Claude’s User Base Grows 1,260 Percent, but ChatGPT Still Dwarfs It
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Anyone looking for growth in the A.I. industry right now ends up at Claude: The number of monthly active users of the Claude app rose 1,260 percent year over year in the third quarter of 2026. That is according to new estimates from the market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. Over the same period, ChatGPT grew 70 percent and Google’s Gemini 166 percent. Anthropic’s sprint does little to change the pecking order, however: With 1.4 billion monthly users, ChatGPT remains by far the largest A.I. assistant.
The Numbers at a Glance
For its report, Sensor Tower compared seven A.I. assistants: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Meta AI, Grok, Perplexity and Meta’s A.I. agent Muse. The third-quarter figures:
| App | Monthly active users, change from a year earlier | Share of all users in the group |
|---|---|---|
| Claude | +1,260% | about 4% |
| Meta AI | +675% | n/a |
| Gemini | +166% | about 26% |
| ChatGPT | +70% | more than 60% |
| Perplexity | -5% | n/a |
Source: Sensor Tower, app estimates
In absolute terms, Gemini has 591 million monthly active users and ChatGPT 1.4 billion. Claude trails far behind with a share of about 4 percent. Across the group, monthly active users rose 97 percent, and revenue from in-app purchases grew 108 percent.
What Set Off the Claude Boom
Claude’s steep growth began in the United States in March, according to Sensor Tower. The report points to OpenAI’s partnership with the U.S. Department of War and a Super Bowl ad campaign as triggers. Anthropic had run spots at the time poking fun at advertising in ChatGPT. Downloads have climbed sharply ever since: up 765 percent from a year earlier in the first quarter, 1,264 percent in the second and 891 percent in the third.
Claude users often use it for work, according to Sensor Tower. Nearly half of Claude’s app users in the United States also used LinkedIn in the past six months. That fits with the fact that Claude is mainly used in the browser. Between April and October, 73 percent of Claude users accessed the service only on the web and 17 percent only through the app. ChatGPT shows the opposite pattern: 56 percent use only the app, 26 percent only the web and 18 percent both. App statistics alone therefore capture only part of Claude’s audience.
Who Spends the Most on Ads
The growth also comes at a price. U.S. advertising spending by the A.I. assistants rose 429 percent year over year in the third quarter. Claude accounted for 15 percent of that spending. OpenAI remains the biggest advertiser: ChatGPT has accounted for 54 percent of the group’s ad spending so far this year, up 26 percentage points from a year earlier. In the current fourth quarter, new names are pushing to the front. Meta’s personal agent Muse, which reached 10 million U.S. downloads in 40 days, accounts for 27 percent of ad spending so far, and xAI’s Grok Bot agent for 4 percent.
The money is having an effect. About 22 percent of all downloads in the group this year came from paid advertising, 5 percentage points more than a year earlier and 12 points more than in 2024. For Muse, the figure is 62 percent; for Meta AI, 52 percent.
Why Investors Are Watching App Data
The numbers carry extra weight because of Anthropic’s upcoming I.P.O. The maker of Claude has already filed its prospectus, and investors are talking about a valuation of about $1.5 trillion. Anthropic’s annualized revenue recently reached $68 billion. According to Sensor Tower, Anthropic’s quarterly revenue tracks closely with the firm’s estimates of app users and web visits, with a correlation of 0.85. For investors, such data could become an early indicator of the company’s results.
How Intensively the Apps Are Used
People are using A.I. assistants more often and for longer. Since the start of the year, sessions per user in the group have risen 44 percent and time spent 50 percent. Claude users open the app an average of 23 times a week, 72 percent more than a year earlier and slightly above the group average of 22 sessions. ChatGPT users average 32 sessions, DeepSeek users 33. Claude users spend 39 minutes a week in the app, up 33 percent. For ChatGPT, time spent per user fell 5 percent.
The Competition
The biggest jump after Claude came from Meta AI, up 675 percent, growth that Meta is also fueling with large ad budgets. Google can push Gemini through Android and its own services and is clearly in second place with 591 million users. Perplexity is the only app in the group that shrank. And OpenAI is responding to the pressure from Anthropic: ChatGPT is merging Chat and Work, a step Anthropic has already taken with Claude.
Big Percentages, Small Base
Sensor Tower’s estimates have their limits, though. Claude’s growth starts from a low base, and with about 4 percent of users, the gap to ChatGPT and Gemini remains wide. On time spent, Claude’s 39 minutes a week are below the group average of 43 minutes. Downloads across the group fell 11 percent in the third quarter, and a growing share of them is bought with advertising. The figures are also Sensor Tower’s own projections and do not come from the companies themselves. And Anthropic makes most of its revenue from businesses and developers that use Claude through its A.P.I. or tools like Claude Code, usage that barely shows up in app statistics.
