ChatGPT Nears 900 Million Weekly Active Users But Gemini is Catching Up
The competition between AI chatbots has been heating up, with Google’s Gemini nipping at OpenAI’s heels. On Monday, I wrote about how Gemini’s share of weekly mobile app downloads increased in late November following the release of Gemini 3, according to data from research firm Sensor Tower, which says it tracks 5 million consumers globally.
Gemini’s growth is also evident on the web. Between August and November, Gemini’s global website visits doubled while ChatGPT’s rose about 1% over the same period, according to the Sensor Tower data. Monthly active users tell a similar story during the period: Gemini’s increased roughly 30% to 346 million while ChatGPT’s rose about 5% to 810 million.
These figures explain why OpenAI CEO Sam Altman called an internal “code red” to focus on ChatGPT and delay other initiatives.
While OpenAI remains dominant, Google’s AI reach is greater than the numbers suggest. Google CEO Sundar Pichai, for instance, said in July that more than 2 billion people see Google’s AI-generated search answers, AI Overviews, every month, and in November said that the Gemini app has more than 650 million users per month. That’s not including Google Search’s chatbot-like AI Mode, which the company says has more than 75 million daily active users globally.
Still, ChatGPT has nearly 900 million weekly active users, according to a person with knowledge of its growth. Its monthly active user figure is probably substantially higher.
Aside from Google’s momentum, one factor that could be slowing ChatGPT growth is that it already captured the easiest and most accessible users, which means the next stage of growth will be harder. Facebook, for example, reached 500 million users in 2010 and doubled that number in just two years to 1 billion. But it took another five years for the company to double that figure to 2 billion users.
OpenAI likely will face a similar growth trajectory to Facebook as it expands beyond the U.S.
ChatGPT’s top five markets by weekly active users are U.S., India, Brazil, Japan and France, according to the person with knowledge of its growth.
ChatGPT also has a decent edge over Google Gemini in terms of raw usage, though Gemini is gaining on it.