Recent statistics from digital analytics platform Similarweb reveal that OpenAI’s ChatGPT iPhone app was installed approximately 29.6 million times globally during the past 28 days.
This surge brings it within striking distance of the combined iOS downloads for social media giants TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and X, whose total stands at about 32.6 million downloads in the same period.
According to Similarweb, ChatGPT ranks as the top free productivity app on the iOS App Store and maintains a strong overall position across categories in key markets like the U.S., Germany, France, Spain, Italy, and Japan. The boost in downloads was fuelled by buzz-worthy updates in March, especially the AI image generator capable of producing visuals inspired by Studio Ghibli.
This feature unleashed a wave of “Ghibli-style” creations and helped drive a 28 % month-over-month increase in total downloads.
n the latest 28-day window, ChatGPT’s iPhone download count (~29.55 M) nearly matches the combined download volume of four social media powerhouses (~32.86 M). While social apps still lead on Android, ChatGPT is now firmly competitive on iOS.
TikTok alone has surpassed 2 billion global installs, with over 130 million downloads in the U.S. Combined totals for Meta apps like Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp continue to dominate mobile engagement, but ChatGPT’s climb demonstrates increasing appetite for AI-centered tools.
our engineering and compute teams do incredible work to rapidly scale to meet customer demand for chatgpt.
a lot of blood sweat and tears go into this, and they make it look relatively easy.
i have never seen a team handle a 2.5 year sprint with such grace! https://t.co/Ez7mk1tafl
— Sam Altman (@sama)
ChatGPT’s spike reflects a larger shift as users increasingly install AI-driven apps alongside traditional social platforms. March 2025 data showed the top 10 non-gaming appsd ominated by ChatGPT, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and WhatsApp, totaled around 339 million downloads worldwide.
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Are they counting updates as downloads or just new installations? If they’re just counting people downloading for the first time, it’s a rather useless comparison, since the vast majority of those other apps would have been downloaded years ago. Who’s installing FB or TikTok for the first time right now?
Young blood of age just entering the machine…