ChatGPT isn’t the Only Chatbot Attracting More Users

OpenAI’s ChatGPT may be the world’s most popular chatbot app, but competitors are gaining traction, according to analytics firms Similarweb and Sensor Tower.

Similarweb, which tracks web traffic to chatbot platforms, has observed steady growth among rivals like Google’s Gemini and Microsoft’s OpenAI-powered Copilot. In March, Gemini’s daily web visits averaged 10.9 million, a 7.4% increase from February, while Copilot saw a 2.1% rise, reaching 2.4 million daily visits.

Rising Competition Among AI Chatbots

Anthropic’s Claude recorded 3.3 million average daily visits that month, while Chinese AI lab DeepSeek’s chatbot surpassed 16.5 million. Meanwhile, xAI’s Grok, which launched its web app only a few months ago, matched DeepSeek’s daily traffic at 16.5 million visits.

Although these figures are far behind ChatGPT’s 500 million weekly active users in late March, Similarweb editor David Carr highlighted the intense competition for the No. 2 chatbot position.

“For March, DeepSeek ranked second despite experiencing a 25% drop in daily traffic from February,” Carr told TechCrunch. “China’s DeepSeek emerged suddenly in January, but the AI platform with the most momentum right now is Elon Musk’s xAI chatbot, Grok, which saw an almost 800% month-over-month traffic surge.”

AI companies are also expanding their mobile chatbot user bases, likely driven by recent AI model launches.

AI Model Releases Drive User Growth

According to data from app analytics firm Sensor Tower, Anthropic’s Claude app saw a 21% increase in weekly active users during the week of February 24, coinciding with the release of its latest AI model, Claude 3.7 Sonnet. Two weeks earlier, Google’s Gemini app experienced a 42% rise in weekly active users following the general release of its Gemini 2.0 Flash model.

Abraham Yousef, senior insights analyst at Sensor Tower, credited this growth to both new AI models and enhanced capabilities. Recently, Google introduced a “canvas” feature for Gemini, allowing users to preview coding project outputs, while Anthropic has been continuously adding tools to its Claude app.

“The rollout of advanced AI models, increased consumer interest, new features, and expanding use cases have all driven growth for AI chatbot apps,” Yousef told TechCrunch.

However, OpenAI likely isn’t concerned just yet. Yousef noted that as of March, ChatGPT had ten times more weekly active mobile users than Gemini and Claude combined.

Read the original article on: TechCrunch

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