As mobile app development continues to evolve, insights into download trends and daily active users can provide valuable clues about an app's growth trajectory. A recent analysis by Apptopia, a third-party app intelligence firm, suggests that ChatGPT's mobile app has reached its peak in terms of new user growth.

According to the analysis, global downloads have slowed significantly since April, with estimates indicating a month-over-month percentage change in downloads down 8.1% as of October. This slowdown may be attributed to increased competition and changes to ChatGPT's AI model characteristics. While the sheer number of new installs remains impressive, with millions of downloads per day, the stagnation in growth could signal a plateauing effect.

The analysis also delved into other key metrics, revealing a 22.5% drop in average time spent per daily active user (DAU) in the U.S. since July, as well as a 20.7% decline in average sessions per DAU. This suggests that U.S. users are spending less time in ChatGPT's app and opening it fewer times per day.

Interestingly, user churn in the U.S. has stabilized during this period, indicating that the app is retaining its core users rather than experiencing a high turnover rate. This stability could be attributed to OpenAI's efforts to improve the chatbot's AI model, including the April update designed to make the AI less sycophantic.

Beyond reaching its peak, other factors may have contributed to ChatGPT's growth slowdown. Competition from Google's Gemini, released in September, likely played a role, as did changes to user engagement following the April update and the August release of GPT-5, which aimed to be less personable.

Apptopia notes that while Google's Gemini has influenced some recent drops in ChatGPT's core metrics, it doesn't fully explain the overall trend. Instead, the firm suggests that the experimentation phase with ChatGPT may have ended, and now the app is becoming a part of users' daily routines – people are using it when they need it or remember to use it.

For OpenAI, this plateauing growth means investing in app marketing or releasing new features to boost core metrics again. The company can no longer rely solely on novelty to drive growth.

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