What UK Buyers Actually Clicked in April — A Look at the Real AI-Tool Demand Curve

When you run a marketplace, the demand signal you actually trust is the one nobody can game — what real visitors click, search for, and compare side-by-side. We started capturing first-party events on DigitalbyDefault.ai in early April. Six weeks later we have enough data to share what UK buyers are looking at, and the picture is sharper than the hype cycle suggests.

A note on method up front: this is our own telemetry, not a survey or vendor self-reporting. We track eight events server-side — page views, app detail views, comparison initiations, alternatives-page views, head-to-head views, search queries, filter applications, and quiz completions. No user-level identifying data leaves the events table. The numbers below cover April 1 to April 30, 2026.

The voice-AI cluster won April

The top three apps by detail-page views weren't ChatGPT, Claude, or Cursor. They were Vapi, Speechmatics, and ElevenLabs — every one of them a voice-AI building block. The voice-AI category collectively generated 23% of app-detail traffic in April, more than any other category we track.

This tracks with what we hear from our advertise enquiries: voice-AI pilots are running in earnest at UK contact centres, fintech support teams, and field-service operators. The companies haven't all gone live, but procurement evaluation is in full swing. If you're a vendor in this category, the engagement signal is real.

SDR tools peaked, then plateaued

The Best AI SDR Tools 2026 roundup was the second-most-clicked blog post in April. Detail page views for Alta, AiSDR, Topo, Landbase, and Qualified Piper all spiked in the first two weeks, then plateaued — classic comparison-shopping pattern.

What's interesting is the alternatives data. Alta and Qualified Piper drove the most "see X alternatives" clicks; AiSDR drove the most "compare with…" deeplinks back into our compare flow. Buyers in the SDR category aren't just looking for one tool — they're shortlisting two or three for a side-by-side proof of concept.

The most-clicked alternatives page wasn't the most-reviewed app

The single most-viewed alternatives URL in April was for Cursor — not ChatGPT or Claude. The Cursor alternatives page outpaced the runners-up (ChatGPT, Claude, GitHub Copilot) by a meaningful margin.

The implication: buyer evaluation behaviour clusters tightly around recently-disrupted categories. AI coding had a year of rapid product churn (Cursor → Windsurf → Bolt → v0 → Cursor again), so when buyers land on a Cursor page they're checking whether they bet on the right horse. The big assistants don't generate the same anxious comparison shopping because the field looks more settled.

Search queries that came in cold

The search bar on /apps caught some interesting cold queries — terms typed before any filter:

• "voice agent" (147 distinct sessions)
• "sdr" (104)
• "automation" (98)
• "finance" (61)
• "customer support" (54)
• "compliance" (47)

The compliance signal is worth flagging. We've not had a strong security & compliance category presence in editorial coverage, but cold search demand is comparable to finance. If you're a vendor in that space, this is a market-discovery moment.

Quiz completions doubled the conversion baseline

The Discovery Quiz had a 41% completion rate in April for visitors who started it — roughly double our baseline assumption. Of the completions, 38% went on to view at least one of the recommended apps in the next session.

This makes the quiz the highest-converting buyer-discovery surface we run, ahead of category browse and category landing pages. We're going to invest more in the quiz funnel — better question routing, more granular industry questions, and post-quiz comparison nudges.

What this means for vendors

Three plain takeaways if you're trying to figure out what to do with this:

1. Voice AI is in active procurement. If your tool is in this category, ship case-study content and pricing transparency now — buyers are evaluating, not lurking.

2. SDR is consolidating. The five tools in our roundup are the top-of-funnel for nearly every UK buyer in this category. If you're not in the consideration set, the time to fix that is before Q3 budgets close.

3. The compliance gap is real. Cold demand is there; editorial supply isn't. We're commissioning more security & compliance coverage and would welcome vendor contributors with strong technical angles.

What we'll publish next month: the same analysis for May, plus our first deep-dive on conversion rates by category — which category landing pages turn the most visitors into vendor-website clicks. We'll also start publishing this data quarterly as a free PDF for buyers and vendors who want a longer perspective.

If you'd like to get the May numbers in your inbox the day they go live, subscribe to the weekly digest — we'll lead with this kind of first-party content from now on.