Claude’s User Base Grows 1,260 Percent, but ChatGPT Still Dwarfs It

Anyone looking for growth in the A.I. industry right now ends up at Claude: The number of monthly active users of the Claude app rose 1,260 percent year over year in the third quarter of 2026. That is according to new estimates from the market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. Over the same period, ChatGPT grew 70 percent and Google’s Gemini 166 percent. Anthropic’s sprint does little to change the pecking order, however: With 1.4 billion monthly users, ChatGPT remains by far the largest A.I. assistant. For its report, Sensor Tower compared seven A.I. assistants: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Meta AI, Grok, Perplexity and Meta’s A.I. agent Muse. The third-quarter figures: In absolute terms, Gemini has 591 million monthly active users and ChatGPT 1.4 billion.