ChatGPT remains the clear leader in worldwide AI chatbot market share, but new data points to intensifying competition from rivals such as Google Gemini and Grok across mobile apps and web traffic.
Statcounter’s latest worldwide snapshot for January 2026 puts ChatGPT at 80.49% market share. The same Statcounter view lists Perplexity at 7.89%, Google Gemini at 7.18%, Microsoft Copilot at 3.5%, Claude at 0.92%, and Deepseek at 0.01%.
Worldwide share still heavily favors ChatGPT
The Statcounter numbers show a market where one product still dominates globally. With more than four-fifths of worldwide AI chatbot market share in January 2026, ChatGPT’s lead is large compared with the next cluster of services in the single digits.
At the same time, Statcounter’s breakdown highlights a widening field of recognizable alternatives. Perplexity and Google Gemini are shown close together in the high single digits, while Microsoft Copilot, Claude, and Deepseek appear with smaller shares in the same January 2026 snapshot.
U.S. mobile app data shows a tighter race
A separate dataset described by Big Technology suggests ChatGPT’s lead looks smaller when measured a different way: daily U.S. users of mobile apps. Big Technology reported that ChatGPT’s market share in that category fell from 69.1% in January 2025 to 45.3% in January 2026.
In the same period, Big Technology reported that Gemini rose from 14.7% to 25.1% and Grok rose from 1.6% to 15.2% among daily U.S. users of its mobile app. Big Technology said the data was obtained from mobile insights firm Apptopia and that it indicates the chatbot race has tightened meaningfully over the past year.
Big Technology also reported that the overall chatbot market increased 152% since last January, citing Apptopia, while noting that ChatGPT had healthy download growth. That combination—fast category expansion plus rising challengers—can change relative shares even when a leader continues to grow.
Web traffic shows rapid growth for Gemini
Big Technology also pointed to a similar competitive pattern on desktop and mobile web, using data attributed to analytics firm Similarweb. It reported that visits to ChatGPT increased from 3.8 billion to 5.7 billion between January 2025 and January 2026, a 50% increase.
Over the same period, Big Technology reported that visits to Gemini rose from 267.7 million to 2 billion, a 647% increase. While ChatGPT was still described as “far and away the leader in visits,” the report said it now has more company in the race.
Big Technology included a quote from Similarweb’s insights news and research editor David Carr, who said: “ChatGPT showed really strong growth for most of 2025. That said, we did see a ChatGPT traffic dip in November / December, which coincided with a growth spurt for Gemini. Preliminary data for January show ChatGPT traffic recovering but not back to its peak of 6 billion + visits in October. And Gemini continues to grow strongly, up another 17% month over month based on a preliminary estimate for January.”
Why these rankings can differ
These reports underline how “market share” can look different depending on what is being measured and where. Statcounter’s figures describe worldwide AI chatbot market share for January 2026, while Big Technology’s app-share figures focus on daily U.S. users of mobile apps and are attributed to Apptopia.
Similarly, web “visits” reflect traffic patterns rather than app usage, and the Big Technology story ties those figures to Similarweb. Taken together, the numbers point to the same broad direction: ChatGPT leads, but competition is rising quickly in key channels.
