ChatGPT Alternatives: Other Chatbots Gaining Popularity

The Competitive Landscape of AI Chatbots

While OpenAI’s ChatGPT currently leads as the most widely used chatbot application globally, emerging competitors are demonstrating significant growth, as indicated by data from analytics firms Similarweb and Sensor Tower.

Growth in Usage of Rival Chatbots

Similarweb, specializing in website traffic estimation – including web-based chatbot applications – has observed consistent increases in user engagement with alternatives such as Google’s Gemini and Microsoft’s Copilot, which is powered by OpenAI. In March, Gemini’s web traffic reached an average of 10.9 million daily visits worldwide, representing a 7.4% rise compared to the previous month.

Copilot also experienced growth, with daily visits climbing to 2.4 million, a 2.1% increase from February’s figures.

Emerging Players and Regional Trends

Anthropic’s Claude achieved 3.3 million average daily visits in March. Notably, DeepSeek’s chatbot, originating from a Chinese AI laboratory, surpassed 16.5 million visits during the same period.

xAI’s Grok, which launched its web application more recently, matched DeepSeek’s traffic volume, averaging 16.5 million daily web visits. This demonstrates rapid adoption of the platform.

ChatGPT Remains Dominant

Although these numbers are substantial, they remain considerably lower than ChatGPT’s performance, which exceeded 500 million weekly active users by late March. However, David Carr, an editor at Similarweb, highlights the intense competition for the second-place position in the chatbot market.

Carr stated to TechCrunch that, based on daily visits, DeepSeek held second place in March, despite a 25% decrease in traffic from February. He further noted that Grok, from Elon Musk’s xAI, is currently the fastest-growing AI platform, experiencing nearly an 800% month-over-month increase in traffic.

Mobile App Growth and New Model Releases

The user bases of AI companies’ mobile chatbot applications are also expanding, potentially driven by the release of updated AI models.

Data from Sensor Tower, an app data analysis company, reveals that the Claude app saw a 21% week-over-week increase in weekly active users during the week of February 24, coinciding with Anthropic’s release of its latest model, Claude 3.7 Sonnet.

Prior to this, following the general availability of Google’s Gemini 2.0 Flash model, the number of weekly active users of the Gemini app increased by 42%.

Factors Driving User Growth

Abraham Yousef, a senior insights analyst at Sensor Tower, attributes the growth to both new models and enhanced capabilities. Google recently introduced a “canvas” feature to Gemini, allowing users to preview coding project outputs, while Anthropic has consistently added new tools to its Claude client.

Yousef explained to TechCrunch that the introduction of innovative AI models, increased consumer interest, the addition of new features, and the expanding range of applications are all contributing to the growth of AI chatbot apps.

OpenAI’s Continued Lead

Despite the gains made by competitors, OpenAI maintains a significant lead. Yousef pointed out that, as of March, ChatGPT had ten times the mobile app weekly active users compared to Gemini and Claude combined.