Business and economy·October 6, 2026, 06:26

a16z list: ChatGPT leads, and Claude is now number three

AI-generated and checked against the sources listed below.

The investment firm a16z has released the 7th edition of its list of the most used consumer AI apps. ChatGPT is still the biggest, and for the first time the list also looks at what people pay for.

On October 5, the US investment firm a16z released the 7th edition of its "Top 100" list of AI apps for ordinary consumers. ChatGPT is still at the top, both on the web and on mobile.

ChatGPT has a big lead

On the web, the top three are ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude. On mobile, ChatGPT is around 2.5 times as large as Gemini measured by monthly active users and around 14 times as large as Claude. I have not been able to confirm the headline claim that ChatGPT has over 1 billion monthly mobile users in the sources I have seen. That does not change the fact that ChatGPT is clearly the biggest.

Claude from Anthropic has advanced to a clear number three and has overtaken DeepSeek and Perplexity. In the US, according to a16z, Claude also passed Gemini in the number of paying subscribers earlier this year.

New: What do people spend money on?

For the first time, the list has a ranking by actual spending. It is based on data on US card payments from the analytics company YipitData. ChatGPT has around three times as many paying subscribers in a16z's US data as Gemini or Claude.

The figures also show that few people pay a lot:

- Only 4.5 percent of US consumers had an active paid subscription to ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude in August 2026. - The 1 percent who spend the most account for 19.5 percent of all consumer spending on AI. - That group pays on average 903 dollars a month, or about DKK 6,000.

The market is settling down

Only 11 new products made the list. That is the lowest number in any edition. It suggests that the market is consolidating around a few big players, rather than new apps constantly taking over.

There is, however, movement in new types of tools. Several small companies are building so-called agents, that is, AI that can carry out tasks for you on its own. Some of them, such as Lindy and Poke, report hundreds of thousands of users.

What does it mean for you?

If you use an AI assistant, there is a high probability that it is ChatGPT, and most people do not pay for it. The figures are from the US and do not directly show how Danes use AI. But they point to a market where a few big names dominate and where the money comes from a small group of heavy users.