Which AI makes you look most prestigious? Research shows Claude users’ income far exceeds its peers, while Meta AI comes in at the bottom

A recent report from Epoch AI, a research organization, says that users of different AI platforms each have distinct income structures. 80% of Claude users have annual incomes over $100k, while Meta AI’s audience spans all income levels and is the closest option to the mainstream. This data not only reveals each platform’s market positioning, but also makes “which AI you use” start to carry a bit of an identity label.

80% of US adults who report using Claude in the previous week live in households earning $100k or more a year, compared to 37% of Meta AI users.

Other major providers cluster in a relatively narrow band, with 56–64% of users in $100k+ households. pic.twitter.com/4PJnbqJB8X

— Epoch AI (@EpochAIResearch) April 22, 2026

Claude users are the highest earners—nearly eight in ten make over $100k

Based on this survey covering six major platforms—ChatGPT, Claude, Google Gemini, Grok, Meta AI, and Microsoft Copilot—Claude users show the most pronounced income concentration among all the services.

High-income groups making more than $100,000 account for 79.8% of Claude users, while low-income users earning under $25k account for just 2.5%, the lowest among the six platforms. By comparison, the share of high-income users is about 63.7% for Microsoft Copilot, 60.3% for ChatGPT, and 55.9% and 56.2% for Google Gemini and Grok, respectively. Claude’s user profile clearly leans toward the high end, pulling far ahead of other platforms.

However, in this survey Claude’s original sample size is only 201, the smallest among the six platforms, while ChatGPT leads with 1,611 samples. The gap in sample size means the interpretation should be more cautious, but the overall trend still has reference value.

Meta AI is the most mainstream; Grok’s user base skews toward men in the tech scene

At the other end of the spectrum, Meta AI’s income distribution is the most spread out among all platforms. Users earning over $100,000 make up only 36.5%, the lowest among the six; meanwhile, low-income users earning under $25k make up 17.1%, the highest across all platforms.

This profile closely matches Meta’s broad user base across apps like Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Meta AI is default-integrated into these everyday apps, making it easy to reach a wider—and more diverse—population, rather than a specific high-income or professional group.

Developed by xAI, Musk’s company, and integrated with the X platform, Grok’s user income structure is similar to Google Gemini’s, with the high-income share hovering around 56%. Given that X’s user base is heavily populated by people working in technology, finance, and media, this figure is not surprising.

Claude is getting more expensive—there’s a price to its premium image

Claude’s high-income user profile is reflected, to some extent, in its product pricing and business strategy. Recently, multiple pricing moves surrounding Anthropic have been continuously raising the bar for using Claude.

First are changes to the subscription plan. Rumors in the market suggest that Claude Code is being removed from the $20/month Pro plan, and users may need to upgrade to the Max plan starting at $100/month to continue using it. Although Anthropic’s head of growth says this is only a feature test, the market has interpreted it as an early signal that high-consumption features are being concentrated into higher-priced plans.

At the same time, the billing structure for Claude Enterprise is also facing restructuring. Part of Claude’s services are expected to be separated from the monthly fee and instead billed separately based on actual Token consumption. While the subscription fee is lowered from roughly $40/month to $20/month, the removal of API discounts and the requirement for enterprises to pay their monthly usage in advance will raise the cost for enterprises to use AI.

Finally, the newly released Claude Opus 4.7 keeps the same per-million-token rate, but the updated tokenizer will split the same text into more tokens, so the real cost could increase by 37% to 47%.

All these mechanisms make the true cost of using AI increasingly hard to judge from surface-level numbers, and have also sparked widespread questions about AI pricing transparency.

Are AI tools headed toward “class stratification”?

Based on the data from this survey, differences in users’ income structures on AI platforms are likely only the beginning. As more platforms start tiering prices for high-consumption features, and even adding more hidden costs, the “accessibility” of AI tools will increasingly be tied to willingness to pay and usage scale.

For the average consumer, Meta AI’s free integration model may still be the lowest-barrier entry point. But for developers and professionals with deep, intensive usage needs, Claude’s premium image also exposes the reality that it costs a lot to operate behind the scenes.

In the future, the question of “which AI you use” may really become a quiet indicator reflecting purchasing power and usage scenarios. Income

This article What AI is most likely to show your identity and status? Research reveals Claude users’ income far exceeds that of its peers; Meta AI props up the bottom—first appeared in Chain News ABMedia.