Back to the trend of the day: Musk cuts how much paying users can use his AI helper
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Most Popular AI Apps 2026: Which Ones People Pay For

About 50 million people pay for ChatGPT, roughly 1 in 18 of its weekly users. Grok's app downloads fell from over 20 million a month to 8.3 million, and paying users of Grok Bot have just had their weekly caps cut.

  • No. 1: ChatGPT
  • 10 places

01Final list

The leading AIs each built their own list of ten independently. Here is one result that is easy to check: every place has a reason, a source, and the list of AIs that included it.

Order: from most to least AI agreement.

A bright badge means this AI put the entry on its list. A dim badge means it did not.

  1. 1

    ChatGPT

    Most payers by far: 50M+ in February, about 1 in 18 of 900M weekly users. YipitData counts 3x Claude's US paid base. OpenAI gave no new count in November.

    Included it: Claude, Grok, Gemini, Kimi. Did not include: ChatGPT, Nova, Wenxin, Qwen.

    In their lists: Claude: 1 · Grok: 4 · Gemini: 1 · Kimi: 1

    What each AI noted 4
    • Claudeplace 1

      About 50M people pay while 900M use it weekly. That is roughly 1 in 18, and Recon Analytics puts payers above 6% of surveyed users.

      Source ↗
    • Grokplace 4

      More than 50 million people pay, but in February that was about one weekly user in 18, and on 3 November OpenAI still would not give the new total.

      Source ↗
    • Geminiplace 1

      Commands over 60% of all consumer AI subscription dollars and retains 71% of paid Plus members after six months.

      Source ↗
    • Kimiplace 1

      1.2 billion people use it every week and only ~4% pay — but that 4% is roughly 50 million subscribers, more paying customers than every rival on this list combined.

      Source ↗
    4 AIs put it here
    Source ↗
  2. 2

    Claude

    Converts best: Sensor Tower says 13% of users pay, against about 5.5% for ChatGPT. That is one source, and YipitData still counts 3x more US payers at ChatGPT. Claude's paid base more than doubled.

    Included it: Claude, Grok, Gemini, Kimi. Did not include: ChatGPT, Nova, Wenxin, Qwen.

    In their lists: Claude: 2 · Grok: 1 · Gemini: 2 · Kimi: 3

    What each AI noted 4
    • Claudeplace 2

      It is third in downloads, yet its paid base more than doubled in 2026. It has the best ratio of payers to installs among the challengers, and the heaviest users.

      Source ↗
    • Grokplace 1

      13% of its users pay — the highest rate Sensor Tower published for a major assistant — and 7.3% of those US payers buy the $100 plan, against 1.1% at ChatGPT.

      Source ↗
    • Geminiplace 2

      Converts fewer casual mobile downloaders than rivals, but generates over $85M monthly as agentic workflows turn trial coders into permanent subscribers.

    • Kimiplace 3

      The smallest installed base of the frontier trio converts best: web visits up 540% in a year with almost zero paid marketing, and a $200 Max plan that heavy users willingly max out.

      Source ↗
    4 AIs put it here
    Source ↗
  3. 3

    Google Gemini

    Biggest reach, with 1B monthly users, but Google never says how many pay. Its US paid base only matched Claude's after storage subscribers were moved onto the AI plan.

    Included it: Claude, Grok, Gemini, Kimi. Did not include: ChatGPT, Nova, Wenxin, Qwen.

    In their lists: Claude: 3 · Grok: 7 · Gemini: 5 · Kimi: 2

    What each AI noted 4
    • Claudeplace 3

      1B monthly users, but Google has never said how many of them pay.

      Source ↗
    • Grokplace 7

      662 million monthly users in May, yet its US paid count only pulled level with Claude after Google moved old storage subscribers onto the AI plan.

      Source ↗
    • Geminiplace 5

      Leverages native Android installation to drive massive install volume, converting via Google One AI Premium bundles while ambient daily integration keeps churn low.

    • Kimiplace 2

      The fastest climber of the big two: from 450 million to 1 billion monthly users in 13 months — yet still only ~40% of ChatGPT's reach, and its payers mostly arrive bundled inside Google One.

      Source ↗
    4 AIs put it here
    Source ↗
  4. 4

    Perplexity

    Revenue tripled to $750M a year, but there is no payer count; the 1.25–3.1M figure is an estimate. A free year of Pro in India brought 56M downloads and only a 60% revenue rise.

    Included it: Claude, Grok, Gemini, Kimi. Did not include: ChatGPT, Nova, Wenxin, Qwen.

    In their lists: Claude: 6 · Grok: 6 · Gemini: 3 · Kimi: 6

    What each AI noted 4
    • Claudeplace 6

      It was 5th in 2025 downloads, yet it has never published a user or subscriber count.

      Source ↗
    • Grokplace 6

      Revenue passed $750 million a year by August, but a free year of Pro in India brought about 56 million downloads and, once it ended, only about a 60% rise in local app revenue.

      Source ↗
    • Geminiplace 3

      Converts everyday search intent into sticky $20/month Pro subscriptions, achieving higher daily return frequencies than conversational chat companions.

      Source ↗
    • Kimiplace 6

      The best tryer-to-payer ratio in consumer AI: roughly 1 in 20 monthly users pays, a conversion rate ChatGPT can only match on its best day — on a base 25x smaller.

      Source ↗
    4 AIs put it here
    Source ↗
  5. 5

    Microsoft Copilot

    30M+ paid seats, but employers buy them. The consumer app's US daily users fell 84% from March to July, and Copilot Pro was switched off.

    Included it: Claude, Grok, Gemini, Kimi. Did not include: ChatGPT, Nova, Wenxin, Qwen.

    In their lists: Claude: 8 · Grok: 9 · Gemini: 7 · Kimi: 4

    What each AI noted 4
    • Claudeplace 8

      It was 10th in 2025 downloads. A table attributed to Sensor Tower lists 212M monthly users for May 2026, but the sourcing is unclear.

      Source ↗
    • Grokplace 9

      Over 30 million paid work seats, while the consumer phone app’s US daily users fell 84% from March to July and the old $20 Copilot Pro was switched off on 1 August.

      Source ↗
    • Geminiplace 7

      Draws unmatched desktop and enterprise trials via Windows and 365, holding an estimated 52% 6-month consumer retention among paid Copilot Pro users.

    • Kimiplace 4

      30 million people pay for it — but almost all through their employer, which is why Microsoft happily reports paid seats and stays silent on how many use it each month.

      Source ↗
    4 AIs put it here
    Source ↗
  6. 6

    Grok Bot

    No free tier, so everyone who uses it pays: about 800,000 paid weekly users by early October. Weekly caps were then cut on 31 October, which Musk blamed on cost. Renewal after the first month is untested.

    Included it: Claude, Grok, Gemini. Did not include: ChatGPT, Nova, Kimi, Wenxin, Qwen.

    In their lists: Claude: 4 · Grok: 2 · Gemini: 6

    What each AI noted 3
    • Claudeplace 4

      No free tier, and 800K paid weekly users against about 418K weekly users a month earlier. Almost everyone who uses it pays, until the limit cut.

      Source ↗
    • Grokplace 2

      It has no free tier: about 800,000 people a week were paying by early October, and over the 31 October weekend many of them hit 100% of a cap Elon Musk then blamed on cost.

      Source ↗
    • Geminiplace 6

      Grew to 800,000 paid weekly users before severe compute costs forced Elon Musk to slash subscribers' weekly usage quotas on October 31, 2026.

    3 AIs put it here
    Source ↗
  7. 7

    Grok app (SuperGrok)

    Downloads fell from over 20M in January to 8.3M in April. About 2% of 118M monthly users pay (estimate); Recon's survey finds 0.174% of all people pay.

    Included it: Claude, Grok, Kimi. Did not include: ChatGPT, Gemini, Nova, Wenxin, Qwen.

    In their lists: Claude: 5 · Grok: 8 · Kimi: 7

    What each AI noted 3
    • Claudeplace 5

      Downloads fell by about 60% between January and April 2026, and only 0.174% of surveyed people pay, the same as a year earlier.

      Source ↗
    • Grokplace 8

      About 118 million people use Grok in a month and about 2.4 million pay for SuperGrok — roughly 2 in 100 — because most of them already get it free inside X.

      Source ↗
    • Kimiplace 7

      On the Halloween weekend of 2026, paying Grok users woke to smaller weekly usage pools — the clearest sign yet that Musk's AI loses money on exactly the subscribers who love it most.

      Source ↗
    3 AIs put it here
    Source ↗
  8. 8

    Meta AI and Meta Muse

    The widest gap: Meta AI has 1.2B monthly users and no paid plan. The new Muse app drew 10.2M US downloads in 40 days, and Meta has not said how many pay.

    Included it: Claude, Grok, Kimi. Did not include: ChatGPT, Gemini, Nova, Wenxin, Qwen.

    In their lists: Claude: 7 · Grok: 10 · Kimi: 8

    What each AI noted 3
    • Claudeplace 7

      It was 9th in 2025 downloads. A video feed (Vibes) drove installs but little revenue, so it is the clearest case of reach without payment.

      Source ↗
    • Grokplace 10

      10.2 million US downloads in 40 days, and 30% of those people still opened it a week later — Meta has not said how many of them pay $20.

      Source ↗
    • Kimiplace 8

      1.2 billion monthly users and almost zero paying ones — the biggest tryer-to-payer gap in the industry, which is exactly why Meta keeps hinting at subscriptions.

      Source ↗
    3 AIs put it here
    Source ↗
  9. 9

    Character.AI

    The most time spent, the least money kept: 12M monthly users at about 120 minutes a day, yet about $5.3M of August revenue and a bankruptcy filing in October.

    Included it: Grok, Gemini, Kimi. Did not include: Claude, ChatGPT, Nova, Wenxin, Qwen.

    In their lists: Grok: 5 · Gemini: 10 · Kimi: 10

    What each AI noted 3
    • Grokplace 5

      After SpaceX bought it, Cursor booked $608 million in the 48 days from 14 August to 30 September — and a new $8 plan no longer includes the Claude and GPT models people were paying to run.

      Source ↗
    • Geminiplace 10

      Generates billions of hours in entertainment and emotional companionship, but suffers from steep casual download churn that keeps c.ai+ paid conversion below 2.5%.

    • Kimiplace 10

      Its users average two hours a day — the deepest engagement of any consumer AI — and the company still filed for bankruptcy in October 2026: proof that time spent is not the same as money kept.

      Source ↗
    3 AIs put it here
    Source ↗
  10. 10

    GitHub Copilot

    4.7M paid subscribers by January, up 75% in a year, beside about 20M total users. That is roughly 23%, but the two company figures come from different dates.

    Included it: Grok, Kimi. Did not include: Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Nova, Wenxin, Qwen.

    In their lists: Grok: 3 · Kimi: see list

    What each AI noted 2
    • Grokplace 3

      4.7 million people were paying by January 2026, up 75% in a year, beside a free tier Microsoft had counted at about 20 million users — a higher pay rate than any general chatbot has published.

      Source ↗
    • Kimi

      Named differently in its own list: open the full list.

      see list
    2 AIs put it here
    Source ↗

More about the top three ↓

02More about the top three

The ranking is above. Here is more about the three places at the top: what they are, why they are here, and what is worth knowing.

The three are measured differently: ChatGPT's payers come from OpenAI against weekly users, Claude's 13% is one Sensor Tower estimate (some outlets say iOS only), and Google gives monthly users but no payer count.

1ChatGPT

No. 1 — ChatGPT. On the lists of 4 of 8 AIs; median place there: 1. It has the most paying people by far, about 50 million, even though only a small share of its huge user base pays.

ChatGPT 5.2 Thinking Wikipedia historia PDF screenshot
Gio Antonio · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Did you know

  • When the past-chats memory launched, it skipped the EU, UK, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein, reportedly for privacy reasons. It also switches off automatically in Temporary chat mode.

    Source ↗
What it is
OpenAI's chatbot app, the biggest AI assistant by weekly users.
Its edge
Far more payers than the other two: 50M+, about 1 in 18 weekly users.
Who should know
Useful for anyone wanting to know which AI app people actually pay for most.
  • Payers against people who try50M+ payers, 1 in 18 users

Wikipedia · Wikidata

Why it is here

  • OpenAI said ChatGPT passed 900 million weekly users and 50 million paying subscribers in late February 2026. That is about 1 payer for every 18 weekly users, and no other app in this ranking has a payer count that large.

    Source ↗
History

  • ChatGPT launched as a free research preview on November 30, 2022. OpenAI invited people to try it and share feedback, using the public release to learn about the system’s strengths and weaknesses. — OpenAI

    Source ↗
Keep in mind

  • Main complaint: a Plus user reports no warning when memory is full and no usage bar. ChatGPT still confirms new entries as saved, so you can't tell when to clean up.

    Source ↗

  • Users also report ChatGPT saying "Memory updated" while the entry does not show up in the saved-memories list. This matches the ranking's warning that the list may not show everything.

    Source ↗

Video: The Man Behind ChatGPT (Sam Altman) · ColdFusion

Compare the top three ↓

2Claude

No. 2 — Claude. On the lists of 4 of 8 AIs; median place there: 2. It turns the biggest share of its users into payers, though ChatGPT still has far more paying people overall.

Claude Monet 1899 Nadar crop
Nadar · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Did you know

  • Claude can take in what a rival has learned about you. You export your saved memory from ChatGPT's settings, paste it into a new Claude chat, and ask Claude to store it. It's a similar picture of you, not an exact copy.

    Source ↗
What it is
Anthropic's AI assistant, popular with coders and heavy users.
Its edge
Best share of users who pay, and its users spend more each.
Who should know
Useful for anyone curious whether a smaller app can earn more per user.
  • Payers against people who try13% of users pay

Wikipedia · Wikidata

Why it is here

  • Sensor Tower says US mobile revenue per user is about $2.76 for Claude against $1.74 for ChatGPT. Claude's users spend more, even though it has fewer of them.

    Source ↗
Did you know

  • Claude's memory is split by project. Each project gets its own memory space, so notes from one project don't have to mix with another. You can also delete single memories or use incognito mode.

    Source ↗ ✓ confirmed by several AIs
History

  • In 2022, Anthropic trained its first Claude model but chose to use it for safety research instead of releasing it. Claude became available more broadly in March 2023, after a closed test with partners. — Anthropic

    Source ↗
Keep in mind

  • A Reddit user says Claude Code saved a memory containing a patch instead of fixing the code, so they turned memory off for their whole account. It shows saved notes can be wrong.

    Source ↗
What people say

  • I honestly don’t like the half-baked memory features because that’s what this is — u/Primary_Bee_43 (r/ClaudeAI, on Claude Code's new auto-memory)

    Source ↗
Where to go further

  • Read Anthropic's help page on how Claude's memory works. Then open Settings, look at the memory list, and try editing or deleting one entry.

    Source ↗
Grok put it first. What they saw in it

  • Grok: 13% of its users pay — the highest rate Sensor Tower published for a major assistant — and 7.3% of those US payers buy the $100 plan, against 1.1% at ChatGPT.

Video: Turmoil and Triumph: A Film of the Life and Art of the Impressionist Claude Monet. · Art History School

Compare the top three ↓

3Google Gemini

No. 3 — Google Gemini. On the lists of 4 of 8 AIs; median place there: 4. It has the biggest reach, 1 billion monthly users, but Google never says how many pay, so it ranks third.

Gemini multimodal reasoning based on visual cues
Authors of the preprint: Gemini Team Google: Rohan Anil, Sebastian Borgeaud, Yonghui Wu, Jean-Baptiste Alayrac, Jiahui Y · CC BY 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Did you know

  • Deleting your Gemini activity may not remove everything. Reports say chats that human reviewers have looked at can be kept for up to three years, even after you delete your activity.

    Source ↗
What it is
Google's AI assistant, built into Android and Google's other products.
Its edge
Largest reach of the three: 1 billion monthly users.
Who should know
Useful for anyone wondering why big reach does not prove many people pay.
  • Payers against people who try1B users, payers not given

Wikipedia · Wikidata

Why it is here

  • Google says the Gemini app passed 1 billion monthly users. That is the largest reach of the three. Google's post gives no count of paying subscribers.

    Source ↗ ✓ confirmed by several AIs
Did you know

  • Google's help page says Gemini Apps activity older than 18 months is deleted by default. You can change that to 3 or 36 months, or turn auto-delete off.

    Source ↗
History

  • In February 2024, Google renamed Bard to Gemini and introduced a Gemini mobile app and a paid Advanced plan powered by Ultra 1.0. The rebrand tied the assistant’s name to Google’s family of AI models. — Google

    Source ↗
Keep in mind

  • Even with activity turned off, Google keeps a short-term buffer of up to 72 hours for safety. Your data might also be reviewed by human annotators, though Google says it's anonymized.

    Source ↗

  • A reviewer found it hard to make Gemini forget one old topic. He writes that teaching a neural network to forget is one of the hardest problems in computer science.

    Source ↗
What people say

  • Like a drop of dye mixed into a gallon of water, you can't reach in and pick out the dye molecules. — Ben Khalesi (Android Police)

    Source ↗
Where to go further

  • Read Google's help page on Gemini Apps Activity to see the auto-delete choices. Then find the Activity setting in Gemini and pick the period you want.

    Source ↗

Video: Gemini 4 Argon explained in 5min.. · Caleb Writes Code

Compare the top three ↓

The top three side by side

ChatGPTClaudeGoogle Gemini
In the AIs' lists4 / 84 / 84 / 8
Payers against people who try50M+ payers, 1 in 18 users13% of users pay1B users, payers not given
Put first byClaude, Gemini, KimiGrok—

Places with the same number of AIs are ordered by their average place in the AIs' own lists.

More ratings

03Worth knowing

What the AIs noticed while building the list.

Only 4.5% of US consumers paid for ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude in August, up from 2.1% a year earlier. The median payer spends $25 a month, and the top 1% spends $903.

Noticed by:
Included it: Grok. Did not include: Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Nova, Kimi, Wenxin, Qwen.
Source ↗

AI apps convert well but churn badly. At the median they keep about 31% fewer paying subscribers after 12 months than non-AI subscription apps.

Noticed by:
Included it: Kimi. Did not include: Claude, ChatGPT, Grok, Gemini, Nova, Wenxin, Qwen.
Source ↗

Image-model launches drove about 6.5x more downloads than chat updates, but the install spikes did not reliably turn into subscriptions. Meta's Vibes feed brought installs and little revenue.

Noticed by:
Included it: Claude. Did not include: ChatGPT, Grok, Gemini, Nova, Kimi, Wenxin, Qwen.
Source ↗

An agent uses about 4x the tokens of a chat, and a multi-agent run about 15x. This is why flat $20–200 plans now come with weekly caps rather than higher prices.

Noticed by:
Included it: Claude, Grok, Kimi. Did not include: ChatGPT, Gemini, Nova, Wenxin, Qwen.
Source ↗

ChatGPT's weekly audience grew to 1.2B even as its US downloads fell 25% in a 30-day window. Popularity and new installs no longer move together.

Noticed by:
Included it: Grok. Did not include: Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Nova, Kimi, Wenxin, Qwen.
Source ↗

04How we counted

In plain words, no formulas.

1The question

Top 10 AI Assistants People Keep Paying For, Set Against How Many People Try Them

2Why this topic

It puts download data next to subscriber and revenue reports, which shows that the most-downloaded AI app and the most-paid-for AI app are often different apps.

3Where it applies

global; consumer AI assistant and agent apps

4What we looked at

  • Downloads against paying subscribers: the share of people who install the app and go on paying
  • Download trend over the last six months
  • Reported cost to the provider per paying user
  • Share of the plan's limits a typical subscriber uses
  • Sensor Tower, State of AI 2026 — Monthly users of AI assistant apps, each app's share of that audience, and the share of Claude users who pay (end of May 2026)
  • YipitData US card panel, via a16z — US personal paid subscriptions to ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude, and the share of payers on the $100 tier (through August 2026). This is a panel, not a census.
  • AppMagic download data, reported by the WSJ — Monthly app downloads, including Grok falling from over 20M in January 2026 to 8.3M in April 2026
  • Recon Analytics consumer survey (260,000+ respondents) — Share of surveyed US consumers who pay for each assistant. The base is all people surveyed, not each app's users.

5Who ranked

The leading AIs, each building its own list of ten independently and naming a source for every place: Claude, ChatGPT, Grok, Gemini, Nova, Kimi, Wenxin, Qwen.

6How the places were set

The same entry written differently by different AIs was counted as one. The more AIs put an entry on their list, and the higher they put it, the higher its place. "AI agreement" shows how many of the AIs had it on their own list. Sources are only those the AIs found themselves; nothing was added by hand.

05Each AI's own list

🇺🇸 Claude8 places · 4 notes

The same question, answered by Claude alone. The final list above combines all the AIs.

  1. 1
    ChatGPT (OpenAI)

    About 50M people pay while 900M use it weekly. That is roughly 1 in 18, and Recon Analytics puts payers above 6% of surveyed users.

    Source ↗
  2. 2
    Claude (Anthropic)

    It is third in downloads, yet its paid base more than doubled in 2026. It has the best ratio of payers to installs among the challengers, and the heaviest users.

    Source ↗
  3. 3
    Google Gemini app (Google AI Pro / Ultra)

    1B monthly users, but Google has never said how many of them pay.

    Source ↗
  4. 4
    Grok Bot (SpaceXAI, 2026)

    No free tier, and 800K paid weekly users against about 418K weekly users a month earlier. Almost everyone who uses it pays, until the limit cut.

    Source ↗
  5. 5
    Grok (consumer app, xAI / SuperGrok)

    Downloads fell by about 60% between January and April 2026, and only 0.174% of surveyed people pay, the same as a year earlier.

    Source ↗
  6. 6
    Perplexity

    It was 5th in 2025 downloads, yet it has never published a user or subscriber count.

    Source ↗
  7. 7
    Meta AI

    It was 9th in 2025 downloads. A video feed (Vibes) drove installs but little revenue, so it is the clearest case of reach without payment.

    Source ↗
  8. 8
    Microsoft Copilot

    It was 10th in 2025 downloads. A table attributed to Sensor Tower lists 212M monthly users for May 2026, but the sourcing is unclear.

    Source ↗

What Claude noticed

ChatGPT's 5–6% paid share is roughly 30 times Grok's 0.174%. This is the widest conversion gap in the category.

Source ↗

Image launches drive about 6.5x more downloads than chat updates, but the spike in installs does not always turn into subscriptions.

Source ↗

A $20 Claude Pro heavy user is estimated at about $58.50 a month in inference, nearly three times the price. This is why providers cap usage with weekly limits.

Source ↗

Grok Bot went from under 100K to over 600K daily users in about seven weeks, with no free tier.

Source ↗
🇺🇸 Grok10 places · 4 notes

The same question, answered by Grok alone. The final list above combines all the AIs.

  1. 1
    Claude AI 2026

    13% of its users pay — the highest rate Sensor Tower published for a major assistant — and 7.3% of those US payers buy the $100 plan, against 1.1% at ChatGPT.

    Source ↗
  2. 2
    Grok Bot 2026

    It has no free tier: about 800,000 people a week were paying by early October, and over the 31 October weekend many of them hit 100% of a cap Elon Musk then blamed on cost.

    Source ↗
  3. 3
    GitHub Copilot 2026

    4.7 million people were paying by January 2026, up 75% in a year, beside a free tier Microsoft had counted at about 20 million users — a higher pay rate than any general chatbot has published.

    Source ↗
  4. 4
    ChatGPT 2026

    More than 50 million people pay, but in February that was about one weekly user in 18, and on 3 November OpenAI still would not give the new total.

    Source ↗
  5. 5
    Cursor AI 2026

    After SpaceX bought it, Cursor booked $608 million in the 48 days from 14 August to 30 September — and a new $8 plan no longer includes the Claude and GPT models people were paying to run.

    Source ↗
  6. 6
    Perplexity AI 2026

    Revenue passed $750 million a year by August, but a free year of Pro in India brought about 56 million downloads and, once it ended, only about a 60% rise in local app revenue.

    Source ↗
  7. 7
    Google Gemini 2026

    662 million monthly users in May, yet its US paid count only pulled level with Claude after Google moved old storage subscribers onto the AI plan.

    Source ↗
  8. 8
    Grok AI 2026

    About 118 million people use Grok in a month and about 2.4 million pay for SuperGrok — roughly 2 in 100 — because most of them already get it free inside X.

    Source ↗
  9. 9
    Microsoft Copilot 2026

    Over 30 million paid work seats, while the consumer phone app’s US daily users fell 84% from March to July and the old $20 Copilot Pro was switched off on 1 August.

    Source ↗
  10. 10
    Meta Muse 2026

    10.2 million US downloads in 40 days, and 30% of those people still opened it a week later — Meta has not said how many of them pay $20.

    Source ↗

What Grok noticed

In August only 4.5% of US consumers paid for ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude, double the 2.1% of a year earlier. Among people who do pay, the median bill is $25 a month and the top 1% averages $903.

Source ↗

An agent uses about four times the tokens of a chat, and a multi-agent run about fifteen times. That is the gap between a $20 month and a weekly cap: Zed has estimated the heaviest agent use on a subscription at roughly 15 to 30 times the same work at API prices.

Source ↗

The assistant people keep open longest is not the one they keep paying for. Character.AI told a bankruptcy court it had about 12 million monthly users spending about 120 minutes a day, August revenue of about $5.3 million, and losses of about $8 million to $9 million that month.

Source ↗

ChatGPT’s weekly audience grew to 1.2 billion by early November even as US downloads fell 25% in the latest 30-day window Sensor Tower described in October. Popularity and new installs are no longer the same series.

Source ↗
🇺🇸 Gemini10 places

The same question, answered by Gemini alone. The final list above combines all the AIs.

  1. 1
    ChatGPT

    Commands over 60% of all consumer AI subscription dollars and retains 71% of paid Plus members after six months.

    Source ↗
  2. 2
    Claude

    Converts fewer casual mobile downloaders than rivals, but generates over $85M monthly as agentic workflows turn trial coders into permanent subscribers.

  3. 3
    Perplexity AI

    Converts everyday search intent into sticky $20/month Pro subscriptions, achieving higher daily return frequencies than conversational chat companions.

    Source ↗
  4. 4
    Cursor

    Software creators exhaust their monthly allowance faster than any other cohort, yielding a 65% 6-month retention rate despite high $20–$200/month tier prices.

  5. 5
    Google Gemini

    Leverages native Android installation to drive massive install volume, converting via Google One AI Premium bundles while ambient daily integration keeps churn low.

  6. 6
    Grok Bot

    Grew to 800,000 paid weekly users before severe compute costs forced Elon Musk to slash subscribers' weekly usage quotas on October 31, 2026.

  7. 7
    Microsoft Copilot

    Draws unmatched desktop and enterprise trials via Windows and 365, holding an estimated 52% 6-month consumer retention among paid Copilot Pro users.

  8. 8
    Poe

    Multi-model orchestration lets subscribers mix Claude, GPT-4, and FLUX under a single monthly credit budget, sustaining high retention among prompt engineers.

  9. 9
    Notion AI

    Embeds directly into personal notes and company workspaces, producing a remarkable 50%+ AI add-on attach rate among active subscribers.

  10. 10
    Character.ai

    Generates billions of hours in entertainment and emotional companionship, but suffers from steep casual download churn that keeps c.ai+ paid conversion below 2.5%.

🇨🇳 Kimi10 places · 4 notes

The same question, answered by Kimi alone. The final list above combines all the AIs.

  1. 1
    ChatGPT (OpenAI)

    1.2 billion people use it every week and only ~4% pay — but that 4% is roughly 50 million subscribers, more paying customers than every rival on this list combined.

    Source ↗
  2. 2
    Google Gemini

    The fastest climber of the big two: from 450 million to 1 billion monthly users in 13 months — yet still only ~40% of ChatGPT's reach, and its payers mostly arrive bundled inside Google One.

    Source ↗
  3. 3
    Claude (Anthropic)

    The smallest installed base of the frontier trio converts best: web visits up 540% in a year with almost zero paid marketing, and a $200 Max plan that heavy users willingly max out.

    Source ↗
  4. 4
    Microsoft Copilot

    30 million people pay for it — but almost all through their employer, which is why Microsoft happily reports paid seats and stays silent on how many use it each month.

    Source ↗
  5. 5
    Doubao (ByteDance)

    382 million monthly users — bigger than Gemini was a year ago, more than the next two Chinese rivals combined — and almost nobody outside China has ever opened it, because ByteDance doesn't distribute it abroad.

    Source ↗
  6. 6
    Perplexity

    The best tryer-to-payer ratio in consumer AI: roughly 1 in 20 monthly users pays, a conversion rate ChatGPT can only match on its best day — on a base 25x smaller.

    Source ↗
  7. 7
    Grok (xAI / SpaceX)

    On the Halloween weekend of 2026, paying Grok users woke to smaller weekly usage pools — the clearest sign yet that Musk's AI loses money on exactly the subscribers who love it most.

    Source ↗
  8. 8
    Meta AI

    1.2 billion monthly users and almost zero paying ones — the biggest tryer-to-payer gap in the industry, which is exactly why Meta keeps hinting at subscriptions.

    Source ↗
  9. 9
    DeepSeek

    The app that crashed the Nasdaq in January 2025 is quietly shrinking at home: down 20% year on year in China while charging almost nothing — famous everywhere, paid for almost nowhere.

    Source ↗
  10. 10
    Character.AI

    Its users average two hours a day — the deepest engagement of any consumer AI — and the company still filed for bankruptcy in October 2026: proof that time spent is not the same as money kept.

    Source ↗

What Kimi noticed

Only about 4% of ChatGPT's weekly users pay — yet those ~50 million subscribers still outnumber the paying bases of all other consumer AI assistants combined, which is why 'conversion rate' and 'subscriber count' rankings crown different winners.

Source ↗

AI apps convert better but churn worse: at the median, AI apps keep about 31% fewer paying subscribers after 12 months than non-AI subscription apps — people try AI eagerly and cancel it just as eagerly.

Source ↗

The 'unlimited' era is ending from below: over the Oct 31, 2026 weekend Grok cut paying users' weekly usage pools, after Anthropic added weekly Claude Code limits in September — heavy subscribers now consume more compute than their plans pay for, so limits, not prices, are where the squeeze shows up.

Source ↗

The second-biggest AI assistant on Earth is invisible to most of the planet: ByteDance's Doubao passed 382 million monthly users in China (+172% YoY) but is not distributed outside it, so Western 'most popular AI apps' charts structurally undercount it.

Source ↗