--- title: "OpenAI Beats Anthropic on Consumer AI Spending in 47 States, Loses California" description: "Card data in a16z’s new report shows ChatGPT’s wide paid lead, while Claude’s smaller base has far more $100-a-month spenders" author: "Nate Ledger" published: 2026-10-07T08:03:01Z modified: 2026-10-07T09:50:37Z url: https://rews.cc/a/openai-beats-anthropic-on-consumer-ai-spending-in-47-states--c53c07 language: en tags: ["openai", "anthropic", "ai", "spending", "chatgpt", "tech"] publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)" --- # OpenAI Beats Anthropic on Consumer AI Spending in 47 States, Loses California *Card data in a16z’s new report shows ChatGPT’s wide paid lead, while Claude’s smaller base has far more $100-a-month spenders* By Nate Ledger · October 7, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/openai-beats-anthropic-on-consumer-ai-spending-in-47-states--c53c07 ## In brief - YipitData card data for June to August shows OpenAI outspent Anthropic among US consumers in 47 states - Claude led in Massachusetts, Montana, California and Washington, DC; OpenAI topped 70% in eight states, led by Delaware at 82% - The data excludes free users and other AI firms, and a16z says it should not be read as total company revenue - Top 1% of payers made up 19.5% of observed spend; 7.3% of Claude payers are on its $100-a-month Max plan vs 1.1% for ChatGPT - In August 4.5% of panel consumers paid for ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude, up from 2.1% a year earlier Here is a fun map. \[Henry Chandonnet at Business Insider reports\](\) that YipitData, which tracks purchases on consumer credit and debit cards, looked at what Americans paid for AI between June and August. In 47 states, people spent more on OpenAI products than on Anthropic’s. Claude led in three: Massachusetts, Montana and California. It also led in Washington, DC, which is not a state, though it would like to be. The data first appeared in the \[seventh edition of Andreessen Horowitz’s “Top 100 Gen AI Consumer Apps” report\](\), posted on October 5 by Olivia Moore. It is the first edition to rank products by observed spending on US consumer cards rather than just by web visits and mobile users. The report’s own summary is that ChatGPT “is also dominant in all U.S. states aside from California, Montana, and Massachusetts.” In some places it wasn’t close. OpenAI took at least 70% of spending in eight states: Delaware (82%), Mississippi (77%), Alaska (74%), West Virginia (72%), Kentucky (71%), Louisiana (71%), North Dakota (71%) and New Mexico (70%). So in Delaware, a state better known for hosting companies than for having opinions about them, OpenAI collected a bit more than four dollars for every dollar that went to Anthropic. Before anyone redraws the electoral college, a few caveats. The map measures spending, so it can’t see anyone who uses ChatGPT or Claude for free, which is most people. It gives each state one colour regardless of population, so Wyoming and California count the same, and California, the biggest state, went to Anthropic. It leaves out Gemini, which lots of people use because it is built into Google products, and Meta’s agent Muse, which has [lately been doing well with consumers](https://rews.cc/a/openai-launches-always-on-dots-agents-to-rival-meta-s-muse-639760). And a16z says so itself: “The data is U.S.-only and drawn from panels rather than a census; so it should not be read as total company revenue.” Still, the national picture is not ambiguous. According to the report, ChatGPT has 3x more US consumer paid subscribers than Claude or Gemini. It was first into the chatbot race, and for a lot of people “ChatGPT” is still simply the word for AI. ## Whales I think the interesting question is what “share of spending” means when spending is this lumpy. The report found that the top 1% of payers accounted for 19.5% of all observed consumer AI spend, more than the bottom 50% of spenders combined, at 16.6%. That top 1% pays an average of $903 a month on consumer cards for AI. The median payer spends $25 a month and, per a16z, has “barely” increased that over time. So the typical whale spends about 36 times what the typical customer does, and a share of spending is partly a census of whales. And Anthropic has a lot of whales for its size. a16z says 7.3% of Claude’s consumer payers are on Max, its most expensive individual plan, which starts at $100 a month. The equivalent figures for Google and ChatGPT’s $100-a-month tiers are 1.3% and 1.1%. Claude has fewer paying customers, but proportionally more than five times as many of them are on the expensive plan. Here is a made-up example to show how that plays out on a map. Imagine a lightly populated state where ChatGPT has three times as many paying subscribers as Claude, mostly on cheap plans, while a few dozen local software developers each pay for Claude’s top tier. Those developers could be a big chunk of all the AI money in the state. In California, where there are lots of people like that, you would not need to imagine very hard. I have no data on who is actually paying for Claude in Montana; I’m just saying a state-by-state spending map is the sort of chart where a small group of heavy users can change a colour. The two companies also don’t seem to be fighting over the same wallets. Only 8% of US ChatGPT subscribers also pay for Claude, the report says. Business Insider points to two 2025 studies finding that ChatGPT is better suited to augmentation, helping you do a task, while Claude is better suited to automation, doing the task for you. ChatGPT can also generate images and Claude can’t. If your chatbot is mostly a smarter search box, $20 a month is plenty. If it is doing chunks of your job, $100 starts to look reasonable. The summer wasn’t great for Anthropic, though. YipitData’s global desktop panel recorded declines in Claude’s average daily sessions in July and August, and its US e-receipt panel showed new subscriptions slowing and churn rising, according to a16z. On the web, meanwhile, a16z said Claude \[“has climbed to #3 on web with nearly 1B monthly visits”\](\). Lots of people visit; fewer of them pay; the ones who pay, pay a lot. Overall the market is still small. In August, 4.5% of eligible consumers in YipitData’s US e-receipt panel had an active paid personal subscription to at least one of ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude. A year earlier it was 2.1%, so the number has more than doubled, but more than 95 out of 100 people in the panel still weren’t paying any of the three. ## The card in the other wallet The bigger blind spot is that this is a map of personal cards. a16z itself notes, about its top spenders, that “work usage may be even higher,” and that spending runs through company accounts and expense reports a consumer panel never sees. By Business Insider’s account, ChatGPT may not even be OpenAI’s most important product. That would be Codex, its AI coding tool, which mostly gets used at work. So the map shows what Americans will pay for AI out of their own pockets, and in 47 states the answer is ChatGPT. The really big AI spending, for both companies, probably shows up on corporate cards.