Downloads Are Not Users
When OpenAI launched ChatGPT's mobile app in May 2023, Sensor Tower estimated it reached one million downloads within five days — a figure that made headlines and was widely cited as proof of consumer hunger for AI-native products. By the end of 2023, Sensor Tower's annual estimates credited ChatGPT with more than 110 million downloads across iOS and Android globally. Google's Gemini app (relaunched under that name in February 2024 after the Bard rebrand) and Anthropic's Claude followed into the same download territory: sharp launch spikes, strong press coverage, immediate chart positions.
The monthly-active-user figures tell a quieter story. Appfigures data published in early 2024 showed that across the major AI assistant apps, estimated MAU figures ran at a fraction of cumulative installs — a gap that is normal for consumer apps in general but is particularly pronounced for AI assistants, where the novelty-driven install is a well-documented pattern. Users download on the day a capability is announced, open the app once or twice, and do not return at a rate that would close the gap between the install number and the engagement number.
Perplexity, which positions itself as a search replacement rather than a chatbot, reported internally in 2024 that it had tens of millions of monthly active users — a figure its own communications have been careful to distinguish from download totals. The distinction matters: Sensor Tower and data.ai produce estimates from panel and store data ↗, not from developer-reported actuals, and the two methodologies produce figures that often diverge. Every estimate in this space carries that caveat.
What the Revenue Charts Show
Top-grossing chart position is a cleaner signal than download rank, because it requires actual subscription conversion rather than a free install. ChatGPT's iOS app entered the top-grossing charts in the United States within weeks of its launch and held a position inside the top ten apps by revenue for extended periods through 2023 and into 2024, according to Appfigures tracking. That is a meaningful number: the top-grossing chart on the US App Store is a highly competitive cohort, and sustained presence there implies that a non-trivial share of the install base converted to ChatGPT Plus at $20 per month.
The conversion rate implied by that revenue position, however, also reveals the retention floor. If cumulative global installs of ChatGPT exceed 300 million by mid-2024 — the range Sensor Tower's public estimates suggest — and monthly paying subscribers number in the low tens of millions at most (OpenAI has not published a verified subscriber count for the mobile app specifically), the conversion rate sits well below 10 percent. The free tier, which runs on capacity-limited model access, serves as both a user-acquisition tool and a ceiling on how much the install base translates to revenue.
Claude and Gemini occupy lower positions on the top-grossing charts than ChatGPT, reflecting both later market entry and different monetisation structures: Google has an incentive to bundle Gemini with existing Google One subscriptions rather than drive standalone app revenue, and Anthropic's Claude Pro subscription has a smaller retail footprint than OpenAI's consumer brand. Perplexity's subscription tier, Perplexity Pro, has appeared in top-grossing rankings but below ChatGPT's sustained positions, according to Appfigures data reported in 2024.
The pattern across all four apps is consistent enough to describe as structural. AI assistant apps attract downloads at rates that rival social platforms at their peaks. They convert to subscriptions at rates that rival productivity tools at their medians. And they retain daily-active users at rates that, on current evidence, resemble reference tools — opened when a specific need arises, closed when it is answered.
