Key differences
Configuration. Both are administered from the web-based admin console in Organization settings on claude.ai. Claude Desktop on 3P can also be configured through MDM (Jamf, Intune, Group Policy) or a bootstrap server. Telemetry. Claude Desktop on 3P sends usage and debugging metrics only, and these can be fully disabled via managed configuration. Claude Enterprise does not offer telemetry toggles. See Telemetry and egress. Inference. Claude Desktop on 3P routes all inference through the provider you configure, and data handling at the inference endpoint depends on that provider. For Google Cloud’s Agent Platform and Amazon Bedrock, data handling is governed by Google Cloud and Amazon Bedrock respectively. For Microsoft Foundry, Anthropic operates the Claude models and handles conversation data as an independent processor for Microsoft. See Data handling by provider on the Overview page for each provider’s data path. Pricing. Claude Desktop on 3P is token-based consumption billed by your cloud provider, with no seat licensing. Features not available in 3P. Features marked with — are absent from the UI. Users see a clean interface without error states for unavailable features.User features
§ Amazon Bedrock deployments and gateways that do not forward Anthropic server tools need a web search provider configured first; see Web search options.
† Memory in Claude Desktop on 3P is stored on the device, not on Anthropic infrastructure. Users can review, delete, or pause it under Settings → Cowork → Memory; see Memory. Chat-history search and nightly summary generation are not available in Chat on 3P.
¶ Cowork’s Automatically approve and Skip all approvals modes are not available for Claude Enterprise organizations.
Admin features
‡ Many of these capabilities can be achieved via OpenTelemetry export to your own collector. See Monitoring.
◊ With the Enterprise Admin Console, administrators add users and groups, connect single sign-on and SCIM, assign administrator roles, and set per-group permission policies from Organization settings on claude.ai. Deployments configured through MDM or a bootstrap server manage access through those channels.