Yet beneath these impressive numbers, troubling patterns have emerged. According to an analysis released today by app intelligence firm Apptopia, ChatGPT’s mobile app growth may have hit its peak. New user growth, measured by percentage changes in global downloads, slowed after April 2025. More concerningly, global daily active user growth has plateaued in recent weeks, with numbers evening out over the past month.
October 2025 is on pace to show an 8.1% month-over-month decline in global download growth. While ChatGPT still attracts millions of daily downloads in absolute numbers, the deceleration signals something fundamental: the experimentation phase is over.
Competition Arrives With Force
ChatGPT’s decline coincides with Google’s aggressive mobile AI push. In September 2025, Google’s Gemini app surged to the top of both U.S. app store charts, gaining 12.6 million downloads, up 45% from August’s 8.7 million.
The catalyst was Gemini 2.5 Flash Image, Google’s new image editing model that went viral under the nickname “Nano Banana.” On September 12, Gemini knocked ChatGPT from its position as the No. 1 app on the U.S. App Store, a position ChatGPT had held for months.
However, Apptopia’s data reveals a more nuanced story: ChatGPT’s metrics were declining before Gemini’s rise. Average time spent per daily active user in the U.S. dropped 22.5% since July, while average sessions per DAU fell 20.7% during the same period.
“If only average time spent per DAU was dropping, but not average sessions per DAU, it could have suggested that people were getting more efficient with their ChatGPT queries,” Apptopia noted. “But since both are on the decline, that’s not the case.”
The data suggests Gemini accelerated an existing trend rather than causing it. Still, the competitive impact is undeniable. ChatGPT’s generative AI market share dropped from 76% in January 2024 to 59.5% by January 2025, while Microsoft Copilot captured 14.3% of the market.
GPT-5’s Cold Reception
Beyond competition, internal changes may be undermining engagement. When GPT-5 launched on August 7, 2025, OpenAI promised a “significant step” toward artificial general intelligence. CEO Sam Altman touted faster responses, better coding capabilities, and fewer hallucinations.
What users experienced felt different. Reviews noted that GPT-5 provided “more direct, concise responses” compared to GPT-4o’s slightly more detailed and personable style. Users complained the new model felt “robotic,” “too formal,” and lacking warmth.
The backlash was swift. On August 17, 2025, OpenAI issued an update promising to make GPT-5 “warmer and friendlier,” assuring users they would notice “small, genuine touches like ‘Good question’ or ‘Great start,’ not flattery.” Internal tests showed “no rise in sycophancy,” the company claimed.
But the damage may have been done. For users who relied on ChatGPT for creative writing, casual conversation, or empathetic responses, the shift represented a fundamental change in the product they had grown attached to. The emphasis on safety and accuracy, admirable from an engineering perspective, came at the cost of spontaneity and personality.
This wasn’t the first personality adjustment. An April 2025 update aimed to make the chatbot less sycophantic, beginning a trend that would continue through GPT-5’s release.
From Viral Sensation to Daily Utility
The slowdown doesn’t mean ChatGPT is failing, it means it’s maturing. The mobile app surpassed 150 million total downloads with a 30% year-over-year growth rate. Users spend an average of 13 minutes per mobile session, and app store ratings remain strong at 4.8 on iOS and 4.6 on Android.
The platform continues breaking usage records. ChatGPT’s website received 5.8 billion visits in September 2025, up from 3.8 billion in January. Monthly active users reached 190.6 million, processing queries at a rate of 2,206 per second.
Financially, ChatGPT remains dominant. OpenAI hit $10 billion in annual recurring revenue by June 2025, with 92% of Fortune 500 companies using the platform. The company secured a $40 billion funding round in March 2025 at about 30 times revenue, targeting $125 billion in revenue by 2029.
Yet Apptopia’s findings reveal a critical shift in user behavior. User churn in the U.S. has dropped and stabilized, indicating the app is retaining its core users while shedding experimenters. The platform has transitioned from viral novelty to utility tool, a natural evolution that inevitably leads to slower, steadier growth.
Feature Addition or Fundamental Limits?
Apptopia’s conclusion is straightforward:
“For OpenAI, that means the company will have to invest in app marketing or release new features for it to boost some of these core metrics again, just as other established mobile apps have to do. It can no longer rely on novelty alone to provide growth.”
The prescription sounds simple, add features, market aggressively, and iterate constantly. But it overlooks a more fundamental question: perhaps users don’t want to spend more time with AI assistants. Perhaps the ideal interaction with ChatGPT is brief and transactional, not prolonged and social.
Recent usage patterns support this interpretation. Over 20 daily prompts per user positions ChatGPT closer to a productivity tool than a social platform. Approximately 40% of requests are classified as “doing” tasks, users asking ChatGPT to write, calculate, or draft rather than merely answer questions.
Research shows ChatGPT users complete tasks 30-40% faster than non-users, particularly for drafting, editing, and summarizing. The tool improves clarity and presentation but doesn’t significantly boost originality, confirming it acts as a co-pilot rather than a substitute for human expertise.
If that’s the natural use case, then measuring success by daily active users and session length may be fundamentally flawed. ChatGPT might be doing exactly what users want by providing quick answers when needed, then getting out of the way. The metrics show decline; user satisfaction might tell a different story.
The Competitive Landscape Intensifies
While ChatGPT navigates maturation, competitors are gaining ground. ChatGPT’s market share in generative AI dropped to 62.5% in 2025 from previous highs, with Google Gemini capturing 13.4%, Perplexity taking 6%, and Claude AI holding 3%.
In North America, ChatGPT commands 39% market share, while in Europe it accounts for 29%. APAC markets are catching up with a steady 24% share, driven by educational and mobile usage.
The AI chatbot market is estimated at $8.7 billion in 2025, with OpenAI capturing nearly $2.8 billion in revenue. But the gap is narrowing. DeepSeek recorded over 10 million downloads in January 2025 alone, while Claude’s quarterly growth rate hit 15% compared to ChatGPT’s 8%.
OpenAI continues innovating, recently launching ChatGPT for U.S. government agencies in January 2025 and rolling out the o3-mini model for free and paid users. The company also introduced ChatGPT Pro at $200 per month for advanced users in December 2024.
Yet the competitive pressure is unprecedented. Google’s integration of Gemini across its ecosystem, Anthropic’s Claude improvements, and emerging players like Perplexity all chip away at ChatGPT’s dominance.
What Comes Next: Utility or Obsolescence?
The question isn’t whether ChatGPT will disappear, it won’t. With 800 million weekly active users, 5.8 billion monthly visits, and $10 billion in annual revenue, the platform remains a powerhouse.
It’s whether it will evolve into a utility accessed occasionally, like a calculator, rather than a daily destination visited for entertainment, companionship, or exploration. Apptopia’s data suggests that transition is already underway.
For users who discovered ChatGPT in its viral phase, when every interaction felt like glimpsing the future, the app’s maturation might feel like a loss. But for the 92% of Fortune 500 companies integrating it into workflows, or the 62% of college students using it weekly for academic purposes, ChatGPT’s transformation from novelty to necessity represents success, not stagnation.
Whether OpenAI can reignite growth through new features, marketing, or model improvements remains uncertain. What’s clear is that the age of effortless viral expansion has ended. Like every technology before it, ChatGPT must now prove it can sustain value beyond the initial wow factor.
The experimentation phase is over. The question now is if routine utility is enough, or does OpenAI need to redefine what an AI assistant should be to keep users engaged for the long term.
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