ChatGPT application reaches one billion monthly users

Data from the mobile application market research and analysis platform Sensor Tower announced on June 2 showed that the ChatGPT application reached one billion monthly active users (MAU) in May. Chatbot launched on iOS in May 2023 and on Android two months later, meaning it only took about three years to reach the above milestone, surpassing the TikTok record of 5 years.

MAU (Monthly Active Users) is the number of users who access or interact with a platform, application or service within 30 days. According to software marketing measurement and analytics platform Adjust, this is a core metric for assessing the popularity and user retention of an app, service or business.

Popular Science Evaluate, With one billion MAUs in about three years, ChatGPT has surpassed the growth rate of previous famous products such as Google Maps (more than 10 years), TikTok (5 years), Instagram, Facebook and YouTube (all 8 years). Reuters believes that ChatGPT’s record is of great significance when it is established in the context of Anthropic and OpenAI competing fiercely to gain the leading position in the booming AI market. As of the second quarter of 2026, Claude has 56 million monthly active app users globally.

However, OpenAI’s ChatGPT is also facing rapid growth from Anthropic’s Claude. Sensor Tower data shows that Claude’s MAU growth index reached 640%, outperforming ChatGPT’s 62%.

The trend of users downloading ChatGPT is also slowing down. In the second quarter of 2026, ChatGPT accounted for 47% of all downloads of all AI chatbot applications globally, down from 67% in the same period in 2025. Claude increased from 1% to 14% during this period.

Data from Similarweb shows that ChatGPT’s dominance in web visits is also decreasing. By the end of April, ChatGPT website accounted for 53.7% of the total number of visits to AI chatbot websites in general globally, down from 77.6% a year earlier.

During the same period, Gemini and Claude increased sharply. In April, Gemini accounted for 26.7% of all AI chatbot web visits, up from 7% the year before, while Claude accounted for 8%, up from 1%.

Theo ForbesSince its launch in late 2022, ChatGPT quickly received great attention with 100 million users after two months of launch. In early March, OpenAI said its flagship chatbot reached 900 million active users per week, more than doubling over the same period last year. The growth rate of chatbots is also considered impressive when in February 2025, the number of weekly users is 400 million and by September 2025 reaches 700 million.

Meanwhile, in addition to growing rapidly, Anthropic is trying to be faster than OpenAI when it has filed for an initial public offering (IPO). According to CNBCAnthropic is currently valued at 965 billion USD, surpassing OpenAI with 852 billion USD.