ChatGPT Stats May 2026: Users, Subscribers, Traffic & Competition

Key takeaways

900 million weekly active users, up from 400 million in February 2025. Estimated 1 billion monthly active users.
Only ~5% of users pay. Of ~1 billion estimated monthly users, 50 million subscribe to a paid plan. The vast majority use ChatGPT free.
Skews young. 53% of users are aged 18–34. Usage drops steeply above 55.
US and India dominate — together accounting for over 28% of global web traffic and roughly 400 million total users combined.
Google AI Overviews reaches 2 billion users — double ChatGPT's estimated MAU — but those users aren't choosing an AI product, they're using Google Search.
ChatGPT's monopoly is ending. Its share of AI chatbot referrals fell from 84% a year ago to 76.85% in April 2026 — three consecutive months of decline.

ChatGPT launched in November 2022 and became the fastest consumer app to reach 100 million users. Three and a half years later, the numbers are staggering — but the competitive picture has changed significantly. Google, Anthropic, and Perplexity have all grown fast enough to chip away at OpenAI's near-monopoly.

Here is a full breakdown of the numbers as of May 2026.

How many people use ChatGPT?

ChatGPT has 900 million weekly active users as of April 2026, up from 400 million in February 2025. That is a 125% increase in roughly 14 months.

Estimating monthly active users requires an adjustment because weekly figures count the same person multiple times across weeks. The widely cited estimate is approximately 1 billion monthly active users — though OpenAI does not publish this figure officially.

In total web traffic, ChatGPT recorded 5.51 billion visits in April 2026, down slightly from 5.73 billion in March.

In the United States, ChatGPT has an estimated 67.7 million monthly active users.

ChatGPT processes over 2.5 billion queries per day across all users and surfaces.

Guest users vs. registered accounts

OpenAI allows unauthenticated access to ChatGPT — anyone can use it without creating an account, though with more limited functionality and tighter rate limits.

OpenAI has not disclosed a precise breakdown of guest versus logged-in usage, and third-party analytics platforms do not distinguish the two cleanly. What the data does show:

ChatGPT has well over 500 million registered accounts, based on disclosed user milestones through 2025.
Monthly web visits (5.5 billion) vastly exceed registered account counts, which suggests a large volume of repeat sessions from logged-in users, bot traffic, and a meaningful share of unauthenticated guest use.
Free-tier users represent roughly 81% of ChatGPT's active user base — the vast majority of active users remain on the free tier whether or not they have a registered account.

How many people pay for ChatGPT?

OpenAI confirmed 50 million paying subscribers across all tiers in April 2026. That figure spans four consumer and business plans:

ChatGPT Free — no cost, rate-limited access
ChatGPT Plus — $20/month, the original consumer tier
ChatGPT Pro — $200/month, premium access; less than 1% of subscribers but growing
ChatGPT Team / Enterprise — per-seat pricing for businesses, with over 5 million users across these tiers

Free-tier users represent roughly 81% of ChatGPT's active user base. Paid users, while a minority, engage with the product 4.2× more per week than free users.

OpenAI is targeting 122 million total paying subscribers by end of 2026, driven in part by a new $8/month plan aimed at price-sensitive markets in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. If reached, that would be more than double the current base — though analysts note it requires replacing high-value Plus subscribers with a much larger volume of cheaper ones.

Revenue

OpenAI crossed $25 billion in annualised revenue in March 2026, running at approximately $2 billion per month. At 50 million paying users, that works out to roughly $35–$40 average monthly revenue per paying user — a blended figure across the wide range of plan prices.

Who uses ChatGPT? Age demographics

ChatGPT skews heavily toward younger adults. The 18–34 age bracket accounts for 53% of all users, and usage drops significantly above 55.

Age group	Share of users
18–24	23.32%
25–34	29.67%
35–44	19.06%
45–54	13.85%
55–64	8.88%
65+	5.23%

Source: DemandSage, May 2026.

Where are ChatGPT users?

The United States is the largest market by both total users and web traffic share, but India is closing the gap fast — reaching 100 million weekly active users after the launch of ChatGPT Go in early 2026.

Top countries by total users

Country	Total users
United States	205 million
India	198 million
Brazil	69.6 million
Canada	64.8 million
France	51.6 million

Top countries by web traffic share

Country	Share of ChatGPT traffic
United States	18.53%
India	9.79%
Brazil	5.57%
Japan	4.23%
United Kingdom	3.94%

Source: DemandSage, May 2026 / Deseret News, April 2026.

On a per-capita adoption basis, the picture shifts. Kenya ranks first globally, ahead of the US, UK, and UAE — driven by mobile-first access and the lower-cost Go plan. Canada leads in engagement despite ranking fourth by total users, with Canadians averaging ~130 ChatGPT messages per citizen per year.

How ChatGPT compares to the competition

ChatGPT remains the dominant AI assistant by almost every measure, but its share of the market has declined meaningfully as rivals have scaled.

Google AI Overviews

Google AI Overviews — the AI-generated summaries embedded directly in Google Search results — reached 2 billion monthly users by early 2026, deployed across more than 200 countries and territories.

The key distinction: AI Overviews users are not choosing an AI product. They are using Google Search, and the AI layer is built in. That said, 2 billion monthly users experiencing AI-generated answers is a structural shift that puts AI Overviews in a different category from any standalone chatbot.

The standalone Gemini app (Google's direct ChatGPT competitor) reached 750 million monthly active users by early 2026 — a separate figure from AI Overviews.

Perplexity

Perplexity has approximately 45 million monthly active users as of early 2026, more than doubling from 22 million at the start of 2025. It surpassed $450 million in annualised recurring revenue in March 2026 and is valued at $20 billion.

Perplexity positions itself as an AI-first search engine rather than a general chatbot — its users are typically doing research and citation-heavy work, making it a direct challenger to Google for informational queries.

Claude (Anthropic)

Claude has approximately 26 million monthly active users on the consumer side as of early 2026 — roughly 18.9 million on web and 7.4 million on mobile. Anthropic does not publish a consolidated MAU figure. The company also serves 300,000+ business customers and over 87,000 developer organisations via the API.

Claude's referral market share more than doubled in a single month earlier this year — widely attributed to the "QuitGPT" movement — jumping from 0.92% in January 2026 to 2.91% in March, before settling at 2.66% in April.

Market share: standalone chatbots only

Statcounter measures AI chatbot referrals to third-party websites — a proxy for active usage that excludes Google AI Overviews (which is embedded in Search and generates no outbound referral traffic).

Platform	Share (April 2026)	Change (MoM)
ChatGPT	76.85%	-1.3pp
Google Gemini	9.00%	+0.4pp
Perplexity	7.73%	+0.7pp
Microsoft Copilot	3.76%	+0.6pp
Claude	2.66%	-0.3pp

Source: Statcounter Global Stats, April 2026.

ChatGPT's share has fallen for three consecutive months from a high of 84.21% a year ago. Its dominance is real, but eroding.

Market share: including Google AI Overviews

The standalone chatbot view excludes the largest AI surface on the internet. When you include Google AI Overviews — which serves AI-generated answers to 2 billion monthly users inside Google Search — the competitive landscape looks very different.

Platform	Monthly users (est.)	Type
Google AI Overviews	2 billion	Embedded in Google Search
ChatGPT	~1 billion	Standalone chatbot
Google Gemini (app)	750 million	Standalone chatbot
Perplexity	45 million	AI search engine
Claude	26 million	Standalone chatbot

The caveat: these figures are not apples-to-apples. An AI Overviews "user" is someone who ran a Google search that happened to return an AI summary — they may not have consciously engaged with it. A ChatGPT user opened an app and typed a message. The intent and depth of engagement differ significantly.

Still, the reach numbers make clear that Google is the dominant force in AI-assisted answers globally — even if ChatGPT wins on deliberate AI product usage.