ChatGPT market share slips below 50% as Claude and Gemini close the gap on OpenAI

ChatGPT's market share slips below 50% for first time

More than three and a half years after ChatGPT's initial release, AI assistants are now used by millions of people worldwide, and the competitive landscape is changing fast. While OpenAI's chatbot is still the most popular assistant worldwide, globally, its market share has dipped below 50% for the first time as users are migrating between different assistants like Google's Gemini, Anthropic's Claude, and xAI's Grok, according to analytics firm Sensor Tower's State of AI Report for 2026. ChatGPT's growth has been impressive. It became the fastest app ever to reach 1 billion monthly users, as Sensor Tower reported this month. Notably, OpenAI counts weekly active users, and it last reported 900 million of them in February. The chatbot still remains the most popular AI assistant worldwide with over 1.1 billion monthly users, followed by Gemini with 662 million and Claude with 245 million. Until January, ChatGPT commanded over 50% market share, but by May's end, it had fallen to 46.4% thanks to the rise of Gemini (27.7%) and Claude (10.3%). Other assistants, including Grok, Perplexity, DeepSeek, and Meta AI, have less than 5% market share. Sensor Tower's State of AI Report also found that users are increasingly willing to switch between assistants. Specific events appear to accelerate that behavior: OpenAI's deal with the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) in February triggered a measurable spike in uninstalls, for example -- suggesting brand trust and values alignment matter to users, not just features. While Gemini's momentum is largely due to its integration with Google's broader ecosystem of tools, Anthropic's Claude has gained a strong reputation for productivity use cases and is closing in on ChatGPT's user retention rate. In the first half of 2026, people are on pace to download nearly 2.3 billion AI apps and spend over $4.2 billion on them, according to Sensor Tower estimates. That compares to $1.83 billion in spending in H1 2025 -- a jump that suggests the industry is shifting its focus from pure growth toward monetization. That said, both download and spend growth rates have decelerated, an indicator that the market may be maturing even as absolute numbers climb. Regionally, Asia recorded the first download decline of 3.3% in Q1 2026, drive by dips in China and India. Despite leading globally in total downloads, Asia trails North America and Europe when it comes to in-app spending -- a split that matters for companies deciding where to invest in premium features and monetization. In the U.S., users are gravitating toward AI assistants for productivity tasks and spending more on premium features. Across platforms, average revenue per user has grown industry-wide, but Claude is standing out. Thirteen percent of Anthropic's users are paying for a subscription plan -- a conversion rate that leads the field and will be a metric worth watching for investors evaluating which AI businesses are building lasting revenue. Sensor Tower estimates that the hours spent on AI apps will have increased from 17.2 billion hours in H1 2025 to roughly 36 billion hours in H1 2026. The top three assistants command 89% time spent on AI assistant apps. Meanwhile, adjacent categories like AI companions or AI content generation apps remain fragmented and wide open to competition, which represents both a risk and an opportunity depending on which players move first. Ads and Shopping OpenAI started experimenting with ads in ChatGPT in February. According to Sensor Tower, the company has scaled the number of ads gradually, along with the share of users who see them. By May, an average of 17% of daily users were being served ads -- a number to watch as ChatGPT's monetization strategy evolves beyond subscriptions. Software and shopping are the largest advertiser categories in ChatGPT so far, followed by Media & Entertainment and Food & Dining. As ChatGPT deepens its shopping integrations, it is increasingly sending referral traffic to retailers like Target, Walmart, and Costco. Amazon, which has blocked ChatGPT's web crawlers, has seen stagnant referral traffic from the platform as a result. That creates an opening for others. Sites like Walmart have embedded their own AI assistants to help shoppers find products. While Amazon's Rufus has seen flat user growth, Walmart's Spark has been gaining ground. Sensor Tower also noted that Amazon shoppers who used Rufus both spent more time in the app and converted at higher rates than those who didn't, hinting that on-platform AI can meaningfully influence purchasing behavior when users actually engage with it.

ChatGPT hits a billion monthly app users despite souring public AI sentiment

With college graduates jeering mentions of artificial intelligence at commencement speeches, and voices as disparate as the Pope and technology giant Anthropic warning of the risks of unmitigated AI development, public sentiment toward the technology has sobered considerably since its early euphoria. Yet despite mounting public backlash, global AI usage has surged to record highs. OpenAI's ChatGPT reached one billion monthly app users, or MAUs, in May, according to recent estimates from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. Other AI apps including Anthropic's Claude made triple-digit year-over-year percentage gains in users, the data company said. With its billion-MAU figure -- achieved roughly 3.5 years after its November 2022 launch -- ChatGPT became the fastest app ever to reach the milestone, surpassing the previous record set by Google Maps, which took around five years after launch to reach the same volume of usage, Sensor Tower said. OpenAI, which did not respond to CNBC's requests for comment, said in February that ChatGPT saw more than 900 million weekly active users across web and mobile platforms and claimed it had more than six times the monthly web visits and mobile sessions of the next largest AI platform. According to Sensor Tower, OpenAI's market-leading large language model was trailed by offerings from its competitors, including Google's Gemini, ByteDance's Doubao and its overseas variant Dola, as well as Claude from rival developer Anthropic. But while ChatGPT enjoys a significant lead in monthly users, rival models are quickly catching up. Monthly usage of Claude and Meta AI respectively rose by 640% and 973% year-on-year, compared to ChatGPT's 62%, per Sensor Tower estimates. Despite its "early mover advantage," usage of ChatGPT's competition has grown on tangible model improvements, as well as more positive market sentiment, Abe Yousef, Sensor Tower's senior insights analyst, told CNBC. Yousef cited OpenAI's February deal with the U.S. Department of Defense to deploy its models on classified Pentagon networks as an instance where public unease drove usership. ChatGPT uninstalls surged around 295% day-on-day on Feb. 28 -- the day after OpenAI announced its Pentagon agreement, according to Sensor Tower data. Anthropic gained a boost from sentiment toward ChatGPT, as Claude soared to the App Store's top spot that same weekend, outpacing ChatGPT by U.S. downloads for the first time, after it refused involvement in Pentagon operations. Both Anthropic and OpenAI have recently begun proceedings for widely anticipated public listings, with Sam Altman's OpenAI submitting its IPO filing Monday afternoon stateside, hot on the heels of Anthropic, which filed its IPO prospectus with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission a week earlier.

ChatGPT becomes the fastest app to reach 1 billion monthly active users, just as AI sentiment worsens

Serving tech enthusiasts for over 25 years. TechSpot means tech analysis and advice you can trust. Editor's take: Much like the Call of Duty series and pornography, generative AI is one of those things that's incredibly popular despite a lot of people claiming to dislike it. ChatGPT, for example, has just reached one billion monthly app users, just 3.5 years after it launched in November 2022. Market intelligence firm Sensor Tower reports that ChatGPT has become the fastest app ever to reach one billion monthly app users (MAUs), beating the previous record holder, Google Maps, which took around five years after launch to hit the same number. ChatGPT isn't the only AI app experiencing immense popularity right now. The monthly number of Claude and Meta AI users increased by 640% and 973% year-on-year. ChatGPT was up by a mere 62%, though it remains the clear leader. Abe Yousef, Sensor Tower's senior insights analyst, told CNBC that model improvements and more positive market sentiment have pushed the growth of ChatGPT's rivals. Earlier this year, OpenAI was one of several companies to sign deals with the Pentagon. It led to a huge consumer backlash, prompting CEO Sam Altman to promise additional safeguards to prevent government use of the technology for surveillance of US citizens - while leaving several obvious loopholes in place, of course. Sensor Tower found that ChatGPT uninstalls surged around 295% day-over-day on February 28, the day after OpenAI announced the Pentagon agreement. It also led to Anthropic's Claude becoming the top free app on the iPhone. Anthropic has refused to let the government use its models for mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons, leading to a bitter dispute and the company's blacklisting over claims that it posed a national security risk. But it was recently reported that the NSA is using Claude Mythos for offensive cyber operations. Paradoxically, the use of generative AI tools is growing as public opinion toward the technology worsens. In addition to the tens of thousands of job losses being caused, which some now say never really happened, the anger toward new data center builds is growing. On that note, an OpenAI report this week claimed that Chinese ChatGPT users were trying to encourage anti-data center feelings in the US. The company admitted that their efforts had little effect - it's not like people don't hate the facilities already - but the report might encourage some people to soften their opposition simply because they don't want to be thought of as "influenced" by China.

For the First Time, ChatGPT Reportedly Has Less Than Half of the AI Assistant Market

OpenAI reportedly no longer dominates the AI assistant market. A report from Sensor Tower (reported on by TechCrunch) says that although OpenAI's ChatGPT is still the number one-ranked AI assistant product, it can now brag only the plurality, not the majority of users. ChatGPT's grip on AI assistant market share was much stronger at the start of this year, when it reportedly had more than 50%, but as of May 31, it was down to an all-time low of 46.4%, TechCrunch notes. Around 2023, ChatGPT looked on track to become a "genericized trademark" -- a term for when a trademarked name becomes the accepted term for a whole product category. But anecdotally, I don't hear people say things like "just ChatGPT it" anymore. In March, OpenAI made a deal with the Pentagon at a time when its chief competitor, Anthropic, was noisily feuding with the Pentagon over that company's stance against autonomous killer robots and AI mass surveillance. Anthropic managed to become a sort of folk hero, even if that reputation was probably somewhat unearned. Some AI users revolted in the wake of OpenAI's deal, which CEO Sam Altman acknowledged looked "opportunistic and sloppy." An anti-OpenAI organization called QuitGPT, which calls itself a "grassroots campaign by the people, for the people," formed. Its website claims that "ChatGPT took Trump's killer robot deal. It's time to Quit." That site says 4 million people have joined its boycott. And at the same time, OpenAI more broadly was in the midst of a wrenching and sudden shift in its self-image, from freewheeling and fun to...whatever it is now. Anthropic's surge in revenue-generating enterprise customers had triggered a "code red" in late 2025. By mid-March of 2026, OpenAI was reportedly changing its internal strategy to focus on enterprise and productivity. About a week after that report, OpenAI killed its video-generating app, Sora. Oh, and ChatGPT also started showing ads earlier this year. When an Anthropic Super Bowl commercial made fun of OpenAI for its ads, Sam Altman responded by getting embarrassingly testy in public. In short, ChatGPT's loss of dominance arrived during a less-than-ideal year for its brand image -- although in the "plus" column, OpenAI won its legal war with Elon Musk, so its year hasn't been completely without high points. The market share of Anthropic's Claude, according to this report, is 10.3% -- nowhere near Gemini's 27.7%, let alone ChatGPT's 46.4%. However, earlier analysis of the Sensor Tower report from Reuters says that Claude's pace of year over year monthly active user growth absolutely blew OpenAI's away, with 640% for Claude, and only 62% for ChatGPT. If you're wondering how Grok, the AI assistant whose parent company is SpaceX, measures up in the Sensor Tower report, the answer is not very well. It's essentially lumped into the "other" section, alongside Perplexity, MetaAI, and DeepSeek, which collectively boast 5% of AI assistant market share.

Claude beats ChatGPT on revenue per user, report finds

ChatGPT just became the fastest app to a billion users, but on the metric that pays the bills it is slipping. Claude makes about 1.5 times as much per user, and converts more of them to paying subscribers. The catch: this is phone-app money, not where either firm makes its billions. OpenAI still rules AI by sheer size, but it is no longer running away with it. ChatGPT's apps crossed 1 billion monthly users last month, the fastest any app has reached the milestone, according to Sensor Tower's State of AI report. Yet on the metric that pays the bills, OpenAI is losing: Anthropic's Claude now earns more revenue per user than ChatGPT does. The gap is sizeable. The Claude app makes about $2.76 per user, against $1.74 for ChatGPT, roughly 1.5 times as much, Sensor Tower found. It also converts better: 13 per cent of Claude's iOS users pay for a subscription, compared with 8 per cent for ChatGPT. ChatGPT's lead on raw users is, meanwhile, narrowing. Its share of the AI-assistant market slipped below 50 per cent in March for the first time, down from 81 per cent two years earlier. Why Claude's revenue per user beats ChatGPT Part of the answer is how the two price themselves. Claude has no cheap tier; its plans start at $20 a month, so the users it keeps tend to be heavier, paying ones. ChatGPT and Gemini chase scale with low-cost options, which lifts user counts but dilutes the average. The other part is politics. After the US government's clampdown on Anthropic's models in March, OpenAI signed a deal with the Pentagon, and ChatGPT uninstalls spiked to 202 per cent above normal in the second week of that month, apparently in protest. Claude was the main beneficiary: its global share jumped from 5.1 per cent in February to 10 per cent by April. None of this means Anthropic is out-earning OpenAI. This is consumer-app data from Sensor Tower's estimates, and it measures money made through phone apps, not the enterprise and API contracts where both companies make most of their money. ChatGPT also still wins on stickiness, retaining 86 per cent of new sign-ups against Claude's 73.7 per cent. A price war is brewing The numbers land as the cost of running AI starts to bite. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that OpenAI is weighing major price cuts to compete with Anthropic, and Google has already trimmed its cheapest Gemini plan to $5 a month. The squeeze may get worse: Apple is about to ship a new Siri that runs some AI on the device itself, no subscription required. Even so, the market is still expanding fast. Sensor Tower expects consumers to spend $4.25bn on AI apps in the first half of 2026, more than double the $1.83bn they spent a year earlier.

ChatGPT's market share slips to a historic new low

ChatGPT's sizable lead in the world of AI assistants is slipping, bit by bit. Analytics firm Sensor Tower released its annual State of AI report (as cited by TechCrunch) this week, which contained the news that OpenAI's flagship chatbot no longer has a majority of market share in the AI space. As recently as January, ChatGPT still had more than 50 percent of total AI market share, but now, it's down to 46.4 percent, per Sensor Tower. Let's put it this way: In a multi-candidate election, ChatGPT would still win by a landslide, but this is a sign that other AI tools are gaining momentum. Namely, Google Gemini is up to 27.7 percent, while Anthropic's Claude is up to 10.3 percent. Earlier this year, Anthropic even reported it was seeing a million new users every day. Other AI chatbots, including Grok and Meta AI, has less than 5 percent market share. Even with its slight dip from majority to plurality, ChatGPT seems to be doing quite well. Sensor Tower said it has 1.1 billion monthly users, with Gemini fairly far behind it in that metric, with 662 million monthly users. As Gemini starts working its way into everyday devices and services, like Apple's new Siri AI coming later this year, that number could grow even further. In another troubling sign for OpenAI, Microsoft recently indicated it may go with the lower-cost Chinese model DeepSeek to power some enterprise AI tools. Lastly, don't forget that OpenAI is prepping for a possible IPO later this year. Declining market share is unlikely to improve its prospects in the market. Disclosure: Ziff Davis, Mashable's parent company, in April 2025 filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.

The end of the AI honeymoon? ChatGPT market share falls below 50% for first time

* ChatGPT's market share falls to 46.4% as Gemini climbs to 27.7% * Department of War deal saw a spike in ChatGPT uninstalls * Google's ecosystem is a major Gemini advantage New figures have claimed ChatGPT's share of the global AI assistant market is under pressure after it dropped below 50% for the first time since its launch in the face of stiff competition from other rivals. Even though ChatGPT has lost market share by means of proportion, it remains a clear leader with more than 1.1 billion monthly active users, making it the world's largest assistant by a significant margin. However, Gemini is rising up the charts, accounting for 27.7% of the market in May 2026 compared with 46.4% for ChatGPT. ChatGPT is still the leader, but Gemini is chasing it in second place The data comes from Sensor Tower, which observed considerable recent growth among Claude users. Though Anthropic's chatbot still only accounts for 10.3% of the market. Grok, Perplexity, DeepSeek and Meta AI all have much smaller shares. "Claude has experienced explosive growth, led by a strong web presence, and its True Audience share in the US has more than tripled," the company added. Time spent on GenAI apps has also more than doubled in one year, from 17.2 billion hours in the first half of 2025 to 36 billion hours in the first half of 2026. Conversely, the company also warned that ChatGPT uninstalls had surged following the company's agreement with the Department of War, marking poor consumer trust. Uninstalls have since fallen closer to the average. Overall, the data shows that consumers haven't been tied to specific chatbots for long enough to have any extreme loyalties. Instead, they're more prepared to migrate based on model capabilities and releases, ecosystem and third-party integrations, pricing and even company politics. As for Google's growing market share, its ties to the broader Google ecosystem is a huge advantage, with integrations spanning Android, Search, Workspace, Health and more. Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds.

ChatGPT Is Still Huge, But Rival AI Chatbots Are Catching Up Fast

Grok users are about four times more likely than the general population to be crypto traders, the widest skew Sensor Tower measured for any assistant, ahead of Claude, Copilot, and ChatGPT in that order. For three years, ChatGPT had the rarest advantage in tech: Its name was the category. Nobody said they were using generative AI. They said they were "using ChatGPT," the way people once said they'd Google something. But it's possible ChatGPT's glory days from 2023 are over. ChatGPT's share of the AI assistant market dropped below 50% for the first time in March 2026, then closed May at 46%, according to Sensor Tower's new State of AI 2026 report. Google Gemini holds 28%. Claude has climbed to 10%. None of that means ChatGPT is dying. The app crossed 1 billion monthly users in May, becoming the fastest app in history to hit that mark, ahead of TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram. OpenAI is now pushing ChatGPT toward a superapp bundling shopping and agents, timed to an IPO process it has already begun. What's ending is the monopoly on being the only AI app anyone's normie cousin has heard of. Decrypt reported in May that ChatGPT's web traffic share had already slid from 77.6% to 53.7% in a year. Sensor Tower's numbers just confirm it crossed into minority territory. The more alternatives in the market, the more brand-agnostic consumers are getting. Gemini's rise is mostly a distribution story, and the count depends on who's doing it. Google told investors Gemini hit 750 million monthly users in February, then announced more than 900 million at its developer conference in May. Sensor Tower's outside tracking, which measures only Gemini's own app and site, puts that same month at 662 million. Either number lands in the same place. ChatGPT's dominance is fading not because it's worse, but because distribution and defaults now matter more than raw capability -- Gemini's integration across Android, Search, Chrome, and Workspace gives it an advantage that benchmarks can't capture. Claude's U.S. share nearly tripled, from 5% in December to 14% in May, and that spike has a name attached. In late February, Anthropic refused Pentagon demands to drop safeguards against mass surveillance and autonomous weapons, and the Department of Defense, renamed the Department of War, branded the company a supply chain risk. OpenAI signed its own deal with the same department days later. ChatGPT uninstalls in the U.S. spiked roughly 200% above average the week of March 9, Sensor Tower found. Claude out-downloaded ChatGPT for five straight days that March, before ChatGPT's lead snapped back. Brand trust turned out to be a feature too. Crypto traders picked a favorite, and it's not close Buried in the user-persona data is the report's best detail. Grok users are about four times more likely than the general population to be crypto traders, the widest skew of any assistant Sensor Tower measured. For some reason, ChatGPT is 'meh' among degens. Claude is a distant second, ahead of Copilot, with ChatGPT users barely above the population baseline. Grok's edge traces back to X, where it ships free inside Premium and reads live posts the second a meme coin starts trending, an advantage no standalone chatbot has. So the structural factors really reinforce each other here -- Grok's embedded in X's ecosystem where crypto traders already congregate, it taps directly into real-time sentiment and meme coin chatter, Musk's personal crypto enthusiasm shapes the platform's culture, and the user base itself skews toward people already steeped in crypto Twitter dynamics. This creates a self-reinforcing loop that naturally pulls Grok toward crypto-focused output. It also offers a similar experience to ChatGPT depending on the situation-a chat box, artifacts, coding capabilities, generative image, generative video which ChatGPT doesn't offer, web searching, connectors, etc. Claude's runner-up spot tracks with last fall's Alpha Arena contest, where Grok and Claude Sonnet posted real-money trading gains on the Hyperliquid exchange while GPT-5 and Gemini 2.5 Pro each lost more than a quarter of their stake. Crypto Twitter remembers who made it money, so they may not be too crazy judging by their chatbot preferences. The revenue numbers back up the user numbers. Claude's average revenue per U.S. mobile user jumped from under $0.50 last September to $2.76 in May, ahead of ChatGPT's $1.74, and 13% of Claude's users now pay for a subscription, the highest conversion rate in the report. OpenAI is heading toward an IPO with the biggest audience in AI history and a shrinking claim on what that audience actually prefers.

A sobering new sign for OpenAI as ChatGPT competitors gain ground

OpenAI ushered in the current AI era with the release of ChatGPT, but a lot of competitors have emerged since that day in November 2022. Now, ChatGPT's share of the global AI assistant market has fallen to below 50% for the first time. According to the newly released "State of AI 2026" report from data analytics firm Sensor Tower, ChatGPT's fall came in March, hitting just 46% by May. Sensor Tower measures market share through a "true audience" metric, which looks at usage across desktop, mobile apps, and the mobile web. The news comes just over a week after OpenAI announced it has taken the first step toward pursuing an IPO. The company has yet to disclose a stock listing date.

ChatGPT hits 1 billion users as global AI adoption surges despite backlash

Public sentiment towards artificial intelligence has declined amid warnings from high-profile figures, including the Pope and tech companies, about the risks associated with unregulated AI development. Despite a backlash, global AI usage has surged, with OpenAI's ChatGPT reaching one billion monthly users in May 2023, according to market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. ChatGPT became the fastest app to reach this milestone, achieving it in approximately 3.5 years following its launch in November 2022, surpassing Google Maps, which reached the threshold in five years. OpenAI reported over 900 million weekly active users across web and mobile platforms and claimed its app had more than six times the monthly visits compared to other AI platforms. Although ChatGPT leads in user numbers, competitors like Google's Gemini and Anthropic's Claude have seen significant growth. Claude's monthly usage increased by 640% year-on-year, while Meta AI experienced a 973% rise. In contrast, ChatGPT's growth was measured at just 62% during the same period, reflecting heightened competition. Analysts indicate that improvements in model performance and shifts in market sentiment have benefited these rivals. OpenAI's partnership with the U.S. Department of Defense to deploy AI models on classified networks contributed to a 295% increase in uninstalls of ChatGPT on February 28, 2023. Meanwhile, Claude gained traction, topping the App Store charts after Anthropic refused to engage with Pentagon projects. Both Anthropic and OpenAI have initiated public listing processes, with Anthropic filing an IPO prospectus a week before OpenAI's submission. The popularity of AI technology comes despite growing concerns regarding its implications. Anthropic recently called for a pause in AI development, warning that uncontrolled advancements could lead to serious consequences. The company emphasized the need for increased security and monitoring in AI systems capable of self-improvement.

ChatGPT Market Share Falls Below 50%. The AI Race Is Still Wide Open

For most people, ChatGPT has been the answer to "which AI should I use" the same way Google has been the answer to "which search engine should I use." It's the name your parents and maybe even grandparents know. It's the default, but that grip just slipped. According to Sensor Tower's State of AI Report for 2026, cited by TechCrunch, ChatGPT market share fell to 46.4% by the end of May. That's down from over 50% in January. It's the first time that number has dropped below half since ChatGPT launched three and a half years ago. Gemini climbed to 27.7% over the same stretch. Claude rose to 10.3%. Everyone else, including Grok, Perplexity, DeepSeek, and Meta AI, sits under 5% individually. Why Gemini Has an Edge Part of Gemini's growth comes down to something OpenAI simply can't replicate: Google already owns the infrastructure most people use every day. Gemini is built into Search, Android, Gmail, Docs, and Workspace. Google's AI Overviews alone reach roughly 2 billion monthly users, many of whom are getting Gemini-powered answers without ever opening a separate app. That's not a feature advantage. That's a distribution advantage, and it's the kind of thing a competitor can't just code its way around. Claude's rise tells a different story. Anthropic doesn't have anything close to Google's reach, but Claude leads every major platform in subscription conversion, with 13% of its user base paying for the product. For a tech-curious reader who always assumed ChatGPT was simply the best AI by default, that distinction matters. People aren't necessarily switching because ChatGPT got worse. They're switching because better-fitting options now exist, and Google has even started building tools to make that switch easier. None of this means ChatGPT is in trouble. It still has over 1.1 billion monthly users, more than Gemini and Claude combined, and remains the most-used AI assistant in the world by a wide margin. But three and a half years in, the assistant that defined the category just lost its majority, and the ChatGPT market share drop is the clearest sign yet that the AI race is still being decided. That's a strange thing to say about the company everyone assumed had already won.

ChatGPT market share falls below 50% as rivals gain ground

ChatGPT remains the world's largest AI assistant, but its market grip is weakening as rivals gain ground, according to Sensor Tower's State of AI 2026 report. The report found that ChatGPT's share of the global AI assistant market fell below 50% for the first time this year. After controlling more than half the market until January, its share dropped to 46.4% by the end of May. Google's Gemini reached 27.7%, while Anthropic's Claude climbed to 10.3%. The decline comes even as ChatGPT's user base continues to grow. Sensor Tower estimates the platform now has more than 1.1 billion monthly active users, making it the fastest mobile app to reach the one-billion-user mark. Gemini follows with 662 million monthly users and Claude with 245 million. Users increasingly switch platforms: The report suggests users are increasingly willing to switch between AI assistants. Sensor Tower noted that uninstallations of ChatGPT in the US spiked after OpenAI announced a partnership with the US Department of Defense, while Claude's downloads surged during the same period. Claude's US audience share has risen from 4.4% to nearly 14% over the past year, with its global audience growing 452% year-on-year in May. While competition is increasing, the market remains highly concentrated. ChatGPT, Gemini and DeepSeek account for nearly 90% of total time spent on AI assistant apps. User engagement is also rising rapidly, with global time spent on generative AI apps projected to reach 36 billion hours in the first half of 2026, more than double the 17.2 billion hours recorded a year earlier. AI spending continues to rise: Consumer spending on AI is growing as companies push subscriptions and premium features. Sensor Tower estimates AI apps will generate more than $4 billion in in-app revenue during the first half of 2026. However, download and spending growth rates have begun slowing, suggesting the market may be moving from rapid expansion toward maturity. The report also highlights diverging regional trends. Asia, the largest market for AI app downloads, recorded a 3.3% decline in downloads during the first quarter of 2026, driven by slowdowns in China and India. North America and Europe, meanwhile, continue to lead in spending. Claude leads in monetisation: Claude appears to be outperforming rivals in monetisation. According to Sensor Tower, 13% of Claude users pay for a subscription, the highest conversion rate among major AI assistants. In the US, Claude's mobile average revenue per user rose from less than $0.50 in September 2025 to $2.76 in May 2026. AI's growing role in shopping and ads: Beyond chatbots, AI is increasingly influencing online shopping and advertising. Sensor Tower found that referral traffic from AI assistants to retail websites increased across all major retail categories between late 2024 and early 2026. Retailers such as Walmart and Target have seen AI-driven referrals account for more than 1.5% of visits, while Amazon has lagged due to its limited access to certain AI web crawlers. Advertising is emerging as another revenue stream. ChatGPT began testing ads earlier this year and gradually expanded their reach. By May, around 17% of its daily users were being shown advertisements. Companies in software, shopping, travel and financial services were among the earliest advertisers on AI platforms.

ChatGPT vs Claude vs Gemini: Who is winning the AI war in India in 2026?

AI loyalty is weak as users jump between AI apps, deleting one to install another Ever since the AI chatbot "war" began in 2023, when ChatGPT announced itself to the world and captured everyone's imagination, it has always felt like OpenAI versus everyone else. ChatGPT was first, encapsulated AI as a category, and had raced to 100 million users faster than anything in history. Everyone else from Anthropic's Claude to Google's Gemini, and everyone in between, was competing for second place - no exaggeration. But as unbelievable as it sounds, that era of unrivalled march onwards for ChatGPT and brand OpenAI may be coming to an end. Not before some more good news, however. In its latest State of AI 2026 report, Sensor Tower proclaimed ChatGPT becoming the fastest mobile app ever to reach one billion monthly active users in May 2026. That is an extraordinary achievement, just three years after launch. The likes of TikTok, YouTube and Instagram defeated by a chatbot suggested just how mainstream AI had become in people's lives around the world. And yet, tucked beneath that billion-user victory headline is the more interesting number: 46%. Because that was ChatGPT's share of the AI assistant market in May 2026, across mobile apps, mobile web and desktop web, claimed Sensor Tower's State of AI 2026 report. What should be definitely worrying for OpenAI is that ChatGPT's position had slipped below 50% for the first time in March 2026. Gemini stood at 28%, Claude at 10%, and suddenly the competition looks like it's gaining serious ground. Also read: OpenAI made more money than Anthropic, but ChatGPT growth has stalled In India, based on Sensor Tower's latest numbers, ChatGPT has 330 million monthly active users, followed by Google Gemini at 229 million. Claude is a distant third at just over 72 million monthly users in India, and Perplexity's has nosedived dangerously low to barely over 29 million monthly users in India. Gemini's rise is predictable, since it enjoys an advantage in distribution. Google can just weave Gemini through Android, Search, Workspace and the wider Google ecosystem, placing AI wherever users already are. ChatGPT may still be the destination people consciously visit, but the experience isn't as seamless or intuitive as firing up Gemini inside contextual Google apps, for instance.. Claude's rise is different, and possibly more intriguing. It can be argued that Anthropic's assistant has grown through reputation rather than ubiquity, attracting users who care about coding, better long-form reasoning and value AI safety. Sensor Tower says Claude's US share climbed from roughly 5% in December 2025 to nearly 14% by May 2026. In India, too, it's a similar story, where Claude numbers jumped from 28 million in Feb 2026 to over 72 million in May 2026. Its total audience was up 452% year-on-year in May. If there's a lesson in Sensor Tower's report for every AI company is that chatbot loyalty is remarkably soft. Following OpenAI's agreement to work with the US Department of War, ChatGPT uninstalls spiked roughly 200% above average in the US during the week of March 9-15. Claude, after declining a Pentagon partnership, briefly recorded more daily downloads than ChatGPT from March 1-5. Brand loyalty didn't matter in the face of ethics and morality, it seemed, as people chose one app instead of another. That should unsettle every AI company. The models may be enormously expensive to build, but switching between them costs the consumer almost nothing. A subscription can be cancelled with a click, and just as easily conversation history can increasingly be exported or recreated. The arrival of advertising adds another complication. ChatGPT began testing ads in early 2026, and Sensor Tower says impressions grew more than sevenfold between March and May. Retention, therefore, becomes as important as intelligence. Also read: WWDC 2026: Apple's new Siri AI can do things no other AI assistant can ChatGPT's churned-user share rose from 12.7% in January to 14.5% in April, while Claude's declined. ChatGPT still retains users better, but Claude is closing the gap while simultaneously adding newcomers. On this front, OpenAI is learning quickly how scale creates gravity, not immunity. All of this is great news for users. A genuine three-way contest between ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini forces faster improvements, more generous features, sharper pricing and clearer differentiation. ChatGPT must defend its lead. Gemini must prove integration is more than a gimmick. Claude must translate professional edge into mass-market habit. That is where the next phase of this contest will be decided. The chatbot war isn't about who can produce the most impressive demo anymore. In 2026, it's about who earns a permanent place in our routines.