AskCR launched in June 2024 as Consumer Reports’ expert-powered AI answer engine. We’re thrilled to announce that as of this month, people have used AskCR to answer over two million consumer questions. We’re thrilled to see consumers coming to CR for direct, trusted advice on topics that matter most to them:
Which car is actually safest?
Which refrigerator will last?
Which baby stroller is worth trusting?
It took 16 months to reach our first million messages, and it took just 7 months to reach our second million.
Growing Consumer Impact
AskCR’s monthly active users have doubled in the past year. This was powered in large part by our free Basic Trial program, which gives new users three expert-powered answers at no cost, in keeping with our pro-consumer mission. In November 2025, we expanded this program from our mobile app to all visitors on consumerreports.org, which helped advise tens of thousands of new consumers right as they headed into holiday shopping season. We now see tens of thousands of new users trying AskCR for free every month. Since then, we’ve added many thousands of new trial users and we keep welcoming thousands more each month.
Evolving the Experience
Between our 1 millionth- and 2 millionth-question milestones, we’ve also introduced several new features and improvements to make AskCR even more helpful to consumers.
For example, we launched in-answer product cards, complete with visuals of our lab-tested ratings and sub-ratings. We also made products fully filterable and sortable by every attribute in our test data. Together, these features have brought Consumer Reports’ trusted ratings and testing data more to the forefront of the user experience. Additionally, we’ve expanded the range of products and categories available in AskCR, by leveraging CR’s Outside the Labs program and our specialized data partnerships such as SkinSAFE (developed with Mayo Clinic dermatologists). Finally, behind the scenes, we’ve leveled up our orchestration, evaluation systems, and safeguards to deliver more reliable and trustworthy advice.
Meeting Consumer Needs
Two million messages tells us there’s a real need for a different kind of AI: one that’s independent, expert-driven, and built around consumers first. We’re excited to keep growing AskCR, adding new capabilities, and finding new ways to bring CR’s expertise into the conversation.
