ChatGPT’s mobile app growth may have peaked, according to new analysis of download trends and daily active user numbers provided by third-party app intelligence firm Apptopia. According to its estimates, the growth in new users, as measured by the rate of change in global new downloads, has slowed since April.
The company looked at global daily active user (DAU) growth and found that the numbers have started to level out over the past month or so.
Although October is only half over, the company says that the month-on-month rate of change in the number of downloads worldwide is trending down by 8.1%.
To be clear, this is a look at download growth, not total downloads. In terms of new installs, ChatGPT’s mobile app remains strong, with millions of downloads per day.
However, seeing download growth stagnate could suggest that the app’s overall pace of growth is slowing. In the case of ChatGPT, this may be due to increased competition and changes in the characteristics of the AI model.
Looking deeper, other metrics specifically show that the average time spent per DAU in the US has decreased by 22.5% since July, and the average number of sessions per DAU in the US has also decreased by 20.7%.
This indicates that US users are spending less time on ChatGPT’s apps and opening them fewer times per day. During this period, user attrition in the US also declined and stabilized. This shows that the app is currently retaining its core users, and fewer users are abandoning the app after just dropping by to try it out.
OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment.
Beyond simply peaking, there are other factors that may have played a role here. This includes competition from Google’s Gemini, as well as changes in user engagement after an April update designed to make chatbot AI models less flattering. This continued with GPT-5, which was released in August, but was also said to be less unique.
However, Apptopia notes that ChatGPT’s average time spent per DAU and average sessions per DAU metrics were on the decline before competitor Google’s Gemini soared. Gemini shot to the top of the charts in September thanks to the release of Nano Banana, Google’s new AI image model.
As such, while Gemini’s growth may have contributed to some of the recent decline in ChatGPT’s core metrics, it does not explain the overall trend, the company said.
Additionally, Apptopia points out that if only the average dwell time per DAU is decreasing, rather than the average number of sessions per DAU, it could suggest that people are becoming more efficient with their ChatGPT queries. However, this is not the case as both are on the decline.
In fact, Apptopia says the ChatGPT app may be out of its experimental phase and now becoming part of users’ daily lives. People may be using the app when they need or want to use it, compared to the increased usage seen when the app was new.
For OpenAI, this means the company needs to invest in marketing the app or release new features to improve some of these core metrics again, just like other established mobile apps need to do. Growth can no longer be achieved by relying solely on novelty.
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