ChatGPT holds 81.4% of global chatbot traffic as growth returns

By Tom Whitfield

ChatGPT captured 81.4% of worldwide web and mobile-app visits to six major AI chatbots in Graphite’s July–September 2026 analysis, leaving every rival below 10%.

Graphite, a research and growth marketing firm, based the study on Similarweb data. CEO Ethan Smith led an analysis of worldwide traffic to and from major AI services.

The share breakdown was:

• ChatGPT: 81.4%
• Claude: 6.8%
• Gemini: 5.0%
• DeepSeek: 4.0%
• Grok: 1.9%
• Perplexity: 0.9%

Earlier in 2026, attention centered on Google’s Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude as their momentum made ChatGPT’s lead appear vulnerable. The new data instead shows a market where both rivals grew from much smaller bases.

ChatGPT usage surged through the first half of 2025 before plateauing for seven months. Growth resumed in 2026, with monthly visits climbing nearly 20% to a record 61.35 billion in September.

Business Insider reporter Katie Notopoulos reported the previous week that ChatGPT had reached 1.2 billion weekly users. The two measures answer different questions: monthly visits measure traffic volume, while weekly users measure people, and neither figure supplies conversion or advertising-cost data.

Graphite recorded extraordinary growth for Claude over the past year and rapid expansion for Gemini. Their gains did not bring either service close to ChatGPT’s traffic share.

What does this change for marketers and publishers?

For marketers, the practical conclusion is reach, not a ready-made budget case. ChatGPT offers the largest measured traffic pool, but the study reports no advertising costs, conversion rates or audience demographics. Practitioners should not infer return on ad spend from traffic share alone.

ChatGPT also generated 60% of worldwide referrals from AI services after category referrals rose 92% year over year. That makes it the largest measured route from AI interfaces to other websites.

Google’s AI Overviews, which place generated answers in search results, appeared in 62% of US searches. Its conversational AI Mode drew 491 million US web visits in August. For Google publishers and advertisers, these figures put AI search interfaces into audience planning, although the study did not measure advertising-product returns.

Geography narrows the implication. The US accounted for only 8.8% of worldwide AI traffic, leaving more than 90% of usage elsewhere. A US-only plan would underrepresent most measured global activity.

Monthly visits to major AI services reached 76 billion worldwide, up 37% from a year earlier. The market expanded even as traffic concentrated around ChatGPT.

Business Insider summarized the result: “The AI market is still expanding rapidly, and ChatGPT remains overwhelmingly dominant.” Both claims align with the 37% category growth and 81.4% leader share.

The next test is whether Claude and Gemini can turn faster growth into double-digit traffic shares. Until then, Graphite’s July–September evidence supports ChatGPT’s reach advantage, but it does not establish which service will deliver the best campaign return.