ChatGPT’s mobile app is seeing slowing download growth and daily use, analysis shows

ChatGPT’s mobile app growth may have peaked, according to a new analysis of download trends and daily active users provided by third-party App Intelligence. Aptopia. Its estimates indicate that new user growth, as measured by the percentage change in new global downloads, slowed after April. Also, global daily active user growth has stalled and plateaued in recent weeks.

The firm looked at global daily active user (DAU) growth and found that numbers have started to rise over the past month or so.

Although October is only half over, the firm said it is on pace to fall 8.1% in terms of month-over-month percentage change in global downloads.

To be clear, this is a look at the download growthno total Downloads In terms of the sheer number of new installs, ChatGPT’s mobile app is still doing well, with millions of downloads per day.

However, seeing download growth stall suggests that an app’s overall growth is slowing down. In ChatGPT’s case, increased competition and changes in its AI model features could be responsible.

Digging deeper, other metrics indicate that average time spent per DAU in the US, in particular, is down 22.5% from July, and average session per DAU in the US is also down 20.7%.

This indicates that US users are spending less time on the ChatGPT app and opening it less times per day. User churn in the US has also decreased and stabilized during this period, indicating that the app is now retaining its core users and seeing a small number who drop in briefly to check out, then abandon the app.

OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment.

Beyond reaching its peak, there are other factors that may play a role here. This includes not only competition from Google’s Gemini, but also changes in user engagement after an April update that was designed to Make the chatbot’s AI model less sycophantic. Continuing with this August release of GPT-5which was said Less personableAs well.

However, Apptopia notes that ChatGPT’s Average Time Per DAU and Average Sessions Per DAU metrics were on the decline before the sharp rise of its competitor, Google’s Gemini. Which shoots up to the top charts thanks to September Google unveils new AI image model, Nano Banana.

So while Gemini’s growth may have influenced some of the recent drops in ChatGPT’s key metrics, it doesn’t explain the overall trend, the firm says.

Also, Apptopia noted that if only the average time spent per DAU, but not the average session per DAU, this could suggest that people are becoming more efficient with their ChatGPT queries. But since both are on the decline, it is not.

Instead, Apptopia says it’s possible that the experimental phase with the ChatGPT app is over and is now becoming a part of users’ daily routine. People are more likely to use the app when they need to or remember to use it, compared to increased use when it was still new.

For OpenAI, this means the company needs to invest in app marketing or release new features to boost some of these key metrics again, just like other established mobile apps. It can no longer rely on innovation to deliver growth.