Claude is attracting paying customers in a market that ChatGPT has dominated, according to credit card data.

      **TL;DR** The number of consumers paying for Claude has surged by 75% since January, according to credit card data. DataCamp reports that "Claude" is now the most popular search term on its platform, surpassing "AI."

      Recent analysis from Indagari, a credit card transaction evaluation firm, indicates that an increasing number of consumers are opting for Anthropic’s Claude over rival AI chatbots. Since January, Claude's paying consumer base and revenue have seen a growth of approximately 75%, based on Indagari's examination of billions of anonymized transactions from around 28 million US consumers. This trend challenges the notion that Anthropic's primary strength lies exclusively with enterprise developers and Claude Code users.

      The growth continued even after a significant rise in sign-ups in March, following Anthropic's public refusal to permit its models to be utilized for mass surveillance and autonomous weapons by the Trump administration. Indagari's analysis includes weekly transactions from 2025 through mid-May and encompasses payments for subscriptions and API tokens. Although the data does not provide exact revenue figures, it is substantial enough to reveal clear trends, and Claude’s trajectory remains consistently upward.

      Additional insights come from DataCamp, an online education platform with around 20 million users. The term "Claude" has now become the most searched term on the site, even surpassing "AI," as reported to TechCrunch. Among self-directed consumers, demand for Claude courses is tripling that of ChatGPT, with course interest having surged 18 times in just the past month.

      While ChatGPT still maintains a significant lead in total user numbers, Sensor Tower data released earlier this month reflects Claude's growth across all platforms, although it still significantly lags behind ChatGPT. Notably, ChatGPT’s market share dipped below 50% for the first time in March. In May, ChatGPT achieved over one billion monthly users, marking a rapid milestone that no other app has attained.

      This consumer momentum is significant, especially as both Anthropic and OpenAI are preparing for public offerings. Anthropic submitted a confidential IPO filing in June with a valuation nearing $965 billion. Investors reviewing the prospectus will be interested in seeing whether this growth can be sustained in the consumer market, beyond API contracts, where recurring subscription revenues are more consistent.

      The scenario is complicated by Anthropic’s ongoing issues with the US government, which ordered the company to disable its most advanced models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, earlier this month due to a disputed jailbreak. This led to a global shutdown just three days after Fable 5's launch. So far, this conflict seems to have bolstered consumer adoption, mirroring the pattern seen in March where controversy led to an uptick in sign-ups.

      ChatGPT courses remain far more favored in corporate training programs on DataCamp, illustrating that enterprise adoption and consumer preferences can significantly diverge. Additionally, according to Sensor Tower, ChatGPT retains new sign-ups more effectively than Claude, a gap that is shrinking.

      Anthropic declined to comment on the Indagari data. The company has not publicly shared its subscriber numbers, but all independent data sources assessing the situation as of 2026 indicate that Claude is gaining paying consumers at a rate that no longer appears niche.