By just about every measure that matters, ChatGPT is the AI chatbot champion everyone else needs to beat. Traffic share, time-on-site, brand awareness, and developer mindshare lean overwhelmingly in favor of OpenAI’s flagship assistant. But dominance isn’t destiny, and the past few months of data also illuminate the lines of a market consolidating around ChatGPT even as rival strategies sharpen.
What the numbers actually tell us about chatbot usage
According to the latest tracking from Statcounter, ChatGPT has around 81% of chatbot share worldwide, Perplexity garners about 8%, Microsoft Copilot around 5%, DeepSeek approaches nearly 3%, and Google Gemini is a bit over 2%. That’s a strong lead, but it also highlights that alternatives have found purchase by focusing on specific use cases such as live web search and productivity integration.
Comscore’s panel data underscores an important behavioral trend: AI assistant usage is transitioning to mobile. In the final quarter, mobile reach with AI tools grew from approximately 69.7 million unique users to 73.4 million (a rise of 5.3%) as usage on desktop fell significantly. Mobile use has surged since late 2024, and distribution on mobile is shaping the winners, not just in browsers — led by Microsoft Copilot (up 175% on mobile), Google Gemini (up 68%), and ChatGPT (almost 18%).
OneLittleWeb’s research indicates that AI chatbots are capturing some intent from traditional search, with chatbot traffic having increased significantly year over year and search engines are a bit down. Yet Google’s search share hovers around 88%, and ChatGPT’s daily traffic is roughly 26 times smaller than that of Google — as evidence both that the vanguards of chat and search are uniting, and that they’re far from united. In chat-style AI search, OneLittleWeb puts ChatGPT at over 86% share, but smaller players such as DeepSeek have reported eye-popping growth rates coming off of a small base.
Techgage’s aggregation of datasets from, among others, Statcounter and Similarweb also supports the consolidation narrative: users naturally resort to ChatGPT in conversational settings, whereas specialization leads alternative models to jockey for position — real-time dissemination on the web (Perplexity), stack integration into productive chains (Copilot), ecosystem dissemination (Gemini), and rapid turnaround time (DeepSeek).
The distribution advantage shaping mobile AI use
In consumer software, you can think of distribution as a moat. Google and Microsoft are weaving AI assistants into the “operating system,” if you will, as well as flagship apps — Gemini on Google Android devices and across Google services, Copilot with Microsoft 365 and Windows. That lands them prime real estate on the lock screen, the keyboard, and productivity workflows. For Comscore, the mobile surge data shows just how important those default placements are.
ChatGPT, on the other hand, became a web-first habit and later an app presence around a strong brand. It succeeded because it became the neutral place for “ask anything” moments. The question is whether those habits can be chipped away at by native OS-level assistants, preloaded and context-aware to act as a placeholder in the middle of all these habituated substitutions users make when they reach toward whatever’s one tap closer and better wired into their calendars, files, messages.
Why do users choose ChatGPT over other AI chatbots
Performance and breadth matter. ChatGPT is regarded as consistently good across coding, writing, tutoring, brainstorming; and it has an active ecosystem in its favor: prompt presets, custom GPTs, and wide API adoption that attracts developers and startups. And it’s been difficult to counter the flywheel this represents — consumer traffic begets developer tools, which in turn beget better experiences — with any single feature.
There’s also a trust dividend. ChatGPT is the AI chatbot for many consumers. That name recognition reduces friction, particularly for first-time and casual users who may not be interested in comparison-shopping models. The end result: when in doubt, we go where we have succeeded before.
Where ChatGPT’s lead might slip and why it could change
There will probably be three factors that re-establish the equilibrium in the market. One, distribution changes: if/when mobile assistants become deeply context-rich and more proactive in nature, convenience can supersede the habit of going direct to a stand-alone chatbot. Comscore’s mobile path is leading in that direction.
Second, differentiated value: Perplexity’s live web grounding, Copilot’s document and spreadsheet fluency, Gemini’s Android reach — these are products that speak to the user interested in specificity rather than generality.
If these assistants are a clear and easy way to get answers in their niches, share can accrete task by task.
Third, economics and regulation: cutting-edge models are expensive to serve. Pricing, rate limits, and caps can force users into cheaper or on-device alternatives. Compliance’s prevailing requirements spanning privacy, copyright, and safety, however, may favor the provider with strong guardrails and enterprise-grade controls. Organizations like Comscore and Statcounter, and enterprise IT observers, continuously demonstrate that trust, auditability, and data residency can tip procurement decisions.
Signals to watch next in the evolving AI chatbot market
- Watch defaults on phones and in productivity suites — where most day-to-day queries reside.
- Monitor what proportion of chats hits real-time web results or exclusive data sources — if answered questions become standard fare, the hybrid search-chat providers stand to win.
- Watch the performance-price: as open models get better and on-device inference spreads, cost may trump brand for heavy users.
For now, the scoreboard clearly favors ChatGPT: it leads Comscore, Statcounter, OneLittleWeb, and Techgage in terms of usage and engagement. The open question is durability. If history is an omen, early leaders maintain their lead when they combine baseline excellence with superior distribution. The next era of the chatbot race will not be about who answers best, but who can respond most precisely at the moment a question is asked.