Google's Gemini leads surge as chatbots close gap on OpenAI's ChatGPT

Artificial intelligence company OpenAI has seen a decline in the user growth of its chatbot ChatGPT, according to new data from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. The chatbot presently leads the space, accounting for 50% of global downloads on mobile devices and 55% of the monthly active users. However, others are now outpacing the firm in other aspects.

According to the report, Google AI chatbot Gemini has begun to outpace ChatGPT in terms of download growth, growth of monthly active users, and growth of time spent in the app. Over the next few months, an increase in those metrics could help push Gemini in front, narrowing the gap on ChatGPT.

Interestingly, that development worries OpenAI, going by its recent “code red” memo.

ChatGPT user growth slides as rivals heat the AI race

According to reports, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has charged staff to focus on improving the company’s AI products, particularly in areas like personalization, reliability, image generation, and others. Looking at the recent data, it is clear that the race is not yet over between ChatGPT and Gemini, as both chatbots continue to see sizable amounts of growth.

ChatGPT saw its global monthly users climb 180% year-over-year as of November, while Gemini saw a boost of 170%.

The new data shows that ChatGPT’s global monthly active users only grew about 6% from August to November, reaching around 810 million. According to Sensor Tower, the figure shows that the artificial intelligence chatbot is nearing market saturation.

Meanwhile, Gemini’s global monthly active users rose by 30% during the same time. The report noted that the release of its new image generation model, Nano Banana, drove increased adoption.

In addition, the report highlighted that around two times more United States Android users are now engaging with Gemini directly through the Android operating system compared to using the standalone Gemini mobile application.

This is expected to provide a competitive advantage to Google in the global market that has always been dominated by Android, as it means that Gemini can be used outside its mobile application or the company’s Web platform.

Rivals heat the artificial intelligence race

Gemini has also been increasing its share of the overall AI chatbot market when compared to other top applications, including ChatGPT, Copilot, Claude, Grok, and Perplexity.

In the past seven months, between May and November 2025, Gemini saw its shares of global monthly active users rise by 3%, according to the report by Sensor Tower. On the other hand, ChatGPT saw its share of global monthly active users drop 3% over the past four months from August to November 2025.

The report clarifies that ChatGPT may also be impacted by challenges from Perplexity and Claude, as both firms saw triple-digit growth for their respective chatbots in 2025, with Perplexity up by 370% year-over-year, while the latter was up by 190%.

ChatGPT also witnessed a rise in its global downloads, rising to 85% year-over-year as of November, but the figure affected its overall cohort average growth of 110%. Perplexity and Gemini saw the largest growth, rising by 215% and 190% year-over-year, respectively.

The report also mentioned that Gemini users’ time spent in the app has doubled in the past few months. As of November, Gemini users were spending 11 minutes per day in the app, up by 120% from March. This has been attributed to the popularity of its Nano Banana image generation model, which was released in September.

ChatGPT users’ daily time spent went up by only 6% in the same time frame, with the metric down 10% in November, compared to July.

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