💳 AI Takes the Lion's Share of Subscriptions
AI-based services have solidified their position as the main foreign subscription expense for Russians. According to a report by the "Pay Worldwide" service (based on anonymized user transaction data from March to August 2026), AI tools account for 66% of total subscription transaction volume.
All other traditional categories—music and video streaming, video games, and cloud storage—account for just a third of all transactions.
The primary beneficiaries are two AI giants: ChatGPT and Claude. Together, they account for over 35% of all new card issuances and payments processed by the service (20.3% and 15.6%, respectively).
- ChatGPT maintains its lead in overall popularity: Every second user paying for AI services subscribes to OpenAI’s neural network (50.5%).
- Anthropic’s Claude leads in financial metrics: It accounts for 36.5% of total revenue compared to ChatGPT’s 33.3%, driven by higher pricing for corporate and professional plans.
- Cursor rounds out the top three: The specialized AI code editor holds a 9.3% share of the paying audience, outperforming video and image generators as well as neural network aggregators.
The market exhibits high retention dynamics, with 93.6% of spending taking the form of recurring monthly charges. The absence of domestic AI platforms in the statistics is due to the nature of the sample: the study tracks transactions using international payment cards, whereas Russian services are paid for using standard ruble-denominated payment methods.
Source: TASS
