More than half of AI users now pay for it. Menlo Ventures found that 55% of AI users said they pay for at least one AI product in 2026, in a Menlo Ventures survey of 5,067 US adults run with Morning Consult. The spending is uneven: Menlo Ventures found that the top 14% of payers account for 60% of spending. If you are one of the heavier payers, the useful question is no longer whether to pay for AI, but whether the plans you pay for overlap.
How many AI users pay for AI today?
Paying for AI has become the normal case for people who use it.
Menlo Ventures found that 55% of AI users said they pay for at least one AI product in 2026. Menlo Ventures based its 2026 State of Consumer AI report on a nationally representative survey of 5,067 US adults fielded in July with Morning Consult and weighted for education, gender, age, ethnicity and region.
That changes the conversation about AI costs. When most users pay, the decision is less about trying AI and more about which plans earn their place each month, and how many of them do the same job.
Who spends the most on AI?
Most of the money comes from a small group of heavy payers.
Menlo Ventures found that the top 14% of payers account for 60% of spending. These are the people with several paid plans, higher tiers or both, and they are the readers most likely to pay twice for similar work.
The bills are also moving up. Menlo Ventures found that 46% of payers spend more than they did a year ago, versus 12% who spend less. When a monthly AI bill keeps growing, the overlap between plans grows with it unless someone checks it on purpose.
Do people who pay for AI use it more?
Payers use AI far more often than people who stay on free plans.
Menlo Ventures found that payers use AI daily at nearly twice the rate of non-payers (50% vs. 26%). Daily use is exactly where overlap hurts most: a person who opens two or three assistants every day for similar tasks pays several times for the same habit.
Daily use also makes a fair comparison easy. Your own prompts from this week are a better test of which plan earns its price than any general ranking.
Why do paid AI plans often overlap?
Many payers keep more than one assistant because each one is good at different things, and the plans pile up.
YipitData found that 37.8% of US e-receipt panelists with an active Google One AI Pro or Ultra plan also paid for Claude, ChatGPT or Perplexity in the first half of 2026. In the same YipitData data, the overlap with Claude was 24.5% and the overlap with ChatGPT was 19.3%.
Overlap is not a mistake in itself. Different models really do answer the same question differently, and many people want access to more than one. The problem is paying for that access through separate subscriptions that each cover the same chat job.
How do you check whether your AI subscriptions are worth it?
You can check your own plans in one sitting with a short list and your real prompts.
- **List every AI charge.** Include cards, app store receipts and any plan a colleague or employer pays for you.
- **Write the one job each plan does most often.** For example, drafting emails, research, coding or images.
- **Group the list by job.** Any job that appears under two plans is an overlap you pay for twice.
- **Pick your three most frequent prompts.** Use the exact wording you send at work.
- **Run them side by side in the models you pay for.** Note which answer you would actually use and where a second model added something real.
- **Cancel the plans that never win.** Do it before their renewal dates, and repeat the check once a quarter.
How does SmophyAI fit if you pay for several models?
SmophyAI is an AI workspace where ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, Perplexity and DeepSeek answer the same prompt side by side in one subscription.
Multi-Chat sends one prompt to all six models at once, so the side by side check in the steps above becomes one action instead of six tabs. Best Answer combines the strongest information from the six responses into one reply. Image, video and writing studios sit in the same plan, so creative work does not need its own subscriptions.
The plan costs $19.98 a month. You can start free and run your three most frequent prompts before you cancel anything you pay for today.
Common questions
What percentage of AI users pay for AI?
Menlo Ventures found that 55% of AI users said they pay for at least one AI product in 2026, based on a Menlo Ventures survey of 5,067 US adults run with Morning Consult.
Who is actually paying for AI?
Payment is concentrated among heavy users. Menlo Ventures found that the top 14% of payers account for 60% of spending, and that payers use AI daily at nearly twice the rate of non-payers.
Are paid AI subscriptions worth it?
They are worth it when each plan does a job no other plan you pay for already covers. List your plans by job, run your most frequent prompts side by side and cancel the plans that never give you the answer you use.
Is AI spending going up?
For many payers, yes. Menlo Ventures found that 46% of payers spend more than they did a year ago, versus 12% who spend less.
Can I use several AI models without several subscriptions?
Yes. SmophyAI puts ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, Perplexity and DeepSeek in one plan for $19.98 a month, and Multi-Chat shows their answers to the same prompt side by side.
Sources
About SmophyAI
SmophyAI is an AI workspace where ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, Perplexity and DeepSeek answer the same prompt side by side in one subscription, with Best Answer, Smophy Mode routing and studios for images, video and writing. Try Multi-Chat
About the author. Kamil Kępiński is the founder of Smophy Labs Inc. and builder of SmophyAI.
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