ChatGPT's share of the AI assistant market dropped to 46% by the end of May, falling below 50% for the first time in March 2026, according to Sensor Tower's State of AI 2026 report. Google Gemini climbed to 28% market share while Claude reached 10%. The shift reflects intensifying competition in the AI assistant category, with distribution advantages and user preferences reshaping a market ChatGPT dominated for three years.
ChatGPT Market Share Drops to 46% in May
ChatGPT's market share fell below 50% for the first time in March 2026, closing May at 46%, per Sensor Tower's State of AI 2026 report. Google Gemini holds 28% of the market. Claude climbed to 10% overall share.
Sensor Tower's tracking measures Gemini's own app and site at 662 million users in May. Google announced more than 900 million Gemini users at its developer conference in May, and told investors the assistant hit 750 million monthly users in February.
Claude's U.S. market share nearly tripled from 5% in December to 14% in May. In late February, Anthropic refused Pentagon demands to drop safeguards against mass surveillance and autonomous weapons, and the Department of Defense branded the company a supply chain risk. ChatGPT uninstalls in the U.S. spiked roughly 200% above average the week of March 9, Sensor Tower found. Claude out-downloaded ChatGPT for five straight days that March.
ChatGPT Reaches 1 Billion Monthly Users
ChatGPT crossed 1 billion monthly users in May, becoming the fastest app in history to hit that mark, ahead of TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram. OpenAI is pushing ChatGPT toward a superapp bundling shopping and agents.
Grok Dominates Among Crypto Traders
Grok users are about four times more likely than the general population to be crypto traders, the widest skew Sensor Tower measured for any assistant. Claude ranked second, ahead of Copilot, with ChatGPT users barely above the population baseline.
Grok ships free inside X Premium and reads live posts the second a meme coin starts trending. Claude's position tracks with last fall's Alpha Arena contest, where Grok and Claude Sonnet posted real-money trading gains on the Hyperliquid exchange while GPT-5 and Gemini 2.5 Pro each lost more than a quarter of their stake.
Claude Revenue Per User Surpasses ChatGPT
Claude's average revenue per U.S. mobile user jumped from under $0.50 last September to $2.76 in May, ahead of ChatGPT's $1.74. 13% of Claude's users now pay for a subscription, the highest conversion rate in the report.
FAQ
What was ChatGPT's market share by the end of May?
ChatGPT's market share sat at 46% by the end of May, according to Sensor Tower's State of AI 2026 report. This marked a decline from over 50%, which it held until March 2026.
How many monthly users does ChatGPT have?
ChatGPT crossed 1 billion monthly users in May, becoming the fastest app in history to reach that milestone, ahead of TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram.
Why do crypto traders prefer Grok over other AI assistants?
Grok users are about four times more likely than the general population to be crypto traders, the widest skew Sensor Tower measured. Grok ships free inside X Premium and reads live posts in real-time as meme coins trend, giving it an advantage no standalone chatbot offers.
