Statistics & Data March 17, 2026 • Updated: 9 November 2026 • 14 min read

ChatGPT statistics 2026

From 900 million weekly users to roughly $13 billion in 2025 revenue: verified key figures about ChatGPT and OpenAI, each with a link to its source. Based on OpenAI announcements, the European Commission, Statcounter, Eurostat, Pew Research Center and published studies, and applied to marketing by our AI marketing agency.

900M+

Weekly Users (Feb 2026)

Source: OpenAI via ITdaily, 2026

~$13B

OpenAI Revenue 2025

Source: TechCrunch, 2026

51.58%

AI Chatbot Traffic Share

Source: Statcounter, Oct 2026

$730B

Valuation (pre-money, Feb 2026)

Source: TechCrunch, 2026

Section 1 — Users & Growth

ChatGPT users by the numbers

ChatGPT launched on November 30, 2022 and had more than one million users within five days. On February 27, 2026 OpenAI reported more than 900 million weekly active users. Smart marketers plug it into a cohesive AI marketing stack rather than using it in isolation. For Dutch companies, how to become visible in AI answers: more on AI search visibility (in Dutch).

900M+

Weekly active users, announced by OpenAI on February 27, 2026

OpenAI via ITdaily, 2026

50M+

Paying consumer subscribers (OpenAI, February 2026)

OpenAI via ITdaily, 2026

159.1M

Average monthly active users in the EU, as declared by OpenAI under the Digital Services Act

European Commission, 2026

~10%

Of the world's adult population used ChatGPT by July 2025 (700M+ weekly users)

NBER / OpenAI research, 2025

ChatGPT growth timeline

  • November 30, 2022: launch as a research preview; by December 5 it had more than 1 million registered users (NBER, 2025)
  • After one year (late 2023): more than 100 million weekly active users (NBER, 2025)
  • After two years (late 2024): almost 350 million weekly active users (NBER, 2025)
  • March 2025: 500 million people used ChatGPT every week (TechCrunch, 2025)
  • End of July 2025: more than 700 million weekly users sending 18 billion messages per week (NBER, 2025)
  • October 2025: 800 million weekly users (Unite.AI, 2026)
  • February 2026: more than 900 million weekly users (OpenAI via ITdaily, 2026)

Traffic and engagement

  • Consumer users sent 2.6 billion messages per day in June 2025, up from 451 million in June 2024 (NBER, 2025)
  • chatgpt.com was the #7 website worldwide in October 2026, with an average visit of 6 minutes 31 seconds and 4.75 pages per visit (estimate) (Similarweb, 2026)
  • India alone accounts for more than 100 million weekly ChatGPT users (TechCrunch, 2026)
  • OpenAI's coding agent Codex had 1.6 million weekly users in February 2026, a threefold increase since the start of the year (Unite.AI, 2026)
Section 2 — Revenue & Financials

OpenAI & ChatGPT financial data

OpenAI does not publish audited financial statements. The figures below come from funding announcements and from reporting by TechCrunch, The Information, The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times. The company raised $110 billion at a $730 billion pre-money valuation in February 2026.

~$13B

OpenAI revenue in 2025, according to leaked financials

TechCrunch, 2026

$6.7B

Revenue in Q2 2026, up from $5.7 billion in Q1 2026 (The Wall Street Journal)

TechCrunch, 2026

~$50B

Annualized revenue OpenAI told investors in October 2026 (Financial Times)

TechCrunch, 2026

Revenue milestones

  • OpenAI doubled its revenue in the first seven months of 2025 to $12 billion on an annualized basis (The Information) (PYMNTS, 2025)
  • Expected cash burn in 2025: roughly $8 billion (The Information) (PYMNTS, 2025)
  • OpenAI aims for 220 million paying subscribers by 2030 (The Information) (TechCrunch, 2026)

OpenAI funding rounds

  • March 2025: $40 billion at a $300 billion post-money valuation, led by SoftBank (TechCrunch, 2025)
  • February 2026: $110 billion at a $730 billion pre-money valuation, with $50 billion from Amazon and $30 billion each from Nvidia and SoftBank (TechCrunch, 2026)
Section 3 — Usage by Industry

ChatGPT usage by industry

There is no reliable public breakdown of ChatGPT use by industry. Below: what OpenAI's own researchers measured about work use, survey data on who uses it at work, and official Dutch data on AI use by sector (all AI tools, not only ChatGPT).

27%

Share of consumer ChatGPT messages related to work in June 2025 (47% in June 2024)

NBER, 2025

40%

Of work-related ChatGPT messages are writing tasks, the most common work use

NBER, 2025

28%

Of employed US adults have used ChatGPT for work (8% in early 2023)

Pew Research Center, 2025

Work use by education (US, 2025)

AI use by sector in the Netherlands (companies with 2+ employees, 2025)

Section 4 — Comparison

ChatGPT vs Claude vs Gemini vs Copilot

Statcounter measures how referral traffic from AI chatbots to websites is divided. It is not a count of users, but it is the most consistent public comparison of ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Copilot.

51.58%

ChatGPT share of AI chatbot traffic worldwide, October 2026

Statcounter, 2026

28.86%

Google Gemini

Statcounter, 2026

15.04%

Perplexity

Statcounter, 2026

2.3%

Claude (Microsoft Copilot: 2.18%)

Statcounter, 2026

The Netherlands (October 2026)

  • ChatGPT 52.64%, Google Gemini 30.79%, Perplexity 8.97%, Microsoft Copilot 4.79%, Claude 2.81% (Statcounter, 2026)
  • Worldwide, DeepSeek has 0.05% of AI chatbot traffic (Statcounter, 2026)

Which chatbots US teens use (ages 13-17, 2025)

Section 5 — Marketing & Content

ChatGPT for marketing & content

Marketing is one of the biggest use cases for ChatGPT. There is no verified figure for the share of marketers using ChatGPT specifically, so these numbers cover AI use in marketing teams and how ChatGPT is used for writing.

86.4%

Of marketing teams use AI in at least a few marketing areas (1,500+ marketers)

HubSpot, 2026

37.7%

Plan to increase investment most in AI chatbots such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude

HubSpot, 2026

10-14h

Weekly time saved with AI, reported by about one third of teams

HubSpot, 2026

Content and writing

  • 42.5% of marketers use AI extensively for content creation (HubSpot, 2026)
  • 83.5% of marketers say they are expected to produce more content (HubSpot, 2026)
  • Writing fell from 36% to 24% of all ChatGPT use between July 2024 and July 2025; about two thirds of writing requests edit or critique the user's own text (NBER, 2025)
  • Only 1.7% of marketers do not use AI and do not plan to (HubSpot, 2026)
Section 6 — Enterprise & Teams

ChatGPT enterprise & teams adoption

OpenAI does not publish a verified seat count for ChatGPT Business and Enterprise. These are the verified data points on work use, often alongside structured AI marketing support for SMBs.

30,000

Uber employees moving to ChatGPT Work, after a pilot with 1,000

TechCrunch, 2026

56%

Of work-related ChatGPT messages ask it to do something (perform a task), July 2025

NBER, 2025

17%

Of Dutch companies (2+ employees) used AI in 2025, up from 8% in 2023

CBS, 2025

Generative AI at work in Europe (2025, ages 16-74)

  • Netherlands: 26.56% used generative AI for work, against an EU average of 15.36% (Eurostat, 2025)
  • 35% of Dutch companies that use AI apply it to marketing or sales (CBS, 2025)
Section 7 — Global Adoption

Global adoption by region

ChatGPT does not publish user numbers per country. The best comparable data are official surveys on generative AI in general (Eurostat) and on ChatGPT in the US (Pew Research Center).

34%

Of US adults have used ChatGPT, about double the share in 2023

Pew Research Center, 2025

32.66%

Of people aged 16-74 in the EU used generative AI tools in 2025

Eurostat, 2025

100M+

Weekly ChatGPT users in India

TechCrunch, 2026

Generative AI use by country (EU, 2025, ages 16-74)

  • Denmark 48.44%, Estonia 46.64%, Malta 46.46%, Finland 46.27% (Eurostat, 2025)
  • Ireland 44.93%, Netherlands 44.7% (sixth in the EU) (Eurostat, 2025)
  • France 37.46%, Germany 32.25%, Italy 19.86%, Romania 17.76% (Eurostat, 2025)
  • Outside the EU, Norway reached 56.32% (Eurostat, 2025)

ChatGPT use in the US by age (2025)

Who uses ChatGPT

  • Shortly after launch about 80% of active users had typically masculine first names; by June 2025 that was 48% (NBER, 2025)
  • Around 46% of messages come from users aged 18-25 (NBER, 2025)
  • Visitors to chatgpt.com: 54.14% male, 45.86% female (estimate, October 2026) (Similarweb, 2026)
Section 8 — Productivity

Productivity impact & time savings

Controlled experiments give the most reliable picture of productivity gains. Only the first study tested ChatGPT itself; the other two tested a generative AI assistant for customer support and GitHub Copilot.

40%

Less time on writing tasks with ChatGPT, in an experiment with 453 professionals

MIT / Science, 2023

18%

Higher quality of the written output in the same experiment

MIT / Science, 2023

14%

More customer issues resolved per hour with a generative AI assistant; 34% for novice workers (5,179 agents)

NBER, 2023

55.8%

Faster completion of a programming task with GitHub Copilot

arXiv, 2023

What people use ChatGPT for (July 2025)

  • Practical guidance, seeking information and writing together account for about 77% of conversations (NBER, 2025)
  • Practical guidance: about 29% of usage; tutoring or teaching alone is 10.2% of all messages (NBER, 2025)
  • Seeking information grew from 14% to 24% of usage in one year (NBER, 2025)
  • Technical help fell from 12% to about 5%; computer programming is 4.2% of messages (NBER, 2025)
  • Multimedia grew from 2% to just over 7% (NBER, 2025)
  • Relationships and personal reflection: 1.9% of messages (NBER, 2025)
  • 49% of messages are asking, 40% doing and 11% expressing (NBER, 2025)
Section 10 — Key Takeaways

Key takeaways

What do these 50+ statistics tell us about ChatGPT in 2026? Here are the five most important takeaways for businesses and marketers.

1

ChatGPT is still growing fast

From 1 million users in five days (December 2022) to more than 900 million weekly users in February 2026, about 10% of the world's adults already used it by July 2025.

2

Revenue is rising, and so are costs

OpenAI made about $13 billion in 2025 and $6.7 billion in Q2 2026 alone, while cash burn in 2025 was expected at roughly $8 billion.

3

Marketing teams are investing in AI chatbots

86.4% of marketing teams use AI and 37.7% plan to increase investment most in AI chatbots such as ChatGPT. The question is no longer whether you use it, but how well.

4

ChatGPT leads, Gemini is the clear number two

ChatGPT has 51.58% of AI chatbot traffic worldwide and 52.64% in the Netherlands; Google Gemini follows with 28.86% and 30.79%.

5

ChatGPT is becoming a search engine

The EU now regulates ChatGPT as a Very Large Online Search Engine (159.1 million monthly users in the EU), and 10% of people already use AI chatbots for news every week.

Section 11 — Methodology

Sources & methodology

Every figure on this page was checked against a source we opened ourselves, and links to it. OpenAI's own pages could not be opened directly, so OpenAI announcements are cited through the news reports that quote them. Estimates (Similarweb) and press reports on finances are labelled as such. Figures we could not verify were removed.

OpenAI announcement (via ITdaily, Unite.AI)
NBER: How People Use ChatGPT (OpenAI and Harvard researchers)
European Commission: designated VLOPs and VLOSEs
Statcounter: AI chatbot market share
Similarweb: chatgpt.com
TechCrunch: OpenAI funding and revenue
PYMNTS / The Information: OpenAI revenue 2025
Pew Research Center: ChatGPT use by US adults
Pew Research Center: teens and AI chatbots
Eurostat: use of generative AI tools
CBS: AI use by Dutch companies
HubSpot: State of Marketing 2026
Reuters Institute: Digital News Report 2026
Gartner: search volume prediction
MIT / Science: ChatGPT and writing productivity
NBER: Generative AI at Work
arXiv: GitHub Copilot experiment

Updated: 9 November 2026. Have a correction or comment? Get in touch.

Section 12 — FAQ

Frequently asked questions

How many users does ChatGPT have in 2026?

OpenAI reported more than 900 million weekly active users on February 27, 2026, and more than 50 million paying consumer subscribers. In the EU, OpenAI declared 159.1 million average monthly active users under the Digital Services Act.

How much revenue does OpenAI make from ChatGPT?

OpenAI does not publish audited figures. According to leaked financials reported by TechCrunch, OpenAI made about $13 billion in revenue in 2025. The Wall Street Journal reported $6.7 billion in the second quarter of 2026, up from $5.7 billion the quarter before.

How much does ChatGPT cost in 2026?

ChatGPT has a free plan and paid plans called Go, Plus, Pro, Business and Enterprise. ChatGPT Go launched in India in August 2025 as a plan under $5 per month. Prices differ by country, so check the official ChatGPT pricing page for current prices.

Is ChatGPT bigger than Google Gemini and Claude?

Yes. In October 2026 ChatGPT had 51.58% of AI chatbot traffic worldwide according to Statcounter, against 28.86% for Google Gemini, 15.04% for Perplexity and 2.3% for Claude. In the Netherlands ChatGPT had 52.64% and Gemini 30.79%.

What percentage of Fortune 500 companies use ChatGPT?

There is no verified public figure for Fortune 500 adoption. Verified examples: Uber is moving all of its roughly 30,000 employees to ChatGPT Work, and 28% of employed US adults had used ChatGPT for work in early 2025, up from 8% in early 2023 (Pew Research Center).

How much time does ChatGPT save?

In an experiment published in Science, 453 professionals needed 40% less time for writing tasks with ChatGPT, while quality rose 18%. In a study of 5,179 customer support agents, a generative AI assistant raised productivity by 14%, and by 34% for novice workers.

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Ruud ten Have

Written by

Ruud ten Have

Ruud is a digital marketer with 10+ years of experience in online advertising and AI implementation. At Searchlab, he combines strategic thinking with hands-on AI tooling to deliver measurable results for businesses.

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