The number of paid subscribers to Anthropic, the company that operates Claude, has more than doubled in the first six months of 2026.



Anthropic, an AI company known for its chat AI '

Clude ,' coding AI ' Clude Code ,' and the ' Anthropic Institute ,' which researches social issues related to AI, has been rapidly increasing its number of paid subscribers, more than doubling in the last six months.

Anthropic's Claude popularity with paying consumers is skyrocketing | TechCrunch
https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/28/anthropics-claude-popularity-with-paying-consumers-is-skyrocketing/



Anthropic's Claude Sees Surge in Subscriptions
https://www.pymnts.com/artificial-intelligence-2/2026/anthropics-claude-draws-in-record-number-of-consumers/

Anthropic is experiencing a rapid rise in popularity, with plans to top the US App Store download rankings in early March 2026.

Data provided to technology media outlet TechCrunch by consumer transaction analytics firm Indagari analyzed billions of anonymized credit card transactions from approximately 28 million American consumers. The following shows the trend in the number of Claude paid subscribers revealed by credit card transactions, showing an increase of approximately 2.5 times in the five months from September 2025 to February 2026.



The following is a comparison of the weekly trends in the number of new paid subscribers for ChatGPT (blue) and Claude (orange) up to March 1, 2026. ChatGPT has significantly more subscribers, but the number of new subscribers varies from week to week, while Claude has consistently shown an upward trend.



TechCrunch points out that one reason for Claude's rise in popularity is that while OpenAI is pursuing an advertising strategy of placing ads on ChatGPT, Anthropic satirically depicted introducing ads to chat AI in a Super Bowl commercial and made it clear that it would not introduce ads to Claude.

AI company Anthropic releases Super Bowl ad saying 'This is what happens when AI is loaded with ads,' prompting a lengthy response from OpenAI's Sam Altman - GIGAZINE



Furthermore, Anthropic had a contract with the Department of Defense to provide custom models of Claude to the Department of Defense and various intelligence agencies. However, when the Department of Defense pressured Anthropic to remove the security measures it had implemented, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodi firmly refused , stating that 'the use of Claude for 'massive domestic surveillance' and 'fully autonomous weapons' is unacceptable.' As a result, in early March 2026, President Donald Trump announced that the US government would sever ties with Anthropic. During this period of conflict between government agencies and Anthropic, the number of Anthropic users increased rapidly, and Claude topped the download rankings on the US App Store, with reports stating that 'Claude jumped to the top not because of new features or performance, but because of a week-long dispute with the government.'

Claude rises to number one in the App Store rankings, suggesting users support Anthropic's conflict with the government - GIGAZINE



In addition, following the great success of ' OpenClaw ,' an AI agent framework that automates tasks by operating a PC, not just chatting and coding, Anthropic released ' Cowork, ' an AI optimized for PC operation, on January 13, 2026. As of the time of writing, Cowork is available as a research preview for paid members, so it is possible that the growing popularity of AI agents is contributing to the increase in Anthropic's number of paid members.

It should be noted that the data from Indagari is based solely on credit card transaction analysis and does not cover all consumers, therefore it does not accurately represent the number of Anthropic users or new paid subscribers. Also, since Indagari's data is for general credit card users, it does not include Claude's main service, the Enterprise plan for businesses. Anthropic has not released accurate data on the number of users, including free members, but an Anthropic spokesperson reportedly confirmed to TechCrunch that 'the number of Claude paid subscribers has more than doubled this year.'

Furthermore, while the total number of Claude users is estimated by third-party organizations to be between approximately 18 million and 30 million, and precise data has not been released, Anthropic announced a campaign in mid-March 2026 encouraging the use of Claude outside of peak hours in response to the increase in users. Tariq Sihipar, who is involved in the development of Claude Code, explained in an X post: 'To cope with the increased demand for Claude, we are adjusting the session time limits for free/Pro/Max members during peak hours. We have been working on many efficiencies to offset this impact, but about 7% of users may reach session limits that they have not encountered before. You can extend your session limit by running tasks during off-peak hours. We understand that this is frustrating, and we continue to invest in efficient scaling.'




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