ChatGPT mobile app reaches $3 billion in consumer spending, outpacing TikTok and streaming giants

ChatGPT's mobile app hits new milestone of $3B in consumer spending | TechCrunch

ChatGPT has hit a new milestone of $3 billion in worldwide consumer spending on mobile as of this week, according to estimates from app intelligence provider Appfigures. This figure represents the total spending on iOS and Android devices since the app's launch in May 2023, when it first arrived, then only on iOS. What's notable is that the bulk of that spending took place this year. Worldwide, consumers spent an estimated $2.48 billion in the ChatGPT mobile app in 2025, representing a 408% year-over-year increase from the $487 million spent in 2024. In 2023, the app's first year of availability, it earned $42.9 million, before growing 1,036% to reach the 2024 figure. These numbers represent a sharp rise in consumer adoption, compared with other popular apps. For instance, it took ChatGPT 31 months to reach $3 billion in consumer spending, but the top earner, TikTok, took 58 months to do so, Appfigures told TechCrunch. ChatGPT also reached the milestone faster than top streaming apps like Disney+ and HBO Max, which hit the $3 billion figure in 42 months and 46 months, respectively. xAI's Grok, however, is seeing a similar revenue trajectory to ChatGPT, compared with other AI rivals. Grok was released in late 2023 to X Premium Plus subscribers before becoming more broadly available last year. But if you compare the pace of consumer spending across AI apps, Grok came the closest to matching ChatGPT's cumulative revenue at the same point, once it began monetizing. (You can see this on the chart below, which plots the AI apps' spending aligned to when each app began monetizing.) While the $3 billion in spending represents a significant uptake by consumers, it's not the only way to measure AI app adoption or potential long-term revenue. ChatGPT's mobile customers are buying paid subscriptions, like the $20 per month ChatGPT Plus or the $200 per month ChatGPT Pro for advanced users. But AI apps can generate revenue in other ways, including through developer offerings and, perhaps soon for ChatGPT, ads. In addition, ChatGPT on Wednesday launched its own app store of sorts, which the company suggests will be monetized in some way in the future, its blog post noted.

Consumers Spent $2.5 Billion in ChatGPT Mobile App in 2025 | PYMNTS.com

Most of that total, $2.5 billion, was spent in 2025 alone, mobile analytics and intelligence platform Appfigures said in a Thursday (Dec. 18) post on X. The speed with which the ChatGPT mobile app reached the $3 billion milestone in mobile consumer spending was faster than TikTok and major streaming apps, according to the post. It was reported in August that Appfigures found that the ChatGPT mobile app was earning more than six times as much revenue as it did last year. Through July, the AI chatbot app for iOS and Android devices had made $1.35 billion this year, up from the $174 million it made during the same seventh-month period in 2024. The second-ranked app in this category, xAI's Grok, made $25.6 million during the first seven months of 2025. The figures in the August report include only the spending of consumers who paid for these AI assistants via a mobile app store; they do not include subscriptions on the web or the AI companies' other sources of revenue. It was reported in November that OpenAI expects ChatGPT to have at least 220 million paid subscribers by 2030, up from 35 million today. The AI startup also projects that the percentage of weekly users of the AI assistant who become paid subscribers will grow to 8.5% by 2030, up from 5% currently. OpenAI expects about 20% of its revenue to come from new products related to shopping and advertising. For example, the recently released personal shopping assistant for ChatGPT could enable monetization through ads or commissions. The company announced in October the launch of a feature called Apps in ChatGPT that allows users to chat with several third-party apps while in conversation with the chatbot. OpenAI also unveiled an Apps SDK that enables developers to build these kinds of apps. "You can start with an outline and ask Canva to transform it into a slide deck, or take a course with Coursera and ask ChatGPT to elaborate on something in the video as you watch," OpenAI said at the time in a press release.