Data Insight
Apr. 15, 2026

Claude usage rose by over 40% amid increased attention but remains far behind ChatGPT

The share of U.S. adults who used Claude in the past week rose from 3.0% in early March to 4.3% in early April 2026. It is the only AI service to show a clear upward trend over this short time period, though it remains far below the share of several other services, including ChatGPT at 30%. The survey did not investigate the causes of the increase in Claude usage, but timing coincided with a period that included a public dispute with the US government as well as an increase in enterprise adoption.

The numbers are based on three waves of the Epoch AI/Ipsos survey with 2,000 US adults for each of the first two waves, and 1,000 for the final wave. Participants reported which AI services (if any) they used in the past week. Responders were randomly recruited to make the survey representative of the U.S. population, and results are weighted to better reflect underrepresented groups, such as people from a lower socioeconomic status.

Epoch's work is free to use, distribute, and reproduce provided the source and authors are credited under the Creative Commons BY license.

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We examine how Claude’s usage share changed across three survey waves of U.S. adults, conducted by Epoch AI and Ipsos in March and April 2026. For each wave, we estimate the share of adults who reported using Claude in the past week, finding values of 3.0% (90% CI: 2.4% to 3.6%), 4.4% (90% CI: 3.7% to 5.2%), and 4.3% (90% CI: 3.4% to 5.4%).

We test for a trend over time by fitting a weighted linear model to the log-odds of usage. Under this specification, Claude is the only AI service in the survey to show a statistically significant upward trend over this period (p = 0.0448, one-sided test).

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