OpenAI’s video-making app Sora is smoking on iOS, having been installed an estimated 627,000 times in its first seven days, according to Appfigures. That would leave Sora’s debut not far off ChatGPT’s own trajectory at launch on iOS, which the company placed at 606,000 installs in its first week.
The headline comparison needs context. ChatGPT was only available in the U.S. during its first-week rollout, while Sora debuted in both the U.S. and Canada. Appfigures figures Canada was worth approximately 45,000 installs, meaning if you consider Sora’s U.S.-only pace here you’d get just under ChatGPT. Even with that asterisk, this marks a rare instance of an OpenAI follow-on app coming close to matching the cultural ripple created by ChatGPT’s mobile launch.
A Rapid Ascent To The Top Of The App Store
Sora’s growth has been so steep from the beginning. Appfigures tallies some 56,000 installs on day one in the United States, which we’re told pushed the app into the top three on Apple’s U.S. App Store before it snagged the No. 1 overall position. Daily downloads hit a high of about 107,800 during the first week, and the lows were still above 84,000 — an unusually steady volume for a brand-new app.
The ramp is significant because Sora is still an invite-only platform. ChatGPT’s mobile app was widely available at launch, while Sora’s gated access and waitlist could have added more friction. Instead, scarcity seemed to have fueled that demand, propelled by a never-ending cascade of user-shared Sora clips across social networks.
The content itself is a magnet. With the aid of the video model Sora 2, the app’s outputs have included cinematic shorts and uncanny deepfakes — impressive, controversial and eminently shareable. Public figures have already fought back against misuse: The actor Zelda Williams has asked people not to share AI-generated images of her father, Robin Williams, adding urgency to a call for clearer guardrails.
Why The Comparison Between Sora and ChatGPT Matters
ChatGPT’s release on mobile was a turning point, when experimentation with the desktop novelty would become regularized and part of daily life on the go. Sora’s momentum nearly catching up to that baseline means big appetite for generative video — a medium arguably more complex, compute-heavy and creative than text.
There are practical reasons Sora might surf a steeper wave. Video travels better on social feeds than text outputs; it traffics in quick reactions, remixes and meme dynamics that turn early adopters into distribution nodes. Those creative communities, whether filmmakers or marketers, likewise have a way of spreading tools around that hint at new working processes in ways that can lend professional energy to consumer buzz.
Still, downloads are just step one. The true test is conversion into active use: repeat sessions, completion rates for generations, and the proportion of users who stick around after the novelty wears off. App analytics companies like Appfigures, Sensor Tower and Data.ai often closely monitor these cohorts in the first 30 to 60 days to determine durability, not just virality.
How It Stacks Up Against Other AI Launches
Initial signals are that Sora has surpassed recent AI app debuts like Anthropic’s Claude and Microsoft’s Copilot, but is in the same sentence as xAI’s Grok. Here, the speed of reaching No. 1 and staying on top charts is relevant; many AI companions weren’t able to sustain a climb to the number one spot, and retaining a relatively high daily download baseline indicates broad curiosity.
A key advantage of Sora is clarity of value. While general-purpose chatbots can be indistinct on feature sets, video generation is immediately demonstrable. These products are better understood in 10 seconds of striking footage than they might be by a paragraph of release notes — and that dynamic is custom made for the new App Store discovery loop.
Risks And The Way Ahead For OpenAI’s Sora On iOS
Rapid adoption invites scrutiny. Anticipate continued debate around deepfakes, consent and provenance, in conjunction with pressure toward watermarking and detectable metadata. Industry groups and civil society organizations have pushed for standard ways of verifying the authenticity of content; Sora’s heft will gauge how fast such measures can go from principle to product.
On the business side, the questions that matter are echoes of previous AI waves: Can OpenAI translate its downloads into paid usage without defanging its growth? Will mobile policies around AI-generated media clamp down? And how might rivals respond — by siting video features in their own digital assistants or launching standalone creative apps of their own?
Already, the signal is clear. To judge by first-week iOS demand, Sora has joined ChatGPT in that rare stratum of AI apps that break out of the tech echo chamber and into the mainstream. Matching that download drumbeat is one thing; it’s another to turn all that momentum into durable, responsible engagement.
