Claude is a Money-Making Machine! Well, Kind Of

Claude, Anthropic's AI Assistant, doesn't have the same name recognition as ChatGPT, Grok, or even Perplexity. In terms of downloads, Claude's 15M estimates downloads don't come close to ChatGPT's nearly 800M downloads. Sure, Claude hasn't been around as long, but even much newer entrant, Grok, put it in its rear view mirror with its 51M estimated downloads.

But while this sounds pretty grim for Anthropic, scale isn’t the only measure of success in this market, and Claude shows it's almost on part with ChatGPT in one very important metrics - Revenue per Download.

I compared the revenue per download of Claude, ChatGPT, Grok and Perplexity, the most popular first-party AI assistants right now expecting Claude's to be fairly low. But it wasn't!

Appfigures Intelligence shows that on average, Claude gets $2.97 per download. That's net, which means what Anthropic gets to keep after Apple and Google fees. That is within striking distance of ChatGPT's $3.14 per download.

This is important because Grok and Perplexity don't even get a whole dollar per download. That's a big difference.

Will the high revenue per download remain if downloads scale? Maybe.

A smaller user base and not being a household name gives Claude's average an advantage. Fewer users download the app but those who do know why and are more likely to pay.

In September, those users spent $5.6M via the App Store and Google Play, according to our estimates. That's lower than ChatGPT and Grok, but nothing to chuckle at.

I believe there's a lot more Anthropic can do to make Claude competitive on the App Store, and if the revenue per download sticks, it'll be worth the investment.