ChatGPT growth slows as daily usage declines

OpenAI’s application, ChatGPT, has witnessed a slowed download growth and daily use, according to third-party app intelligence firm Apptopia. According to the platform, the AI application may have hit its peak, but things have now been moving in the other direction since April.

According to Apptopia, it looked into the global daily active user (DAU) growth and discovered that the numbers have begun to even out over the past few months. Although October has only just reached its midpoint, the platform claims that ChatGPT is on pace to be down 8.1% in terms of month-over-month percentage change in global downloads. Notably, this is a look into download growth and not the total downloads of the application.

ChatGPT sees slower download growth and daily use

According to Apptopia, the ChatGPT mobile application is still doing well in terms of new downloads, with millions in downloads reported per day. However, seeing the drop in download growth can suggest that the overall pace of download growth of the application is gradually slowing down. In the case of ChatGPT, an increase in the number of competitions and changes to its AI model’s characteristics could be some of the leading reasons to blame.

Diving deeper, other metrics show that the average time spent per DAU in the United States has dropped by 22.5% since July. In addition, average sessions per DAU are also down by 20.7%. This shows that users are spending less time using ChatGPT and are opening it fewer times per day. User churn has also dropped and stabilized around this time, indicating that the app is seeing only core users use it multiple times, with fewer users who just use it and abandon it.

Beyond simply reaching its peak, other factors could have played a role in the latest development. This could include competition from Google’s Gemini and user engagement changes following an update in April, where the company addressed sycophancy issues in its AI chatbot. This also continued with the release of the GPT-5 in August, with users claiming that the latest version was less personable. Although Sam Altman addressed the issue at the time, it remains to be seen if the changes he promised will be effected.

OpenAI needs to invest in boosting core metrics

Apptopia mentioned that ChatGPT’s average time spent per DAU and average sessions per DAU metrics had been on their way down before the sharp rise of its competitor, Google’s Gemini. Gemini shot up to the top of the charts in September, thanks to the release of Google’s new AI image model, Nano Banana. The firm claims that while Gemini’s growth may have influenced some of the recent dips in ChatGPT’s core metrics, it doesn’t explain the overall trend.

In addition, Apptopia mentioned that if only the average time spent per DAU was dropping, while average sessions per DAU still retained its numbers, it could have suggested that people were getting more efficient with their ChatGPT queries. But since both were on the decline, that is not the case. Instead, Apptopia noted that it is possible that the experimentation phase with the ChatGPT app is over, and it is now becoming a part of users’ daily routines.

People are likely to use the application only when they remember or need to use it, as compared with the increase that it saw when it was still new. For OpenAI, it means the company needs to make investments in the application or pool funds into marketing. A perfect example remains the release of new features to boost some of these core metrics again, like most established artificial intelligence applications. Apptopia claims ChatGPT can no longer rely on novelty alone to provide growth.

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