ChatGPT Holds 81% of AI Chatbot Traffic as Growth Resumes

ChatGPT now accounts for more than 81% of worldwide traffic to six major AI chatbots, and no competitor has captured even 10% of the market, according to new research from Graphite, a research and growth marketing firm led by CEO Ethan Smith.

The study, based on Similarweb data covering worldwide web and mobile-app traffic, challenges the widely held view that Google's Gemini and Anthropic's Claude are closing the gap on OpenAI's flagship product. The share picture for July through September 2026:

• ChatGPT: 81.4%
• Claude: 6.8%
• Gemini: 5.0%
• DeepSeek: 4.0%
• Grok: 1.9%
• Perplexity: 0.9%

Earlier this year, ChatGPT's dominance appeared to be slipping as Google and Anthropic gained momentum. The new data points the other way.

Has ChatGPT's growth stalled?

Not according to Graphite. After surging through the first half of 2025, ChatGPT usage largely plateaued for seven months. Growth then resumed this year: monthly visits climbed nearly 20% to a record 61.35 billion in September.

The finding aligns with separate reporting that ChatGPT now has 1.2 billion weekly users — roughly 20% of Google's search query volume.

Claude recorded extraordinary growth over the past year, and Gemini expanded quickly as well. But those gains started from much smaller bases, and the data suggests neither has come close to dislodging ChatGPT from its commanding position.

The takeaway: rapid rival growth rates can coexist with an essentially unchanged market structure when the incumbent is also growing to record highs.

What is happening to Google Search?

AI is reshaping Google's traditional search business from two directions. Google's AI Overviews — AI-generated answers shown directly in search results — now appear in 62% of US searches. Google's AI Mode, which offers more conversational interactions with Search, is also growing fast: it attracted 491 million US web visits in August.

At the same time, AI services have become a meaningful source of outbound traffic. Worldwide referral traffic from AI services jumped 92% over the past year, with ChatGPT responsible for 60% of those visits.

For product teams, that 92% figure matters beyond the chatbot race: discovery channels are shifting, and ChatGPT is the single largest AI referral source on the web.

Where is AI usage actually happening?

Despite America's leadership in developing the technology, the US accounts for just 8.8% of worldwide AI traffic. More than 90% of usage happens elsewhere, underscoring how global the AI boom has become.

Overall, monthly visits to major AI services reached 76 billion worldwide, up 37% from a year earlier.

The pattern has direct implications for roadmaps: a product optimized solely for US users addresses under a tenth of actual AI traffic, and distribution questions are increasingly decided by whether ChatGPT refers users to your product at all.

The market is still expanding rapidly, and ChatGPT remains overwhelmingly dominant — a combination that will keep pressure on rivals to differentiate rather than simply grow.