A new Bank of America Institute report found that only about 3% of US households currently pay for AI services, according to Moneywise via Yahoo Finance. The median monthly spend among those who do pay: $20 as of February 2026.
The number is striking given the scale of corporate investment flowing into AI products. OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Meta have collectively committed hundreds of billions to AI infrastructure, model training, and product development in 2025 and 2026 alone. The gap between that spending and actual consumer uptake is now quantified.
Adoption Is Growing, but from a Low Base
Household participation in AI payments grew 38% compared to the 2024 average, according to Bank of America’s payments data. The growth rate is real, but the starting point is low enough that 38% growth still leaves AI subscriptions as a niche consumer category.
Roughly 60% of AI subscribers spend $20 or less per month. The share spending between $21 and $40 monthly increased 50% since 2024, while 7% of AI-paying households now spend more than $100 per month. Higher-income households earning more than $125,000 account for the largest share of subscribers, though the strongest growth came from the $75,000 to $125,000 bracket.
Gen Z and younger millennials were more likely to pay than older millennials and Gen X, per the report.
One-Third of Consumers See No Practical Use
A CivicScience survey cited in the Bank of America report found that 37% of respondents said none of AI’s common uses were practical or helpful in their everyday lives. Shopping for electronics and planning vacations ranked among the most common consumer uses for AI-powered tools.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in March that the company envisions AI as a metered utility. “We see a future where intelligence is a utility like electricity or water and people buy it from us on a meter,” Altman said. That vision requires consumer willingness to pay that, as of mid-2026, remains limited.
The Enterprise Bet Looks Stronger
The consumer adoption gap may explain why AI companies are increasingly finding their largest customers in the business world. Anthropic’s rapid growth has been driven largely by demand for enterprise AI tools, particularly products aimed at software developers and workplace productivity, according to Reuters as cited in the Moneywise report.
The timing adds context. Both OpenAI and Anthropic are currently navigating government-imposed restrictions on their frontier model rollouts, with GPT-5.6 and Claude Mythos 5 limited to approved partners and critical infrastructure organizations. The restrictions make broad consumer access to the most capable models even more distant, potentially widening the adoption gap further.
The $20 Question
For founders building consumer AI products, the Bank of America data frames the challenge clearly. The addressable market is not “everyone who uses a phone.” It is, today, 3% of households willing to spend the equivalent of a streaming subscription on AI tools. Growth is there, but the conversion from free to paid remains the central unsolved problem in consumer AI.