How People Use Claude

The Anthropic Economic Index tracks how people use Claude, from samples of real conversations. In its March 2026 release, augmentation narrowly leads on Claude.ai: 52% of conversations against 43% automation. Through the API the balance tips the other way, with 53% automation against 13% augmentation. The API is also far more concentrated: it has no everyday-life traffic, and 65% of its conversations are about coding or AI and data.

Each band’s width is its share of conversations.

• Platform: Claude.ai or the API, from samples of a million conversations each.
• Topic: the index’s request categories, grouped into six themes. Education includes research; Business includes finance and law.
• Mode: automation, where Claude does the task, or augmentation, where people work with Claude. Neither means no collaboration pattern.
• Pattern: how the conversation went. Directive and feedback loop count as automation; task iteration, learning and validation as augmentation.

Unclassified conversations, 3% of Claude.ai and 22% of the API, aren’t broken down by topic or collaboration pattern in the index.

Hover or tap a band for its numbers, and drag dimensions and categories to reorder them. Try dragging Mode to the top to see which topics lean towards automation.