Paid consumer spending on Anthropic’s Claude grows 75% since January 2026, data shows

Credit card transaction analysis by Indagari, covering weekly data from 2025 through May 10, 2026, indicates that spending on Anthropic’s Claude by paid consumers has grown about 75% since January 2026. The dataset includes payments for subscriptions and API tokens and represents a large sample of anonymized transactions from roughly 28 million U.S. consumers. While the data does not provide absolute revenue or customer counts, it is sufficient to identify trends.

Indagari’s analysis shows Claude’s paying consumer base and revenue rising month over month, with growth persisting even after a March spike attributed to Anthropic’s refusal to allow its models to be used by the Trump administration for mass surveillance or autonomous weapons.

Separate data from DataCamp, an online education platform with about 20 million users, indicates a surge in consumer interest in Claude. The term "Claude" is now the most searched term on DataCamp, surpassing even "AI," and demand for Claude courses among self-directed learners is outpacing ChatGPT courses by three to one. DataCamp reports an 18x increase in demand for Claude courses in the last 30 days.

Despite these gains, ChatGPT remains far ahead in overall consumer usage. Sensor Tower data cited in the report shows ChatGPT still leading by a wide margin across all platforms, though its growth has been more modest in recent months.

The article notes that both OpenAI and Anthropic are approaching potential public company status, raising questions about the sustainability and drivers of their respective growth trajectories.