VPS. Over 3 years that's $1,054, vs. ~$700 for DIY VPS or ~$500 for a used Mac mini. The premium is for hands-off operation: no Windows Update to manage, no power-policy tuning, no SMTP debugging, just credentials and a working desktop.

Where Standby wins on cost: if you value your time at more than $50/hour and you'd otherwise spend 2 hours doing DIY setup, the first 6 months pay for the time difference. After that you're paying for ongoing maintenance avoidance — patches, updates, occasional troubleshooting.

Where Standby loses on cost: if you already own a Mac mini, the math doesn't favor us. The Mac mini's 3-year TCO ($422) is less than half of Standby's ($1,054). If you don't mind being a sysadmin and you already have hardware, stick with what you have.

See Standby pricing →

The "don't bother" options

A few paths show up in searches but are wrong for personal Cowork use:

• AWS WorkSpaces. Designed for enterprise IT. Pricing starts around $50/mo for a Cowork-suitable spec, plus AWS data transfer fees. Use if your employer mandates it; otherwise overkill.
• Azure Virtual Desktop. Same story as WorkSpaces. Better integration if you're already deep in Microsoft 365, but not a personal-use fit.
• Shadow PC, Paperspace, Vagon. Gaming/streaming-focused cloud PCs. They're optimized for GPU workloads, which Cowork doesn't need. Cost-per-CPU-hour is poor.
• Raspberry Pi or Linux VPS. Won't run Claude Desktop. There is no version of Cowork that supports Linux. Wine and Crossover are not supported and will break.

Three real cost mistakes to avoid

1. Forgetting electricity in the home-host math. A 90-watt-average laptop run 24/7 costs ~$10/month — meaningful at scale. Use Kill A Watt to measure your actual draw before assuming.
2. Buying hardware bigger than Cowork needs. Cowork runs fine on 4 GB RAM. Spending $800 on a mini-PC with 32 GB is over-buying — that money is better in the bank.
3. Paying monthly for a VPS you only use occasionally. If you're using Cowork for one-off projects, hourly Kamatera billing means you can power off when not in use. Standby's monthly billing is worth it for always-on workflows; less so for occasional use.

FAQ

What's the absolute cheapest way to run Cowork always-on?

Use a laptop or PC you already own, keep it plugged in, set power policy to never sleep, and run Claude Desktop. Total dollar cost: $5–10/month in electricity. Total uptime: 85–92 percent. If those two numbers work for you, this is your answer.

Why doesn't a Linux VPS work?

Claude Desktop is published only for Windows x64 and macOS. Cowork runs inside Claude Desktop, so the host OS has to be one of the two supported platforms. Wine, Crossover, and similar Windows-on-Linux compatibility layers are not supported and break in unpredictable ways. There is no Linux path.

How much electricity does a Mac mini actually use?

M2 Mac mini idles at ~7 watts and peaks at ~30 watts. Average around 15 watts in always-on use. At U.S. average residential rate of $0.16/kWh: ~$1.75/month, ~$21/year.

Is a Windows VPS cheaper than a Mac mini long-term?

Over 36 months: Mac mini at ~$622 TCO (purchase + 3 yr electricity), Windows VPS at ~$504 (no purchase, $14/mo for 3 years). The VPS wins by ~$110, but only after you do the setup yourself (~2 hours). If your time is worth more than $55/hour, the Mac mini is cheaper.

Should I use AWS WorkSpaces or Azure VD?

Almost certainly not for personal Cowork use. They start at ~$50/month for a suitable spec and assume you have an existing AWS or Azure organization. Use them if you're forced to by your employer's IT policy; otherwise pick something simpler.

How does Standby compare on price?

$29/month for the Starter tier. ~2x the cheapest DIY VPS, but with hands-off operation. Break-even versus DIY-plus-your-time depends on what you value an hour at: at $50/hour, the 2-hour DIY setup costs $100 in opportunity, which Standby beats in the first 6.6 months. After that you're paying for ongoing convenience.

Sources and further reading

• claude.com/download — official Claude Desktop installers
• Apple — Mac mini specifications
• Kamatera Windows Server pricing
• Vultr Cloud Compute pricing
• Standby guide — How to keep Claude Dispatch on 24/7