Two narratives about the AI assistant market emerged this week, and they're both true at the same time.
On one hand, ChatGPT remains the absolute king of consumer AI — more users, more revenue, more mindshare than any competitor by a wide margin.
On the other hand, Anthropic's Claude is growing faster among paying consumers — people who actually open their wallets — and the gap is narrowing.
New data from Indagari, a credit-card transaction analysis company that tracks billions of anonymized transactions from ~28 million US consumers, combined with data from DataCamp and Sensor Tower, paints a nuanced picture of where the AI assistant market stands in mid-2026.
Claude's Paid Consumer Growth: 75% Since January
According to Indagari's data covering weekly transactions from January 2025 through May 10, 2026, Anthropic's Claude has shown consistent month-over-month growth in paid consumer revenue. Some highlights:
• ~75% increase in paying consumer revenue since January 2026
• Growth accelerated after Anthropic publicly refused to allow its models to be used by the Trump administration for mass surveillance and autonomous weapons (March 2026)
• Claude's revenue gains continued even after the Fable 5 / Mythos 5 export control issue in June
DataCamp: Claude Course Demand Explodes
DataCamp, the online AI education platform with roughly 20 million users, reported that "Claude" is now the most searched term on its site — surpassing even the word "AI" itself.
Among self-directed consumers (not corporate training), demand for Claude courses is outpacing ChatGPT courses by 3-to-1. In the last 30 days alone, demand for Claude courses increased 18x.
For ChatGPT courses, corporate training remains dominant — businesses are still standardizing on ChatGPT for employee upskilling. But among individuals choosing what to learn, Claude is the hot pick.
The Sensor Tower View
Market intelligence firm Sensor Tower's "State of AI 2026" report shows a broader market reality. Apps mentioning AI terms are on track for $12 billion in in-app purchase revenue in H1 2026 alone. AI app downloads are up 177% versus H1 2023.
But Claude's share of the total market, while growing, remains much smaller than ChatGPT's. Sensor Tower's data shows ChatGPT with a commanding lead across all platforms — though its growth rate is naturally slower given its massive existing base.
What's Driving the Shift?
Several factors seem to be pushing paying users toward Claude:
1. Coding and technical use cases. Claude Code, Anthropic's terminal-based coding agent, has become the preferred tool for many developers. This converts into paid API usage and Claude Pro subscriptions. 2. Longer context windows. Claude's ability to handle very long documents (100K+ tokens since early versions) appeals to professionals processing research, legal documents, and codebases. 3. Brand differentiation. Anthropic's public stance on responsible AI — including refusing certain government requests — has created genuine brand affinity among tech workers who care about these issues. 4. Perceived quality on complex tasks. Many users report Claude outperforms ChatGPT on analytical reasoning, coding, and long-form writing, though both models trade blows depending on the task.
The Caveats
It's important to be clear about what this data does and doesn't say:
• Indagari tracks credit cards, not all revenue. Enterprise invoices, prepaid accounts, and contracts paid via ACH/wire aren't captured.
• ChatGPT's absolute numbers are still much larger. A 75% growth rate on a smaller base is impressive, but ChatGPT's base is enormous.
• The data covers US consumers only. International markets may look very different.
• Free tier users aren't counted. Many of ChatGPT's users are on the free tier, which isn't captured in these payment datasets.
Both Companies Are Heading to IPO
This data arrives at a pivotal moment. Both OpenAI and Anthropic are preparing to go public. Anthropic filed to go public earlier this month. OpenAI's path is more complex given its corporate structure, but an IPO is widely expected in 2027.
The key metric investors will watch is paid user growth and retention — not just total active users. On that front, Claude's trajectory is the more exciting story right now. But ChatGPT's sheer scale means it will remain the default for most consumers for the foreseeable future.
Practical Takeaways
• If you're choosing an assistant, try both for your specific use case. Claude excels at long-document work and coding. ChatGPT is better integrated with third-party tools and has a broader feature set.
• For API users, compare pricing carefully — both providers adjust pricing frequently, and prompt caching, batch processing, and committed-use discounts make apples-to-apples comparison non-trivial.
• For startups building on AI, don't go all-in on one provider. The market is still volatile, and export controls, pricing changes, and model availability shifts can happen overnight.
Sources
• TechCrunch: Anthropic's Claude is winning over paid consumers
• Indagari — Credit card transaction analytics
• Sensor Tower — State of AI 2026 Report
• DataCamp