Claude’s share of UK AI subscription spending quadruples in seven months

Anthropic’s Claude took 29.4% of UK consumer spending on AI subscriptions in July. In December 2025, its share was 7.4%. ChatGPT’s share fell from 73.5% to 52.5% over the same seven months. The figures come from a new study of UK bank and card data, published on Thursday.

The working paper, Who Pays for AI?, is by three economists. Nikhil Datta and Peter John Lambert are at the University of Warwick, and Patrick Schneider is at Imperial Business School. They used de-identified records from 14.2 million UK accounts, supplied by a financial data aggregator.

UK adults now spend about £1.07 billion a year on AI assistants at July’s rate, the study found. In June, 5.1% of adults paid for one, about 2.8 million people. A year earlier, the share was 2.3%.

“The first thing that surprised me is just the sheer volume of everything.” Peter Lambert, University of Warwick, to Bloomberg

Lambert told Bloomberg it is “unheard of” for a paid consumer technology to reach millions of adults this fast.

Claude’s gain is partly about price. Of Claude subscribers, 6.2% pay for plans costing £80 or more a month, the paper found. Among ChatGPT subscribers, the share is 0.3%.

ChatGPT still has far more paying users. It held 71.2% of active assistant subscribers in July, against 27.1% for Claude. Google’s Gemini took 5.1% of spending, down from 5.8%.

The study counts only subscriptions people pay for themselves, not licences employers buy for staff. It counts accounts rather than people, and it estimates app store payments it cannot see directly. With those included, Claude’s share of spending in July falls to 22.8%.

The payers skew young, male, well paid and urban. Adults in their 20s were nearly five times as likely as those over 60 to have ever paid for one. That holds after adjusting for income, sex and region. Men were 27% more likely to pay than women.

London had the highest share of payers and the North East the lowest. By occupation, IT professionals led at 20.3%, while social care workers were lowest at 1.7%.

The study lands as both companies prepare to go public. Anthropic’s amended IPO filing shows $17bn in revenue. OpenAI president Greg Brockman said on Wednesday that his company should be ready for an IPO in 2027.

Brockman told the WSJ Tech conference that OpenAI had a “pretty rough” first half in coding, The Wall Street Journal reported. He said its new tools turned that around in the third quarter.

OpenAI is also pointing to the size of ChatGPT’s user base. ChatGPT now has 1.2 billion weekly users, up from 1 billion two months earlier. Adam Fry, its consumer product lead, gave the figure to Big Technology on Monday.

In the UK, ChatGPT still takes more than half of consumer AI spending and has nearly three in four paying subscribers.

With expertise in digital marketing, product management, and branding & identity, Ana Maria Constantin develops strategies that resonate (show all) With expertise in digital marketing, product management, and branding & identity, Ana Maria Constantin develops strategies that resonate with our target audience in the software/SaaS industry. Collaboration and teamwork are paramount to her, as she loves empowering her colleagues to achieve outstanding results and unlock their full potential.

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