Recent calls from AI industry leaders to slow the pace of frontier development, and the reaction that followed, raise a question we’ve been tracking in our data for some time: whether consumer demand for AI subscriptions shows any sign of cooling. It does not.
Consumer Edge credit and debit card data shows spend in the Consumer AI subindustry growing between roughly 150% and 170% year over year for five consecutive quarters. Growth has not decelerated as the category has scaled, and the most recent data sits near the upper end of the range. Consumer subscriptions are one piece of AI demand, and a smaller one than enterprise and API spend, but they are the piece observable in real time.
OpenAI’s share of tracked consumer AI spend has moved from roughly 55% at the start of 2025 to a peak above 60% in late 2025, down to a trough near 45% in May 2026, and back to roughly 50% today. Anthropic went from under 5% in January 2025 to a peak above 30% this summer, settling around 30%.
The share shift has not come from substitution. Among consumers whose first Anthropic transaction fell in the four weeks ending June 6, 73% had no OpenAI subscription in the prior 90 days, 21% had one and kept it, and only 7% stopped transacting at OpenAI within 90 days. Anthropic has been adding subscribers from outside OpenAI’s paying base rather than taking them from it.
Where the two brands genuinely diverge is income, with pricing potentially explaining the difference. Anthropic captures 35% of tracked consumer AI spend in households above $150k and 18% in households below $60k, stepping down at every band in between. OpenAI steps the other way, at 46% in the top band and 64% in the lowest. OpenAI has a budget tier priced at $8 per month and an ad-supported option on its lower tiers. Anthropic’s entry consumer plan is $20 with no ad-supported equivalent.
How business leaders use this data
- Competitive intelligence teams separate share change into category growth and substitution, so a declining share does not get read as declining demand.
- Pricing teams track share by household income band to see where a budget tier is defending a base and where an entry price point is ceding one.
- Strategy teams monitor new-subscriber cross-shop to test whether growth is incremental to the category or taken from a competitor, before committing to a positioning claim.
Notes: Consumer Edge U.S. consumer credit and debit card data. Category growth reflects year-over-year change in quarterly Consumer AI subindustry spend; 2026Q3 is partial through 9/9/2026. Brand share reflects each brand’s spend as a percent of total tracked Consumer AI subindustry spend, trailing four-week periods through 8/29/2026, the most recent complete period. Cross-shop reflects consumers with a first observed Anthropic transaction in the four weeks ending 6/6/2026, the most recent cohort with a complete 90-day forward window.
