A UK research project estimated that consumer spending on AI subscriptions was running at £1.07 billion a year in July 2026. It also estimated that 5.2% of UK adults paid for an AI assistant that month. ChatGPT still had the larger share of direct payments to AI providers, though Claude had gained ground. Who Pays for AI?
What the UK spending estimate includes
The £1.07 billion figure is an annualized estimate: it applies the spending rate observed in July across a full year. It includes estimates for Apple and Google app-store subscriptions, whose bank charges do not identify the specific product. The project estimates those subscriptions from recurring charges at AI-related price points.
For direct payments, the project matches bank-statement text, exact prices and product launch dates against a registry of more than 200 AI products. Its analysis uses de-identified records from 14 million UK bank and card accounts and weights the results to represent UK adults aged 18 and older.
The provider shares use a narrower set of payments. They exclude app-store subscriptions and some accounts at card issuers whose privacy filters hide Claude’s name; the remaining accounts are reweighted. So those shares describe direct provider payments, not the full £1.07 billion estimate.
How many UK adults paid for AI?
The project estimated that 52.0 out of every 1,000 UK adults paid for an AI assistant in July 2026, or 5.2%. Its estimate for June was 50.6 per 1,000, or 5.1%. These are monthly estimates of paid adoption, separate from the annualized spending total.
ChatGPT still led direct-payment spending
Claude’s share rose substantially between December 2025 and July 2026, but ChatGPT remained ahead in the project’s measure of direct subscription payments.
| Provider | December 2025 | July 2026 |
| ChatGPT | 73.5% | 52.5% |
| Claude | 7.4% | 29.4% |
| Gemini | 5.8% | 5.1% |
| Other providers | 13.3% | 13.0% |
Share of direct payments to AI providers; app-store subscriptions are excluded. The July 2026 figures also exclude some accounts whose issuers hide Claude’s name, with the remaining accounts reweighted.
The gap between ChatGPT and Claude narrowed from 66.1 percentage points in December 2025 to 23.1 points in July 2026, a reduction of 43.0 points. These are shares of spending, not shares of subscribers.
A provider’s share of subscription spending shows where measured payments went, not how many people subscribe.
