Gen AI is the only one of ten subscription categories to grow in either the US or the UK over the past year. It rose from 18% to 19.5% of US consumers and from 15% to 20% of UK consumers. The other nine categories fell in both markets. Nine in ten consumers now use an AI assistant for something, and people who use AI for work are three times more likely to pay for it than those who do not.
What happened to subscription spend in 2026?
One category grew. The rest did not.
Across ten subscription categories tracked in the US and the UK, gen AI is the only one that gained ground over the past year. That is true in both markets independently — a single-market result could be a quirk of local pricing or a platform launch, but this suggests it’s a pattern.
Gen AI means generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini — software that produces text, images or code in response to a prompt. A paid tier here means the consumer pays a recurring fee, as opposed to using a free version.
It’s not only gen AI’s growth that is notable. It is what it grew past. A category that barely registered as a consumer subscription two years ago now sits alongside gaming and gym membership in household spending — and ahead of audiobooks, newspapers and subscription boxes.
What are people using AI assistants for?
An AI assistant is a tool you ask questions of in plain language — ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, or the AI answers that now appear at the top of search results.
Nine in ten consumers now use one for something. What they use it for:
- 65% ask a question or look something up
- 41% write or edit something
- 34% use it for work or study
- 26% use it to shop or choose what to buy
But while 90% of people are using AI, most are taking advantage of free tiers, with far fewer actually paying for it.
How many people now pay for AI — and how fast is it growing?
About one in five consumers pay for a gen AI subscription: 19.5% in the US and 20% in the UK.
That figure is worth pausing on, because usage on its own is a weak signal. Almost everyone has access to a free AI assistant, so using one costs nothing and proves little. Paying is different. A recurring charge is a commitment renewed every month, and it is the clearest evidence available that an AI tool has become part of how someone actually lives their life.
The growth:
- UK: 15% to 20.0% of consumers, a rise of 5 percentage points — a 33% relative increase
- US: 18% to 19.5% of consumers, a rise of 1.5 percentage points — a 8% relative increase
The rank movement tells the same story from a different angle:
- In the UK, gen AI climbed from eighth to joint fifth, passing audiobooks and social media and drawing level with gaming.
- In the US, it moved from seventh to sixth, passing gym and fitness subscriptions.
The US rank move owes something to gym memberships falling rather than to gen AI alone. The UK move does not — gen AI rose 5 points under its own steam, and it is the only category in either market that rose at all.
Which AI assistants do people actually use?
The average consumer used just under two different assistants in the month surveyed. This is not a winner-takes-all market at the consumer level — people move between tools rather than settling on one.
| AI assistant | Both markets | UK | US |
| ChatGPT | 56% | 63% | 48% |
| Google Gemini, or AI answers in Search | 51% | 51% | 52% |
| Microsoft Copilot | 23% | 27% | 19% |
| Meta AI (WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook) | 18% | 17% | 19% |
| Apple Siri or Apple Intelligence | 13% | 13% | 13.5% |
| Claude | 12% | 13.5% | 11% |
| Amazon Alexa+ | 12% | 12% | 11% |
| Perplexity | 4.5% | 3% | 6% |
Used in the last month. Consumers can select more than one, so the column does not total 100%.
ChatGPT is the assistant most people reach for, at 56% of consumers, but there’s a significant gap between the two markets. ChatGPT reaches 63% of UK consumers against 48% of Americans: 15 points, the widest market difference of any assistant in the study. The UK also shows higher adoption of Microsoft Copilot (27% against 19% in the US).
The reason for these divergences is unclear, but part of it could be down to work. Brits are more likely to use AI for work or study than Americans — 39% versus 28% — and both of these assistants skew heavily towards work use: 81% of UK consumers who use AI for work have used ChatGPT, against 63% overall. More exposure at work is a plausible route to more use outside it.
Which assistant are people actually paying for?
The survey asks which assistants people use and whether they pay for a gen AI subscription. It does not ask which product the subscription is for, so no figure here attributes paid share to a brand. What it does allow is an inference, and it points firmly in one direction.
| AI assistant | Used by paid subscribers | Used by non-subscribers |
|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | 89.5% | 47% |
| Google Gemini, or AI answers in Search | 65.5% | 48% |
| Microsoft Copilot | 37% | 19% |
| Meta AI | 36% | 14% |
| Claude | 30% | 8% |
| Apple Siri or Apple Intelligence | 23% | 11% |
| Amazon Alexa+ | 18.5% | 10% |
| Perplexity | 12% | 3% |
| Average number of assistants used | 3.11 | 1.60 |
Nearly nine in ten people who pay for gen AI use ChatGPT. Only about one consumer in ten pays for a gen AI subscription without having opened ChatGPT in the last month. Whatever they are paying for, ChatGPT is almost always in the mix — which makes it the most probable destination for the majority of that spend.
One thing to hold in mind when reading the table: paid subscribers use more assistants in general, 3.11 against 1.60, so every product shows a higher figure in the first column. ChatGPT’s case rests on how close its 89.5% comes to universal, not simply on being higher.
For anyone sizing this market, the read is that paying consumers are not picking one product over the others — they use 3.11 assistants on average. But ChatGPT is in almost every one of those combinations, which makes it the most likely home for most of the money.
Is work the real driver of paid AI adoption?
The evidence points that way.
More than half of consumers — 51% — say AI has changed their working life in some way. Underneath that:
- A quarter now do their job differently because of it
- 23% have had to learn new skills
- 13% say their employer expects them to use it
The work or study use case is the one where AI stops being optional. A consumer who tries an assistant out of curiosity can stop at any point. A consumer whose employer expects them to use it cannot — and someone using a tool daily under obligation is a very different prospect from someone using it occasionally out of interest.
How do work users differ from casual users?
Sharply, and in a consistent direction. Consumers who use AI for work or study:
- Use nearly twice as many different assistants as those who do not
- Are three times more likely to pay for a subscription
That second figure is the structural explanation for everything above. Paid gen AI adoption is not spreading evenly across the consumer base — it is concentrating among people whose working lives have already changed. Work is manufacturing experienced users faster than any marketing campaign could, and experienced users are the ones who pay.
It also suggests where the ceiling is. If paid conversion is largely a function of work exposure, then the addressable market for consumer AI subscriptions is closer to the working population using AI professionally than to the 90% who have tried an assistant.
Why is gen AI growing when nothing else is?
Two things are happening at the same time, and they are not connected to each other.
Gen AI is new, and people are still working out what it does. Work is the engine. Consumers who use AI for work or study are three times more likely to pay for a subscription than those who don’t, and someone using an assistant all day keeps finding new things it can do. Some of those uses follow them home. A category still expanding what it is for has room to grow.
The other nine are mature categories under cost pressure. Video streaming already reaches 71% of UK consumers and 66% of Americans, so there are fewer new customers left to win. And a year ago, 47% of UK consumers and 54% of Americans told us they were likely to reduce the number of subscriptions they had in 2026. They were already planning to cut.
That also points at where gen AI’s growth comes from next. If paid adoption follows workplace exposure, the people most likely to start paying are the ones whose jobs change first.
Frequently asked questions
What percentage of people pay for a gen AI subscription? Around one in five consumers pay for a gen AI subscription — 19.5% in the US and 20% in the UK.
Is gen AI subscription growth unique, or are all subscriptions growing? Gen AI is the only one of ten subscription categories tracked that grew in the US or UK over the past year.
Does using AI for work make people more likely to pay for it? Yes. People who use AI for work or study use nearly twice as many assistants and are three times more likely to pay for a subscription than those who do not.
Which AI assistant is most used? ChatGPT leads at 56%, followed by Google Gemini or AI answers in search at 52%. The average person uses just under two assistants a month.
Which AI assistant do people pay for? One in five respondents say they have a gen AI subscription but the survey does not ask which assistant the subscription is for. However, nearly 90% of consumers who pay for a gen AI subscription used ChatGPT in the last month, against 47% of those who do not pay, so ChatGPT is almost always part of what a paying consumer uses.
How fast is gen AI subscription adoption growing? In the UK it rose 5 percentage points in a year, from 15% to 20.0% of consumers. In the US it rose 1.5 points, from 18% to 19.5%. In the UK it climbed from eighth to joint fifth of ten categories; in the US from seventh to sixth.
Methodology
Figures come from the Attest 2026 Consumer trends report, surveying nationally representative samples of 4,000 working-age consumers in the US and UK.
