Who is most likely to pay for ChatGPT or Claude out of their own pocket? Who Pays for AI?, a new study by economists at University of Warwick and Imperial College London, uses anonymised bank and card transactions to examine the UK's boom in use of paid AI tools.
The study estimates that 5.1% of UK adults - around 2.8 million people - paid for AI assistants themselves in June 2026, with subscriber numbers roughly doubling each year. UK consumer spending on AI tools has grown from almost nothing in early 2023 to a billion-pound annual market.
Occupations
What people do at work is a key factor in whether they pay for AI out of pocket. Across professions identified subscription rates varied from roughly:
- 20% among IT professionals
- 13–16% among university lecturers and finance professionals,
- 7-9% among school teachers, writers, artists, and doctors,
- under 3% among electricians, nurses, and social care workers.
Claude or ChatGPT?
The research found that ChatGPT remains the market leader, but Claude has gained ground rapidly, increasing its share of subscription spending from 7% to 29% between December 2025 and July 2026. ChatGPT's share fell from 74% to 53% over the same period.
Claude's growth also reflects uptake of more expensive plans, particularly among people working in technical and professional roles. Claude has a stronger following among software and IT workers, engineers, finance professionals and academics, while teachers, healthcare workers and HR staff tend to favour ChatGPT.
UK Regions
Londoners are more likely than adults elsewhere in the UK to pay for their own subscription to AI tools like ChatGPT or Claude. In June 2026, an estimated 7.9% of adults living there were estimated to have subscribed, compared with 5.1% nationally. The North East trailed the UK region rankings with 3.8%.
Age, men and women, and income
The study also found that overall:
- under-30s are five times as likely to pay for AI than over-60s,
- men are 27% more likely to subscribe than women,
- the top fifth of earners are almost twice as likely to subscribe than the bottom fifth
Commenting on their results, Dr Peter Lambert from University of Warwick's Department of Economics said: "Millions of people are now putting their hands into their own pockets to pay for AI every month. In little more than three years, these tools have become a billion-pound consumer market in the UK. This surge has been phenomenal and with only one in twenty adults currently subscribing, there's still room for further growth. The big question is how many people currently using free AI tools will eventually decide they are worth paying for?"
Dr Nikhil Datta from the University of Warwick's Department of Economics added: "People whose jobs involve tasks that AI can help with are more likely to pay for it themselves, so that suggests people are buying these tools partly for what they can do for them at work. The first paying customers were disproportionately men and high earners, but that picture is changing rapidly with women now making up nearly half of new subscribers."
Dr Patrick Schneider from Imperial Business School said: "Like many early-stage markets, the picture can change very quickly. ChatGPT still leads at present, but its early dominance is shrinking. Claude captured almost a third of consumer subscription spending by July, up from just 7% seven months earlier."
