Anthropic's Claude gains traction among paid AI consumers

Consumers who pay for AI have been increasingly choosing Anthropic's Claude, trend data from credit card transaction analysis company Indagari shows. This is a sign that the AI lab has a wider and healthier set of customers than the niche it is generally considered to command — enterprise and startup developers using Claude Code. Indagari analyzes billions of anonymized credit card transactions from about 28 million U.S.

consumers. So while that data can't give us absolute numbers about Anthropic's revenue or total customers, it is a large enough sampling to spot trends. The data covers weekly transactions from 2025 through May 10, 2026, and includes payments for items like subscriptions and API tokens.

It shows Claude's paying consumers and revenue growing, month by month, currently up about 75% since January 2026 among this segment. The gains continued even after the company saw a growth spike from consumers in March, when it refused to allow its models to be used by the Trump administration for mass surveillance of Americans and autonomous weapons. Another indicator of Claude's growing popularity with consumers comes from DataCamp, an online education platform that teaches AI skills to consumers and business employees, with about 20 million users.

Interest in Claude among consumers on DataCamp has exploded since the start of the year. 'Claude' is now the most searched term on its site, even more than the term 'AI,' DataCamp tells TechCrunch. While ChatGPT courses are still far more popular with businesses doing corporate training, among self-directed consumers, demand for Claude courses is outpacing ChatGPT by three to one, the company says.

Demand for courses on Claude has increased 18x in the last 30 days alone. Still, while Claude's growth is impressive, ChatGPT is still far and away the most popular AI with consumers, in every way. For instance, recent data from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower shows Claude growing well this year across all platforms, but still a long way behind ChatGPT.

While ChatGPT's growth has, the data implies, been more modest of late (largely due to its already enormous reach), it still has many more paying users. Yet, there's no question that Claude has started to gain on ChatGPT this year in terms of dollars collected from consumers, as well as general consumer awareness and interest. As both OpenAI and Anthropic stand on the threshold of becoming public companies, we're eager for a peek at the legs supporting their businesses.

The ongoing developments in the AI sector and Anthropic's recent conflicts with the U.S. government have significant implications for the business. Anthropic's recent battle with the U.S.