ChatGPT Statistics (2026)

A data analysis of how many people use ChatGPT, how fast it grew, what people actually ask it, who pays for it, and how far ahead of its rivals it really is.

ChatGPT serves more than 1 billion weekly active users as of August 2026, per OpenAI, up from 100 million at OpenAI’s first developer conference in November 2023 (TechCrunch). In the US, 44% of adults now say they use it, per Pew Research Center (2026). Most of that use is personal, not professional. The numbers below come from OpenAI’s own disclosures, an economics working paper built on OpenAI’s internal data, and independent surveys. For how it compares as a tool, see our AI chatbots category.

Key takeaways

• 1 billion+ weekly active users by August 2026, per OpenAI, up from 900 million in February 2026 (OpenAI, TechCrunch)
• 100 million to 1 billion+: weekly users grew from 100 million in November 2023 (TechCrunch) to more than 1 billion in August 2026 (OpenAI)
• 2.5 billion+ messages a day by July 2025, per OpenAI’s NBER working paper, a figure Axios data and an OpenAI spokesperson also confirmed to The Verge
• 73% of consumer messages are not about work (June 2025), up from 53% a year earlier (NBER)
• 44% of US adults use ChatGPT in 2026, up from 18% in 2023, per Pew Research Center
• 44% vs. 24%: ChatGPT’s US reach versus Gemini, the next most-used chatbot (Pew, 2026)
• 9 million+ paying business users in February 2026 (OpenAI), up from 2 million a year earlier (TechCrunch)
• 50 million+ consumer subscribers as of February 2026 (OpenAI, TechCrunch)
• $20B+ in annualized revenue in 2025, up from $2B in 2023, per OpenAI’s CFO and Reuters

How many people use ChatGPT?

ChatGPT has more than 1 billion weekly active users, OpenAI said on August 31, 2026, in a post about its ad-supported free tier (OpenAI). That is up from more than 900 million in February 2026 (OpenAI). By mid-2025, roughly one in ten adults on Earth already used it every week.

1. More than 1 billion people use ChatGPT every week, per OpenAI’s August 2026 ads announcement. OpenAI mentioned the milestone in passing rather than in a standalone release, and no independent outlet has measured it.
2. ChatGPT had more than 900 million weekly active users in February 2026, per OpenAI. TechCrunch called it a jump of 100 million from the 800 million OpenAI reported in October 2025.
3. At DevDay on September 29, 2026, OpenAI cited “our collective 1.2B weekly users” (OpenAI). OpenAI described that figure as collective and did not break it out by product, so 1 billion is the safer ChatGPT-only number.
4. By July 2025, ChatGPT had reached around 10% of the world’s adult population, per the OpenAI and Harvard working paper published through NBER. The authors write that this speed of global diffusion has no precedent.
5. By May 2025, adoption growth in the lowest-income countries was over 4x the rate in the highest-income countries, per OpenAI. Growth is fastest where adoption started lowest.
6. Users who mainly write in a language other than English now make up over half of active users, per OpenAI Signals data from June 2026. Spanish, Portuguese, and Arabic are the leading non-English languages.

How fast has ChatGPT grown?

ChatGPT went from 100 million weekly users in November 2023 to more than 1 billion by August 2026 (TechCrunch, OpenAI). Growth held up at scale: weekly users went from 500 million in March 2025 to more than 900 million by February 2026, per OpenAI’s own announcements.

Source: OpenAI statements, retrieved from OpenAI and the outlets linked in each row. Milestones are as announced, not continuous measurements.

7. ChatGPT had 100 million weekly active users at OpenAI’s first DevDay on November 6, 2023, per TechCrunch. OpenAI’s own paper describes it as “more than 100 million logged-in WAU after one year.”
8. Weekly users doubled to more than 200 million by August 2024, per Reuters. Reuters reported it was double the number from the previous fall.
9. Sam Altman said ChatGPT had more than 300 million weekly users in December 2024 (The Verge). OpenAI’s later working paper put the two-year mark at almost 350 million, so the public number was conservative.
10. 500 million people used ChatGPT every week by March 31, 2025, per OpenAI, in the announcement of a $40 billion funding round.
11. Weekly users hit 700 million in August 2025, more than 4x the year before, per CNBC. CNBC reported the figure was up from 500 million in March.

How many messages does ChatGPT handle per day?

ChatGPT users sent more than 2.5 billion messages per day by July 2025, about 29,000 every second, per OpenAI’s NBER working paper. Axios data reported by The Verge put daily prompts at the same 2.5 billion, with 330 million from US users.

12. Daily consumer messages rose from 451 million in June 2024 to 2,627 million in June 2025, per the working paper. Message volume grew far faster than the user base.
13. ChatGPT handled 18 billion messages a week by July 2025 (OpenAI/NBER). The paper pegs the user base behind those messages at 700 million.
14. Users sent over 1 billion messages per day in December 2024, Sam Altman said at the DealBook Summit (The Verge). By July 2025, daily volume had passed 2.5 billion.
15. Daily user messages surpassed 3 billion by August 2025, counting every ChatGPT product from Free to Enterprise, per CNBC.
16. The 2.5 billion daily figure implies over 912.5 billion requests a year, per The Verge. That is still well short of Google’s 5 trillion annual searches, which The Verge cited for comparison.
17. Six months after signing up, users send 50% more messages per day than in their first month, and they double the number of distinct tasks they try, per OpenAI Signals (2026). Usage deepens with tenure instead of fading after the novelty wears off.

Message volume is the better health metric than signups. Users who stick around use ChatGPT more, not less, and that habit loop is what rivals have to break.

What do people use ChatGPT for?

Three topics, Practical Guidance, Seeking Information, and Writing, account for about 77% of ChatGPT conversations, per OpenAI’s NBER study of roughly 1.1 million sampled conversations. Practical Guidance leads at roughly 29%. Coding is a niche on the consumer app: only 4.2% of messages are about programming.

18. Seeking Information grew from 14% to 24% of usage between July 2024 and July 2025, while Writing fell from 36% to 24%, per the working paper. ChatGPT is turning into a search substitute faster than it is becoming a writing tool.
19. 10.2% of all messages are requests for tutoring or teaching (OpenAI/NBER). Education is one of the single largest use cases, ahead of programming.
20. Only 4.2% of messages relate to computer programming, and Technical Help fell from 12% of usage to around 5% in a year (OpenAI/NBER). The authors suggest coding may have moved to the API, code editors, and agents like Codex.
21. About two-thirds of Writing messages ask ChatGPT to modify the user’s own text rather than write from scratch (OpenAI/NBER). For more on how that plays out at work, see our AI writing statistics.
22. 49% of messages are “Asking,” 40% are “Doing,” and 11% are “Expressing,” per OpenAI. People value ChatGPT most as an advisor, and Asking is the faster-growing, higher-rated category.
23. Relationships and personal reflection make up just 1.9% of messages, and games and role play 0.4% (OpenAI/NBER). The data does not support the idea that companionship is a main use of ChatGPT.
24. Multimedia grew from 2% to just over 7% of usage, with a spike after image generation launched in April 2025 (OpenAI/NBER).

What Americans say they use AI chatbots for

Pew’s 2026 survey asked about AI chatbots in general, not ChatGPT alone, but ChatGPT is the most-used one. 42% of US adults use chatbots to search for information, per Pew Research Center. Another 20% use them for medical advice, 13% for news, 10% for emotional support, and 4% for companionship. Self-reported search use lines up with OpenAI’s own data, where Seeking Information gained the most share of any topic.

Is ChatGPT used more for work or personal life?

Mostly personal life. Non-work messages rose from 53% of consumer ChatGPT traffic in June 2024 to 73% in June 2025, per the OpenAI and Harvard working paper. Work messages still grew, from 213 million to 716 million a day, but personal use grew much faster.

25. Non-work messages grew from 238 million to 1,911 million a day in a year (OpenAI/NBER). The authors found the shift came mainly from existing users changing how they use it, not from a new type of user arriving.
26. Writing accounts for about 40% of work-related messages, with Practical Guidance second at 24% (OpenAI/NBER). At work, ChatGPT is still mainly a drafting and editing tool.
27. “Doing” makes up nearly 56% of work-related queries, compared with 35% for “Asking” (OpenAI/NBER). People ask ChatGPT for advice at home and hand it tasks at work.
28. 28% of employed US adults used ChatGPT for work in 2025, up 20 percentage points in two years, per Pew Research Center. Among employed adults aged 18 to 29, the figure was 38%.
29. 38% of employed adults use AI chatbots for tasks at work in 2026, per Pew, making work the second most common use after search.

The work share falling does not mean ChatGPT is losing ground at the office. Both lines are growing. It means the consumer product has become a general-purpose household tool, and that work use is moving to paid business plans covered below.

Who uses ChatGPT?

ChatGPT skews young but is broadening fast. 44% of US adults say they use it in 2026, including 61% of adults under 30 and 19% of those 65 and older, per Pew Research Center. Globally, OpenAI found the share of users with feminine-classified names rose from 37% in January 2024 to 52% by July 2025.

Source: Pew Research Center, Americans and AI 2026, share of US adults who say they ever use ChatGPT. Pew notes a question wording change in 2026.

30. Use among Americans 65 and older rose from 10% to 19% in a year (Pew). The fastest relative growth is now among older adults, not the young.
31. Adults under 50 are about twice as likely as those 50 and older to use ChatGPT (57% vs. 28%), per Pew. The age gap is shrinking, but it remains the clearest divide in adoption.
32. Education is the other big divide: 52% of postgraduates and 51% of bachelor’s degree holders had used ChatGPT in 2025, versus 18% of those with a high school education or less (Pew).
33. About 80% of ChatGPT’s early weekly users had masculine-classified names; by June 2025 that share had dropped to 48% (OpenAI/NBER). The early gender gap has closed and slightly reversed.
34. Around 46% of messages from users who report their age come from 18- to 25-year-olds (OpenAI/NBER). The youngest adults send a disproportionate share of the traffic.
35. 26% of US teens have used ChatGPT for schoolwork, up from 13% in 2023, per Pew (January 2025). Only 18% of teens said using it to write essays is acceptable.
36. 79% of US adults had heard at least a little about ChatGPT by early 2025, up from 58% in March 2023 (Pew). Most Americans have heard of it, so the remaining growth is about conversion, not awareness.

How does ChatGPT compare with Gemini, Claude, and other chatbots?

ChatGPT is still the default. 44% of US adults use ChatGPT, versus 24% for Gemini, 17% for Copilot, and 6% for Claude, per Pew Research Center’s 2026 survey. It also captured about 70% of all consumer AI spending in 2025, according to Menlo Ventures.

37. In a 2025 survey, 28% of Americans had used ChatGPT and 23% had used Google Gemini in the past six months, per Menlo Ventures. Menlo attributes much consumer adoption to products with existing distribution, which helps Gemini. Pew’s 2026 survey, using a different question, shows a wider gap.
38. ChatGPT accounted for 86% of consumer spending on general AI assistants in a $12 billion consumer AI market, per Menlo Ventures (2025). Usage share and revenue share are not the same thing, and ChatGPT’s revenue lead is larger.
39. OpenAI says ChatGPT has 6x the monthly web visits and mobile sessions of the next largest AI app, and 4x its total time spent, per OpenAI (March 2026). That is the company’s own claim, and we could not independently verify it.
40. Google’s Gemini app had more than 450 million monthly active users in mid-2025, per Sundar Pichai via CNBC. That is a monthly count, so it is not directly comparable with ChatGPT’s 700 million weekly users at the time.

Pew’s numbers matter because they come from an independent survey that asks the same question about every brand. If you are choosing between ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, or Perplexity, popularity tells you which one your team already knows, not which one fits the job. Our AI chatbot statistics cover the wider market.

How many businesses use ChatGPT?

More than 9 million paying business users relied on ChatGPT for work as of February 2026, per OpenAI, up from 2 million a year earlier (TechCrunch). OpenAI counts more than 1 million business customers, and enterprise now makes up more than 40% of its revenue (OpenAI).

Source: OpenAI disclosures, directly and as reported by TechCrunch and CNBC. “Seats” and “users” are OpenAI’s own terms and are not strictly interchangeable.

41. 92% of Fortune 500 companies were using OpenAI’s products by August 2024, per Reuters. Large-company penetration was near-total early; growth since then is about seats per company.
42. ChatGPT Enterprise seats grew 9x year over year by November 2025, and total ChatGPT for Work seats rose 40% in two months (OpenAI).
43. Weekly messages in ChatGPT Enterprise rose roughly 8x over a year, and the average worker sent 30% more messages, per OpenAI’s State of Enterprise AI report (December 2025). Use of Projects and Custom GPTs rose 19x year to date.
44. Workers report saving 40-60 minutes per day with ChatGPT, and heavy users report more than 10 hours a week, per the same OpenAI survey of 9,000 workers across almost 100 enterprises. These are self-reported figures from a vendor survey, so treat them as an upper bound.
45. 75% of surveyed workers say AI improved the speed or quality of their output (OpenAI). Another 75% say they can now complete tasks they previously could not.
46. “Frontier” workers send 6x more messages than the median employee, and frontier firms send 2x more messages per seat (OpenAI). Value concentrates in the people who actually build the habit.
47. Codex, OpenAI’s coding agent, reached 3 million weekly active users by April 2026, up from 2 million in March (OpenAI, OpenAI). In March 2026, OpenAI said Codex usage was growing more than 70% month over month; see our agentic AI statistics.

The adoption numbers look universal, but the depth numbers do not. A 6x gap between frontier and median users says most seats are lightly used. For broader enterprise context, see our AI adoption statistics.

How much revenue does ChatGPT make, and how many people pay?

OpenAI’s annualized revenue passed $20 billion in 2025, up from $6 billion in 2024 and $2 billion in 2023, per CFO Sarah Friar, as reported by Reuters. OpenAI does not break out ChatGPT revenue alone, but it reports more than 50 million consumer subscribers.

48. OpenAI had more than 50 million consumer subscribers in February 2026 (OpenAI, TechCrunch). OpenAI said January and February were on track to be its largest months for new subscribers.
49. Only about 5% of ChatGPT’s weekly users pay for a subscription, per Menlo Ventures (2025). The free tier is the product for the vast majority of users, which is why ads now matter.
50. OpenAI’s annualized recurring revenue reached $13 billion in August 2025, up from $10 billion in June, per CNBC.
51. OpenAI told investors revenue reached $6.7 billion in the second quarter of 2026, up from $5.7 billion in the first, as reported by The Wall Street Journal via Investing.com. The same report said Anthropic’s revenue reached $11.6 billion over that period. These are press-reported figures, not audited results.
52. ChatGPT Ads reached a $1 billion annualized revenue run rate in under 200 days, per OpenAI (August 2026), and now run in over 40 countries. The ads pilot had passed $100 million in ARR in under six weeks (OpenAI).
53. Search usage in ChatGPT nearly tripled in a year, per OpenAI (March 2026). Search and ads together explain the shift from a subscription business to a mixed model.

What to do with this data

ChatGPT’s scale is real, and it changes how you should buy AI tools. But scale is not fit. Here is how we would use these numbers:

• Standardize on one general assistant before adding specialists. ChatGPT already reaches 44% of US adults (Pew), so most of your team arrives knowing it. That lowers training cost, which is the hidden cost of every extra tool.
• Buy for depth, not seat count. Frontier users send 6x more messages than the median employee (OpenAI). Pilot with the people who will build the habit, then expand.
• Match the tool to the job mix. Only 4.2% of consumer ChatGPT messages are about coding (OpenAI/NBER). If your work is mostly code or research, compare dedicated tools like Claude or Perplexity before defaulting.
• Treat self-reported time savings as a ceiling. The 40-60 minutes a day figure comes from a vendor survey. Measure your own baseline before and after rollout.
• Watch the free tier’s incentives. With about 5% of users paying (Menlo Ventures) and ads now a $1 billion run-rate business, keep sensitive work on business plans with clear data terms.

Compare the options side by side in our AI chatbots category, and see how tools8020 scores tools.

Frequently asked questions

How many people use ChatGPT in 2026?

More than 1 billion people use ChatGPT every week, per OpenAI in August 2026. That is up from more than 900 million in February 2026 and 100 million in November 2023. At DevDay in September 2026, OpenAI cited a collective 1.2 billion weekly users across its products, without a ChatGPT-only breakdown.

How many messages are sent to ChatGPT every day?

Users sent more than 2.5 billion messages per day by July 2025, about 29,000 per second, per OpenAI’s NBER working paper. By August 2025, daily messages across all ChatGPT products had passed 3 billion, per CNBC. That is up from 451 million a day in June 2024.

What percentage of Americans use ChatGPT?

44% of US adults say they use ChatGPT, per Pew Research Center in 2026, up from 34% in 2025 and 18% in 2023. Use is highest among adults under 30, at 61%, and lowest among those 65 and older, at 19%, up from 10% a year earlier.

What do most people use ChatGPT for?

Mostly everyday advice and information. Practical Guidance, Seeking Information, and Writing make up about 77% of conversations, per OpenAI’s working paper. About 73% of consumer messages are not work-related. Tutoring and teaching requests make up 10.2% of messages, while programming accounts for only 4.2%, a small slice of overall use.

Is ChatGPT more popular than Gemini?

Yes, by a wide margin in the US. 44% of American adults use ChatGPT versus 24% for Gemini, per Pew Research Center (2026). Copilot follows at 17% and Claude at 6%. ChatGPT also took about 70% of consumer AI spending in 2025, per Menlo Ventures.

How many businesses pay for ChatGPT?

OpenAI reports more than 9 million paying business users as of February 2026 (OpenAI) and more than 1 million paying business customers as of November 2025. Enterprise seats grew 9x year over year, and enterprise now makes up more than 40% of OpenAI’s revenue, per OpenAI.

How much money does ChatGPT make?

OpenAI does not report ChatGPT revenue separately. Company-wide annualized revenue passed $20 billion in 2025, up from $6 billion in 2024, per its CFO. The Wall Street Journal reported second-quarter 2026 revenue of $6.7 billion (Investing.com). ChatGPT has more than 50 million consumer subscribers.

How we compiled these statistics

We drew on 27 source pages from 25 distinct publications, led by OpenAI’s own announcements and research, the OpenAI and Harvard NBER working paper, and independent surveys from Pew Research Center and Menlo Ventures. Every figure was retrieved from the publisher’s page in October 2026; because openai.com blocks automated requests, OpenAI’s pages were retrieved from Internet Archive snapshots of the official URLs. Figures we could not trace to a primary source were omitted, revenue numbers from press reports are attributed to the outlet that reported them, and ranges are shown where sources disagree. Related data: AI chatbot statistics, AI adoption statistics, and AI writing statistics.

Sources

• OpenAI: A milestone in expanding access to AI (2026)
• OpenAI: Scaling AI for everyone (2026)
• OpenAI: DevDay 2026 Recap (2026)
• OpenAI: OpenAI raises $122 billion to accelerate the next phase of AI (2026)
• OpenAI: The next phase of enterprise AI (2026)
• OpenAI: A business that scales with the value of intelligence (2026)
• OpenAI: How ChatGPT adoption has expanded (2026)
• OpenAI: The state of enterprise AI (2025)
• OpenAI: 1 million business customers (2025)
• OpenAI: How people are using ChatGPT (2025)
• OpenAI: New funding to build towards AGI (2025)
• OpenAI Economic Research: How People Use ChatGPT, working paper PDF (2025)
• NBER: How People Use ChatGPT, Working Paper 34255 (2025)
• Pew Research Center: Americans and AI 2026: Chatbots, Smart Devices and Views on Impact (2026)
• Pew Research Center: Americans and AI 2026, Appendix: Detailed chart and tables (2026)
• Pew Research Center: 34% of US adults have used ChatGPT, about double the share in 2023 (2025)
• Pew Research Center: About a quarter of US teens have used ChatGPT for schoolwork (2025)
• Menlo Ventures: 2025, The State of Consumer AI (2025)
• TechCrunch: OpenAI’s ChatGPT now has 100 million weekly active users (2023)
• Reuters via Yahoo Finance: OpenAI says ChatGPT’s weekly users have grown to 200 million (2024)
• The Verge: ChatGPT now has over 300 million weekly users (2024)
• TechCrunch: OpenAI now serves 400 million users every week (2025)
• CNBC: OpenAI’s ChatGPT to hit 700 million weekly users, up 4x from last year (2025)
• The Verge: OpenAI says ChatGPT users send over 2.5 billion prompts every day (2025)
• TechCrunch: ChatGPT reaches 900M weekly active users (2026)
• Reuters via Investing.com: OpenAI CFO says annualized revenue crosses $20 billion in 2025 (2026)
• The Wall Street Journal via Investing.com: OpenAI’s Q2 revenue growth lagged Anthropic as losses deepened (2026)