ChatGate’s mobile app growth may have reached its peak, according to a new analysis of download trends and daily active users provided by a third-party app intelligence firm. ApptopiaIts estimates indicate that new user growth, measured by the percentage change in new global downloads, slowed after April.
The firm looked at global daily active user (DAU) growth and found that the number has started to level out over the past month.
Although October is only halfway through, the company says it’s on pace to be down 8.1% in terms of month-over-month percentage change in global downloads.
To be clear, this is a look at the download DevelopmentNo Total download. In terms of the number of new installs, ChatGPT’s mobile app is still performing well, with millions of downloads per day.
However, seeing a slowdown in download growth may indicate that an app’s overall growth momentum is slowing down. In the case of ChatGPT, increasing competition and changes in the features of its AI models can be attributed.
Digging deeper, other metrics indicate that the average time spent per DAU in the US, specifically, is down 22.5% since July, and the average session per DAU in the US is also down 20.7%.
This suggests that US users are spending less time in ChatGPT’s app and opening it less times per day. User churn in the US has also declined and stabilized during this time, which suggests the app is now retaining its core users and is seeing fewer people who come in for a short period of time and then leave the app.
OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment.
Apart from reaching its peak, there are other factors that can play a role here. This includes not only competition from Google’s Gemini, but also changes in user engagement after a design update in April Make chatbot AI models less sycophanticThis continued with the August release of GPT-5, as stated less attractiveToo.
However, Apptopia notes that ChatGPT’s average time spent per DAU and average session per DAU metrics were trending downwards before the sharp rise of its rival, Google’s Gemini, which reached the top chart in September due to the release of Google’s new AI image model, Nano Banana.
While Gemini’s growth may have offset some of the recent decline in ChatGPT’s key metrics, it does not explain the overall trend, the firm says.
Also, Apptopia says that if only the average time spent per DAU was falling, but not the average sessions per DAU, it could suggest that people were becoming more efficient with their ChatGPT queries. But since both are on the decline, this is not so.
Instead, Apptopia says it’s possible that the experimentation phase with the ChatGPT app has ended, and it is now becoming part of users’ daily routine. People likely use the app when they need it or remember using it, whereas it saw an increase in usage when it was new.
For OpenAI, this means the company will have to invest in app marketing or release new features to boost some of these key metrics again, like other established mobile apps have to do. It can no longer rely solely on innovation to deliver growth.
