185 ChatGPT User Statistics October 2026

ChatGPT user statistics for 2026 describe a mass-market tool with very uneven use. About 28% of US adults aged 18 to 64 had used it by late 2024 (NBER, Feb 2025), yet in six countries only 22% of people used it in a given week in mid-2025 (Reuters Institute, Oct 2025). The people who use it are younger, better educated and better paid than those who do not, and the early male skew has gone.

The page covers how fast ChatGPT grew, who uses it, where, for what, how often and how far they trust it, then what people pay and how it compares with rival assistants. Each one links to the organisation that produced it: Pew Research Center, central-bank and university economists, Eurostat, the Reuters Institute, app store and traffic researchers, company filings, and OpenAI where it published data on its own users or business. Where OpenAI is the only source, the figure is the company's own claim and the citation says so. Model releases, funding, computing and lawsuits are left out. Wider figures sit on our AI statistics, AI search statistics and generative AI statistics pages.

How big is ChatGPT, and how fast did it grow?

ChatGPT grew in steps. App store charts, website rankings and regulator filings now show the audience, which is a better check than any company announcement.

How many people use ChatGPT every week?

ChatGPT had more than 700 million weekly active users by the end of July 2025, nearly 10% of the world's adult population (NBER, Sep 2025).

• OpenAI says more than 1.2 billion people use ChatGPT each week (OpenAI, Oct 2026).
• ChatGPT passed one million registered users by 5 December 2022, five days after it launched (NBER, Sep 2025).
• It had more than 100 million logged-in weekly users after one year and almost 350 million after two (NBER, Sep 2025).
• OpenAI told developers in October 2025 that its Apps SDK reaches over 800 million ChatGPT users (OpenAI, Oct 2025).
• ChatGPT search averaged about 159.1 million monthly active recipients in the EU over the six months to 31 March 2026, the figure OpenAI must publish under the Digital Services Act (OpenAI, Mar 2026).

Account counts run ahead of people. The NBER authors note that a person with two accounts, or two devices while logged out, is counted twice.

How much do people use ChatGPT?

Users sent 18 billion messages a week in July 2025, about 29,000 a second (NBER, Sep 2025).

• ChatGPT became the fastest mobile app ever to reach one billion monthly active users, doing it in May 2026, three years after launch (Sensor Tower, Jun 2026).
• OpenAI says ChatGPT has 6 times the monthly web visits and mobile sessions of the next largest AI app, and that total time spent in it is 4 times the next largest app and 4 times all other AI apps combined (OpenAI, Mar 2026).
• Generative AI websites drew more than 67 billion visits and about 23 billion hours in the first quarter of 2026, up 28% and 41% year on year (Sensor Tower, Jun 2026).
• Time spent in all generative AI apps is projected to reach 36 billion hours in the first half of 2026, up from 17.2 billion a year earlier (Sensor Tower, Jun 2026).

The 6 times and 4 times ratios are OpenAI's own claim, while the Sensor Tower figures are third-party estimates.

Where does ChatGPT rank among the world's biggest services?

Behind Google, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram, and ahead of X and Reddit, in Similarweb's September 2026 ranking of websites (Similarweb, Sep 2026).

• The average chatgpt.com visit lasts 6 minutes 43 seconds, with 4.75 pages per visit and a bounce rate of 24.86% (Similarweb, Sep 2026).
• ChatGPT was the most downloaded app in the world in April 2026, with an estimated 53 million downloads against 42 million for TikTok (Appfigures, Apr 2026).
• ChatGPT topped Apple's chart of the top free apps in the US for 2025, ahead of Threads and Google (Apple, Dec 2025).
• Among generative AI services, ChatGPT and OpenAI stayed at the top of Cloudflare's 2025 ranking of generative AI services (Cloudflare, Dec 2025).

Rankings of this kind measure reach. Revenue is a separate question, covered further down.

How many people use ChatGPT, and how old are they?

Use went from a minority habit to a majority habit for adults under 50 in three years. The oldest adults started lowest and are catching up.

How many Americans use ChatGPT?

Most Americans have heard of it and a large minority use it, but regular use is narrower than awareness.

• 79% of US adults had heard at least a little about ChatGPT in early 2025, up from 58% in March 2023, and 34% had heard a lot (Pew Research Center, Jun 2025).
• 39% of US adults aged 18 to 64 used generative AI either for work or outside it in the two 2024 survey waves (NBER, Feb 2025)
• ChatGPT was the most used generative AI product in a late 2024 survey of adults aged 18 to 64, ahead of Gemini at 17% and embedded tools such as Microsoft Copilot at 14% (NBER, Feb 2025).
• 19% of those adults had used ChatGPT in the previous week, close to the 18% weekly share a separate YouGov survey found in April 2024 (NBER, Feb 2025).
• Since May 2024 the core user base of every major generative AI system across six countries has roughly doubled (Reuters Institute, Oct 2025).
• The majority of people in all six countries are not regular users of any AI tool (Reuters Institute, Oct 2025).

How does ChatGPT use differ by age?

Strongly, but the gap is narrowing. Adults in their 30s and 40s now sit close to adults under 30, and older adults are growing fastest in relative terms.

• Use among adults aged 18 to 29 rose from 33% in 2023 to 61% in 2026 (Pew Research Center, Jun 2026).
• Use among adults aged 30 to 49 rose from 21% in 2023 to 55% in 2026 (Pew Research Center, Jun 2026).
• Around 46% of messages from users who report their age come from adults aged 18 to 25 (NBER, Sep 2025).
• Among Danish workers, each extra year of age was linked to a 1.0 percentage point lower chance of using ChatGPT, and each extra year of experience to a 0.7 point lower chance (Becker Friedman Institute, Apr 2025).

How many teenagers use ChatGPT?

A majority of US teens, and school is a leading reason.

• 59% of US teens use ChatGPT, the only chatbot a majority of teens use, against 23% for Gemini and 20% for Meta AI (Pew Research Center, Dec 2025).
• 26% of teens used ChatGPT for schoolwork in late 2024, double the 13% of 2023 (Pew Research Center, Jan 2025).
• 54% of teens said it is acceptable to use ChatGPT to research new topics, while 18% said it is acceptable for writing essays and 42% said it is not (Pew Research Center, Jan 2025).
• 10% of teens do all or most of their schoolwork with a chatbot's help, 21% do some and 23% do a little (Pew Research Center, Feb 2026).

Does gender, education or income change who uses ChatGPT?

Gender no longer does for access, but it still shapes how often and for what. Education and income still do.

Are men or women more likely to use ChatGPT?

Neither, for ChatGPT itself. Differences remain in daily use and in other chatbots.

• 50% of men and 47% of women use any AI chatbot, against 39% and 28% in 2024 (Pew Research Center, Jun 2026).
• 27% of men use chatbots daily, against 20% of women (Pew Research Center, Jun 2026).
• Men are more likely than women to use Gemini (29% against 20%), Copilot (22% against 13%) and Grok (11% against 4%) (Pew Research Center, Jun 2026).
• Among users with classifiable names, the typically feminine share rose from 37% in January 2024 to 52% in July 2025 (OpenAI, Sep 2025).
• Typically feminine names now account for most ChatGPT usage globally, led by Brazil, Colombia, Poland and Namibia, while usage in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Mali is most concentrated among typically masculine names (OpenAI, Jun 2026).
• Among 100,000 Danish workers in 11 exposed occupations, women reported needing training to use ChatGPT, while men's use was more limited by employer restrictions and data confidentiality (Becker Friedman Institute, Apr 2025).
• Generative AI use at work was 7.5 percentage points higher for men than women in the 2024 US survey, whereas early personal computer use was 6 points higher for women (NBER, Feb 2025).

Does education change who uses ChatGPT?

Yes. The more formal education an adult has, the more likely they are to use it, and the more likely they are to use it for work and learning.

• 51% of US adults with only a bachelor's degree and 33% of those with some college have used ChatGPT (Pew Research Center, Jun 2025).
• 45% of employed adults with a postgraduate degree have used it at work, against 36% with a bachelor's degree, 25% with some college and 17% with a high school education or less (Pew Research Center, Jun 2025).
• 37% of messages are work-related for users with less than a bachelor's degree, 46% for those with a bachelor's degree and 48% for those with graduate education (NBER, Sep 2025).
• Writing is the one topic whose share of messages rises with education (NBER, Sep 2025).
• Generative AI use is about 40% among workers with a bachelor's or graduate degree and about 20% among workers with less education (NBER, Feb 2025).
• Within age groups, Danish workers in exposed occupations with more education and higher grades were more likely to use ChatGPT (Becker Friedman Institute, Apr 2025).

Do income and race matter?

Income does, clearly, and Asian adults stand out for chatbot use.

• 66% of teens in households earning $75,000 or more use AI chatbots, against 56% of teens in households earning under $30,000 (Pew Research Center, Dec 2025).
• Danish workers who use ChatGPT already earned slightly more before it arrived (Becker Friedman Institute, Apr 2025)
• Users in highly paid professional occupations are more likely to use ChatGPT for work than users in other jobs (NBER, Sep 2025)
• 60% of employed Asian adults in the US (English speakers only) use AI chatbots for tasks at work, against 36% of employed White and Black adults and 37% of employed Hispanic adults (Pew Research Center, Jun 2026).

Which countries and languages use ChatGPT most?

The richest countries still have the largest share of internet users on ChatGPT, but the fastest growth is in poorer ones, and English is no longer the main language of most users.

Does a country's income change ChatGPT adoption?

Yes, for the level of use. Richer countries use it more, but poorer countries are catching up quickly.

• Between May 2024 and May 2025 adoption grew dramatically, with disproportionate growth in countries with GDP per capita of $10,000 to $40,000 (NBER, Sep 2025).
• Since July 2023 the fastest relative growth in weekly active ChatGPT users has been in Africa and Asia (OpenAI, Jun 2026).
• Countries with the lowest Human Development Index scores have also seen the fastest relative growth in weekly active users since July 2023 (OpenAI, Jun 2026).
• 80% of people in emerging economies intentionally use AI tools regularly or semi-regularly, against 58% in advanced economies, across 47 countries (KPMG and University of Melbourne, Apr 2025).
• India and Nigeria report the highest regular AI use at 92%, while Singapore is highest among advanced economies at 73% and the Netherlands lowest at 43% (KPMG and University of Melbourne, Apr 2025).
• 72% of employees in emerging economies use AI regularly at work, against 49% in advanced economies (KPMG and University of Melbourne, Apr 2025).

Which countries and languages lead?

Surveys that name ChatGPT find it the most recognised and most used tool in each of six countries studied. Spanish, Portuguese and Arabic lead the non-English languages.

• ChatGPT is the most widely recognised AI tool in each of six countries, from 79% awareness in Denmark to 68% in Argentina (Reuters Institute, Oct 2025).
• ChatGPT is also the most widely used generative AI system in each of those six countries (Reuters Institute, Oct 2025).
• 18% of the Indian sample used chatbots such as ChatGPT and Gemini for news every week, against 3% in the UK (Reuters Institute, Jun 2025).
• Averaged across markets, 4% of people had accessed ChatGPT for news in the last week (Reuters Institute, Jun 2025).
• Nearly 1 in 3 people in the EU used generative AI tools in 2025: 25% for private reasons, 15% for work and 9% for formal education (Eurostat, Dec 2025).
• Use of generative AI tools was highest in Denmark at 48%, Estonia at 47% and Finland and Malta at 46%, and reached 56% in Norway (Eurostat, Dec 2025).
• Among EU people who do not use generative AI tools, 39% see no need, 8% lack knowledge, 5% did not know the tools exist and 4% cite privacy or security (Eurostat, Dec 2025).
• Lack of need was the most common reason for non-use in Poland at 54% and Germany at 49% (Eurostat, Dec 2025).
• The leading non-English languages on ChatGPT are Spanish, Portuguese and Arabic, and Uzbek, Kazakh and Burmese had the largest percentage increase in their share of active users since July 2023 (OpenAI, Jun 2026).

Do people use ChatGPT for work or for life outside work?

Mostly outside work, and non-work use is growing faster than work use. The workers who do use it for their jobs are concentrated in professional and technical roles.

How much ChatGPT use is for work?

A minority of messages and a growing minority of workers.

• 28% of employed US adults have used ChatGPT for work, up 20 points from 8% in March 2023, including an 8-point rise in the last year (Pew Research Center, Jun 2025).
• 26% of US adults have used ChatGPT to learn something new, up from 8% in 2023, and 22% have used it for entertainment, up from 11% (Pew Research Center, Jun 2025).
• Among employed adults aged 18 to 29, 38% have used ChatGPT at work, against 30% of those aged 30 to 49 and 18% of those aged 50 and over (Pew Research Center, Jun 2025).
• 38% of employed adults use AI chatbots for tasks at work (Pew Research Center, Jun 2026).
• 26% of employed adults used generative AI for work in the two 2024 US survey waves: 9% on every workday, 14% on some workdays and 3% not in the last week (NBER, Feb 2025).
• One third of respondents used generative AI outside work, and 27% did so in the previous week (NBER, Feb 2025).
• Between 1% and 5% of all work hours are assisted by generative AI, and respondents report time savings equal to 1.4% of total work hours (NBER, Feb 2025)
• 58% of employees intentionally use AI at work on a regular basis, and a third use it weekly (KPMG and University of Melbourne, Apr 2025)
• 27% of workers used generative AI on the job in 2024, a similar share to the 25% who used computers at work in 1984, three years after the IBM PC launched (NBER, Feb 2025).

Who uses ChatGPT at work?

Computer-related and business roles, younger workers and workers whose employers allow it.

• Work-related shares of messages are 57% for computer-related occupations, 50% for management and business, 48% for engineering and science, 44% for other professional occupations and 40% for non-professional occupations (NBER, Sep 2025).
• Work-related messages are about 23% of messages for users under 26, rise with age, and fall to 16% for users aged 66 and over (NBER, Sep 2025).
• Half of Danish workers in 11 exposed occupations had used ChatGPT, from 79% of software developers to 34% of financial advisors, and 32% were current users (Becker Friedman Institute, Apr 2025).
• 43% of those workers said they need training to use ChatGPT and 35% said their employer restricts it (Becker Friedman Institute, Apr 2025).
• Among workers who believe ChatGPT can halve the time of a task, 50% to 60% do not intend to use it (Becker Friedman Institute, Apr 2025)
• Fewer than 10% of those workers named fear of being replaced or becoming dependent as a reason not to use it (Becker Friedman Institute, Apr 2025).
• About 1 in 10 US workers use AI chatbots at work every day or a few times a week, and 55% rarely or never do (Pew Research Center, Feb 2025).
• Of employees who use AI at work, 73% use general-purpose generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, and 70% use free public tools rather than employer-provided ones (KPMG and University of Melbourne, Apr 2025).

What do workers use ChatGPT for?

Writing and decision support, far more than code.

• Writing is 40% of work-related messages, the most common work topic (NBER, Sep 2025).
• Practical Guidance is 24% of work-related messages, and Technical Help fell from 18% to just over 10% between July 2024 and July 2025 (NBER, Sep 2025).
• 56% of work-related messages ask ChatGPT to do a task, and nearly 35% of all work-related messages are task requests related to writing (NBER, Sep 2025).
• 81% of work-related messages fall into two broad activities: obtaining, documenting and interpreting information, and making decisions, giving advice, solving problems and thinking creatively (NBER, Sep 2025).
• Nearly half of all messages (45.2%) fall under three work activities: getting information (19.3%), interpreting the meaning of information for others (13.1%) and documenting or recording information (12.8%) (NBER, Sep 2025)
• Among work-related messages the most common work activities are documenting information (18.4%), making decisions and solving problems (14.9%) and thinking creatively (13.0%) (NBER, Sep 2025)
• Writing is 52% of work-related messages for management and business users, while Technical Help is 37% for computer-related users (NBER, Sep 2025).
• 47% of work-related messages from computer-related users are requests for information or advice, against 32% for non-professional users (NBER, Sep 2025).
• Among workers who have used AI chatbots, 57% have used them for research, 52% for editing written content and 47% for drafting written content (Pew Research Center, Feb 2025).
• 40% of those workers say chatbots have been extremely or very helpful in doing things more quickly, and 29% say the same for the quality of their work (Pew Research Center, Feb 2025).
• Telling Danish workers what experts think of ChatGPT's time savings closed 15% of the gap between their beliefs and the experts', yet two weeks later they were no more likely to have used it (Becker Friedman Institute, Apr 2025)
• The average Danish worker in an exposed occupation estimates that ChatGPT can halve the time of about a third of job tasks (Becker Friedman Institute, Apr 2025).

What do people ask ChatGPT, and how often do they come back?

Ordinary questions and tasks, asked more often over time. Code and companionship are small slices of use.

What topics do people ask about?

Practical advice, information and writing make up about three in four messages.

• Practical Guidance, Seeking Information and Writing together account for about 77% of messages, and Practical Guidance has stayed near 29% (NBER, Sep 2025).
• Writing fell from 36% of messages in July 2024 to 24% a year later, and Technical Help fell from 12% to about 5% (NBER, Sep 2025).
• Multimedia grew from 2% to just over 7% of messages, with a spike in April 2025 after new image generation launched (NBER, Sep 2025).
• 10.2% of all messages are requests for tutoring or teaching and 8.5% are general how-to advice (NBER, Sep 2025).
• Mathematical calculation is 3% of messages, data analysis 0.4% and games and role play 0.4% (NBER, Sep 2025).
• About two thirds of Writing messages ask ChatGPT to modify text the user provided, such as editing, critiquing or translating, rather than create new text (NBER, Sep 2025).
• 49% of messages ask for information or advice, 40% ask ChatGPT to do a task and 11% express views or feelings (NBER, Sep 2025).
• By late June 2025 the split was 51.6% asking, 34.6% doing and 13.8% expressing (NBER, Sep 2025).
• Interactions that the user's next message marked as good were about three times as common as bad ones in late 2024 and more than four times as common by July 2025 (NBER, Sep 2025).
• 25% of US adults use AI chatbots for fun or entertainment and 24% to create or edit images or videos (Pew Research Center, Jun 2026).
• Among AI chatbot users who get news from them, 42% ask follow-up questions, 35% get the latest news, 34% summarise stories and 33% ask a chatbot to assess whether a source is reliable (Reuters Institute, Jun 2026).

What sensitive questions do people bring?

Health questions are common, emotional support is a minority use, and the most serious conversations are very rare.

• 20% of US adults use AI chatbots to get medical advice and 20% to get diet and fitness information (Pew Research Center, Jun 2026).
• 10% of US adults use AI chatbots for emotional support or advice and 4% for companionship (Pew Research Center, Jun 2026).
• 20% of adults under 30 use AI chatbots for emotional support or advice, against 13% of those aged 30 to 49, 4% of those aged 50 to 64 and 2% of those 65 and over (Pew Research Center, Jun 2026).
• 16% of teens have used chatbots for casual conversation and 12% for emotional support or advice (Pew Research Center, Feb 2026).
• OpenAI estimates that around 0.07% of weekly active users show possible signs of psychosis or mania (OpenAI, Oct 2025).
• OpenAI estimates that around 0.15% of weekly active users have conversations with explicit indicators of potential suicidal planning or intent (OpenAI, Oct 2025).
• OpenAI estimates that around 0.15% of weekly active users show potentially heightened emotional attachment to ChatGPT (OpenAI, Oct 2025).
• Per message, OpenAI estimates 0.01% show possible signs of psychosis or mania, 0.05% contain indicators of suicidal ideation or intent and 0.03% indicate heightened emotional attachment (OpenAI, Oct 2025)
• OpenAI reports that its latest default model update returns responses that do not fully comply with desired behavior 65% to 80% less often across a range of mental health-related domains (OpenAI, Oct 2025).

How often do people use ChatGPT?

Daily use is common among adults under 50, grows with time on the product, and is concentrated in a small group of heavy users.

• 31% of adults aged 18 to 29 and 34% of those aged 30 to 49 use AI chatbots daily, against 19% of those aged 50 to 64 and 7% of those 65 and over (Pew Research Center, Jun 2026).
• 47% of Asian adults in the US use AI chatbots daily, against 20% of White adults, 26% of Hispanic adults and 24% of Black adults (Pew Research Center, Jun 2026).
• The number of messages ChatGPT users sent grew by a factor of more than 5 between July 2024 and July 2025 (NBER, Sep 2025).
• Earlier sign-up cohorts have consistently higher usage, and usage has grown within every cohort (NBER, Sep 2025).
• The first cohort of users cut back somewhat during 2023, then started growing again in late 2024 and is now above its earlier peak (NBER, Sep 2025).
• Six months after signing up, users had doubled the number of distinct tasks they had tried on ChatGPT (OpenAI, Jun 2026).
• Among Danish workers in exposed occupations, 6% paid for a Plus subscription, against 32% who were current users (Becker Friedman Institute, Apr 2025).
• A small number of users are responsible for a disproportionate share of the most affective cues in ChatGPT conversations, and very high usage correlates with self-reported indicators of dependence (OpenAI and MIT Media Lab, Apr 2025).
• In a four-week randomized trial of 981 participants and more than 300,000 messages, people who chose to use the chatbot more showed consistently worse outcomes across four measures: loneliness, social interaction with people, emotional dependence on AI and problematic use (MIT Media Lab and OpenAI, Oct 2025).

How much do users trust ChatGPT?

More people trust it than distrust it in most countries, but trust is thin next to its use, and users are more positive than non-users.

Do people trust ChatGPT?

Slightly more than they distrust it, with the UK as the exception.

• 29% of people across six countries trust ChatGPT, ahead of Gemini at 18%, Copilot at 12% and Meta AI at 12% (Reuters Institute, Oct 2025).
• Net trust, the share who trust minus the share who distrust, is +12 for ChatGPT, +7 for Gemini and +5 for Copilot (Reuters Institute, Oct 2025).
• The UK is the exception, where most systems including ChatGPT are more distrusted than trusted (Reuters Institute, Oct 2025).
• The most common reasons people give for using AI chatbots for news are wanting more depth or explanation (42%) and finding AI faster than other ways of getting news (39%) (Reuters Institute, Jun 2026)
• 44% of AI chatbot users trust news from AI chatbots, against 17% of non-users (Reuters Institute, Jun 2026).
• Trust in AI systems is 57% in emerging economies and 39% in advanced economies, and acceptance of AI is 84% against 65% (KPMG and University of Melbourne, Apr 2025).

Does ChatGPT help the people who use it?

Most users say it helps, and few say it hurts, except for creativity.

• 30% of US adults say using chatbots helps their productivity, against 5% who say it hurts it (Pew Research Center, Jun 2026).
• 21% say chatbots help their creativity, against 11% who say they hurt it. Adults who do not use chatbots are not counted in these shares (Pew Research Center, Jun 2026).
• 35% of men say using chatbots helps their productivity, against 25% of women (Pew Research Center, Jun 2026).
• About a quarter of teens say chatbots have been extremely or very helpful for schoolwork and another 25% say somewhat helpful, while 3% say they were of little or no help (Pew Research Center, Feb 2026).
• 59% of teens think cheating with AI is a regular occurrence at their school (Pew Research Center, Feb 2026).
• 38% of Danish workers say they will not do more of the tasks ChatGPT saves them time on (Becker Friedman Institute, Apr 2025).

What worries people about AI chatbots?

Speed, privacy and weak oversight, and the worry is not limited to people who avoid the tools.

• 63% of US adults say AI is advancing too quickly and 2% say too slowly (Pew Research Center, Jun 2026).
• 71% of US adults expect AI to make their personal information less secure and 3% expect it to make it more secure (Pew Research Center, Jun 2026).
• 67% of US adults have little or no confidence in the US government to regulate AI effectively, up from 62% in 2024 (Pew Research Center, Jun 2026).
• 48% of adults under 30 expect AI to have a negative effect on society, against 35% of adults aged 65 and over (Pew Research Center, Jun 2026).
• 36% of US teens expect AI to have a positive impact on them personally over the next 20 years, against 15% who expect a negative one, while 26% expect a negative impact on society (Pew Research Center, Feb 2026).

How much does ChatGPT earn, and what do people pay?

OpenAI reports revenue as a run rate and gives few details, so this section sets its own figures beside app store data from a third party. Both point the same way: more money and a growing share from businesses.

How much revenue does OpenAI report?

Within a year of launching ChatGPT, OpenAI says it reached $1 billion in revenue, and by the end of 2024 it was generating $1 billion a quarter (OpenAI, Mar 2026).

• Enterprise now makes up more than 40% of OpenAI's revenue, and the company expects it to reach parity with consumer by the end of 2026 (OpenAI, Mar 2026).
• The advertising pilot in ChatGPT reached more than $100 million in annual recurring revenue in under six weeks (OpenAI, Mar 2026).

The revenue and advertising figures are OpenAI's own claims.

How much do people spend in the ChatGPT app?

ChatGPT's worldwide app store spending rose from $224 million in April 2025 to $301 million in April 2026, up 34% (Appfigures, Apr 2026).

• From January to April 2026 it earned an estimated $1.3 billion, up 121% on the same months of 2025 (Appfigures, Apr 2026).
• Spend per download rose 39%, from $4.18 to $5.83, and ChatGPT led the group on that measure in both Aprils (Appfigures, Apr 2026).
• After Apple and Google took their fees, ChatGPT kept an estimated $211 million in April 2026, second only to TikTok at $303 million (Appfigures, Apr 2026).
• In-app purchase revenue across all AI apps is expected to pass $4 billion in the first half of 2026, up 36% on the second half of 2025 (Sensor Tower, Jun 2026).

All Appfigures numbers are estimates, and they cover App Store and Google Play only. Web sign-ups and business plans are not included.

What do ChatGPT plans cost?

In the US, ChatGPT Go costs $8 a month, Plus $20 and Pro $200, and Go has reached 170 more countries since its launch in India, making it OpenAI's fastest growing plan (OpenAI, Jan 2026).

• ChatGPT Business Standard seats cost $25 per user a month ($20 billed annually), and Premium seats cost $125 ($100 annually) for 5 times the usage (OpenAI, Aug 2026).

The Go, Plus and Pro prices are from OpenAI's January 2026 announcement and may have changed since.

How many businesses pay for ChatGPT?

More than 9 million paying business users rely on ChatGPT for work (OpenAI, Feb 2026).

• Weekly messages in ChatGPT Enterprise grew roughly 8 times in a year, and average reasoning token use per organisation rose about 320 times (OpenAI, Dec 2025).
• In August 2026 OpenAI's share of US businesses on Ramp rose only 0.09 percentage points, while Anthropic added 0.34 points (Ramp, Sep 2026).
• In July OpenAI was at 39.7% after a rise of 0.23 points, and GPT-5.6 Sol made up 25% of OpenAI tokens bought and 23% of the spend (Ramp, Aug 2026).

Ramp sees only the spending of its own customers, so it is a panel of US businesses and does not cover the whole market.

How does ChatGPT compare with Gemini, Claude and other assistants?

ChatGPT still leads on money and attention, but rivals win more installs. On the web, the bots that fetch pages for ChatGPT have grown fast.

What share of the AI assistant market does ChatGPT hold?

ChatGPT, DeepSeek and Google Gemini accounted for nearly 90% of the time spent in AI assistant apps in the first quarter of 2026 (Sensor Tower, Jun 2026).

• ChatGPT's share of unique AI assistant users across apps and the web fell below 50% for the first time in March 2026 (Sensor Tower, Jun 2026).
• Claude's share of true audience in the US more than tripled (Sensor Tower, Jun 2026).
• Nearly 90% of the Fortune 100 use Gemini Enterprise, Google's business assistant (Alphabet, Jul 2026).
• ChatGPT's downloads were flat per day, at about 1.76 million in March and 1.77 million in April, so the apparent 9% monthly drop in April reflects a shorter counting period (Appfigures, Apr 2026).
• ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude all made the global top 10 for downloads in April 2026, with Claude at number nine on 20 million (Appfigures, Apr 2026).
• On the App Store alone, the April top three were ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude, with 15.5 million, 15.4 million and 10.9 million downloads (Appfigures, Apr 2026).

Does ChatGPT still earn more than its rivals?

Yes, but the gap is closing: in January 2025 ChatGPT earned 18.5 times what the other leading assistants did combined, and by April 2026 a little more than 2 times (Appfigures, Apr 2026).

• Claude earned an estimated $76 million in April 2026, Grok $39 million, and Perplexity and Gemini about $11 million each (Appfigures, Apr 2026).
• Claude's app store spending from January to April 2026 was $156 million, up from $11 million a year earlier (Appfigures, Apr 2026).
• Spend per download for Grok rose from $0.38 to $5.26 and for Perplexity from $0.93 to $4.90, closing on ChatGPT's $5.83 (Appfigures, Apr 2026).
• Claude's average revenue per user on US mobile climbed from under $0.50 in September 2025 to $2.76 in May 2026 (Sensor Tower, Jun 2026).

How much of the web does ChatGPT read and send people to?

Cloudflare saw requests from ChatGPT-User, the bot that fetches pages when a person asks ChatGPT a question, peak at up to 16 times the level at the start of 2025 (Cloudflare, Dec 2025).

• OAI-SearchBot, which supports ChatGPT's search features, peaked at about 5 times its January request volume in late October 2025 (Cloudflare, Dec 2025).
• Crawling for user actions across all AI bots rose more than 21 times between January and early December 2025, a pattern Cloudflare ties closely to ChatGPT-User (Cloudflare, Dec 2025).
• OpenAI's GPTBot held a 13.8% share of crawling on sites in South America in October 2025, second to Googlebot (Cloudflare, Dec 2025).
• OpenAI says search usage in ChatGPT has nearly tripled in a year (OpenAI, Mar 2026).
• Referrals from generative AI to shopping sites grew in every major retail category between the fourth quarter of 2024 and the first quarter of 2026 (Sensor Tower, Jun 2026).

Counts of the visits chatbots send back to publishers are on the AI chatbot traffic and AI search pages.

Methodology and Sources

We included a number only after opening the page that publishes it and confirming the figure and its date. Figures quoted in roundups were followed back to the original survey, working paper or release, or dropped. Survey figures describe different populations and years, and the text names each one: Pew Research Center reports on US adults and teens, the Reuters Institute on six countries, and the NBER papers on a US survey of adults aged 18 to 64 and on a sample of consumer ChatGPT messages from May 2024 to July 2025. Several figures describe AI chatbots in general rather than ChatGPT alone, and the text says so where they do. Where OpenAI reports on its own users or business, it is named and the figure is labelled as the company's claim. Appfigures, Sensor Tower and Similarweb figures are third-party estimates, and Ramp covers only its own customers. Model releases, funding, computing and lawsuits are left out. We re-check each source and refresh this page monthly.

Sources

• Alphabet, Q2 2026 earnings call remarks from our CEO
• Appfigures, AI Took Three of the Top Ten App Download Spots in April
• Appfigures, ChatGPT at 3: Still Earning 2x Its Rivals Combined
• Apple, Get the US's Top Apps of 2025 (App Store)
• Becker Friedman Institute, The Adoption of ChatGPT (Humlum and Vestergaard)
• Cloudflare, The 2025 Cloudflare Radar Year in Review
• Eurostat, Digital economy and society statistics, households and individuals
• KPMG and University of Melbourne, Trust, attitudes and use of artificial intelligence: a global study 2025
• MIT Media Lab and OpenAI, How AI and Human Behaviors Shape Psychosocial Effects of Extended Chatbot Use
• NBER, How People Use ChatGPT (Working Paper 34255)
• NBER, The Rapid Adoption of Generative AI (Working Paper 32966)
• OpenAI and MIT Media Lab, Investigating Affective Use and Emotional Well-being on ChatGPT
• OpenAI, Accelerating the next phase of AI
• OpenAI, EU Digital Services Act (DSA), ChatGPT search monthly active recipients
• OpenAI, GPT-6 and Intelligent UI for everyone
• OpenAI, How ChatGPT adoption has expanded
• OpenAI, How people are using ChatGPT
• OpenAI, Introducing apps in ChatGPT and the new Apps SDK
• OpenAI, Introducing ChatGPT Go, now available worldwide
• OpenAI, Premium seats are coming to ChatGPT Business
• OpenAI, Scaling AI for everyone
• OpenAI, Strengthening ChatGPT's responses in sensitive conversations
• OpenAI, The state of enterprise AI
• Pew Research Center, 34% of U.S. adults have used ChatGPT, about double the share in 2023
• Pew Research Center, Americans and AI 2026 appendix: detailed chart and tables
• Pew Research Center, Americans and AI 2026: Chatbots, Smart Devices and Views on Impact
• Pew Research Center, How opinions and use of AI differ by age
• Pew Research Center, How Teens Use and View AI
• Pew Research Center, Racial and ethnic differences in how adults use and view AI
• Pew Research Center, Share of teens using ChatGPT for schoolwork doubled from 2023 to 2024
• Pew Research Center, Teens, Social Media and AI Chatbots 2025
• Pew Research Center, The gender gap in AI
• Pew Research Center, U.S. Workers Are More Worried Than Hopeful About Future AI Use in the Workplace
• Ramp, Cracks in the AI Thesis (August 2026 AI Index)
• Ramp, Cracks in the AI Thesis Part 2 (September 2026 AI Index)
• Reuters Institute, Digital News Report 2025 executive summary
• Reuters Institute, Digital News Report 2026: Emerging uses of AI chatbots for news
• Reuters Institute, Generative AI and news report 2025
• Sensor Tower, State of AI 2026
• Similarweb, Top Websites Ranking (September 2026)

Glossary

• WAU: weekly active users, people who used the product at least once in the past seven days.
• Generative AI: AI that produces text, images, code or audio from a prompt. ChatGPT is the best-known example.
• AI chatbot: a conversational AI assistant such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Meta AI, Claude or Grok.
• NBER: the National Bureau of Economic Research, a US non-profit that publishes economics working papers.
• HDI: the Human Development Index, a UN measure of health, education and income by country.
• GDP per capita: a country's economic output divided by its population.
• RCT: randomized controlled trial, an experiment that assigns people to conditions at random.
• Asking, Doing, Expressing: the NBER paper's labels for messages that seek information or advice, request a task or output, or share views and feelings.
• Net trust: the share of people who trust a product minus the share who distrust it.
• Emerging and advanced economies: the IMF classification KPMG and the University of Melbourne used to group the 47 countries.
• Run rate: current revenue multiplied out to a year; it is not recognised revenue.