900 million weekly active users. 50 million paying subscribers. 2.5 billion queries every single day. ChatGPT's numbers are staggering.
In this article, I've collected the most fascinating statistics about OpenAI's blockbuster tool.
From user numbers and available languages to use cases and limitations, it's all here. For OpenAI corporate metrics (revenue, valuation, investors), see the dedicated article: OpenAI Statistics.
- ChatGPT has 900 million weekly active users (official OpenAI figure, February 2026) and over 50 million paying subscribers
- With roughly 2.5 billion queries per day and 52.7% web traffic share (May 2026, SimilarWeb), ChatGPT is the most-used AI chatbot in the world
- GPT-5.6 Sol has been the most powerful generally available model since July 9, 2026, with 1M token context, leading the family on benchmarks like Terminal-Bench, available on ChatGPT Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise as well as via API and Codex. GPT-5.5 was the previous flagship, and GPT-5.2 was retired on June 12, 2026
1. How Many Users Does ChatGPT Have?
On December 5, 2022, just 5 days after its release, ChatGPT was able to according to CEO Sam Altman already record over 1 million users.
Other services took significantly longer to reach one million users, as the following overview shows:
Since then, the user base has grown explosively. The following chart shows the development of weekly active users (WAU) since November 2023:
ChatGPT had 700-800 million weekly active users in September 2025. By February 2026, OpenAI put that number at 900 million weekly active users, roughly 11% of the world's population. That remains the most recent weekly figure for ChatGPT itself. On July 31, 2026, CFO Sarah Friar wrote that OpenAI's models reach “more than one billion active users and more than two million businesses”, but that number covers all OpenAI models rather than ChatGPT alone, and OpenAI did not state a time window for it. Over 200 million people use ChatGPT daily worldwide.
- 900M weekly active users (WAU), official OpenAI figure from February 2026
- Approx. 190M daily active users (DAU)
- Over 50M paying subscribers (of which 9M business users)
- 1.44B cumulative app downloads (since May 2023)
- Approx. 2.5B queries per day
- India is the second-largest single market with 100M WAU, after the United States
- 92% of Fortune 500 companies use ChatGPT or the OpenAI API
2. How Often Is ChatGPT Accessed Each Month?
The analytics tool SimilarWeb estimates ChatGPT's monthly visits as follows:
The most recent data points (DemandSage): February 2026 approx. 5,350M, March 2026 approx. 5,730M, April 2026 approx. 5,510M, May 2026 approx. 5,570M visits.
3. Which Countries Do ChatGPT Users Come From?
According to SimilarWeb (May 2026), visits to chatgpt.com break down as follows: USA 18.53%, India 9.79%, Brazil 5.57%, Japan 4.23%, United Kingdom 3.94%.
4. What Languages Does ChatGPT Support?
ChatGPT understands and writes English best.
It also handles frequently spoken languages like German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Chinese well.
OpenAI officially supports 58 languages, which together cover about 4.5 billion native speakers. In practice, however, ChatGPT can understand and respond in over 95 natural languages, though quality varies depending on available training data.
Here's a selection of the most important supported languages (output quality and comprehension may vary):
5. In Which Countries Is ChatGPT Available and Which Not?
ChatGPT is available in over 160 countries. The following map shows where ChatGPT can be used and where it cannot:
ChatGPT is not available in the following countries:
- China
- Russia
- Afghanistan
- Iran
- Belarus
- Venezuela
- North Korea
6. What Programming Languages Does ChatGPT Support?
ChatGPT can understand and generate code in many programming languages, though not all equally well. The Aider Polyglot Benchmark tests how correctly AI models generate code in various languages. Here are the results for GPT-5.x:
Python leads by a wide margin, driven by the enormous amount of Python training data. Compiled languages like Go and Rust also score very well. Older languages like C land noticeably lower but are still very usable.
ChatGPT also handles markup languages like HTML, Markdown, and XML, as well as database languages like SQL.
6.1 What Markup Languages Does ChatGPT Support?
ChatGPT can handle the following markup languages:
- HTML
- Markdown
- XML
6.2 Which Programming Language Does ChatGPT Handle Best?
According to OpenAI, ChatGPT handles Python best, as it has the most extensive training data in this language.
7. How Current Is the Data ChatGPT Was Trained On?
The Knowledge Cutoff Date specifies how far a model's training data extends. Here is an overview of all GPT models:
The newest model, GPT-5.6 Sol, has a Knowledge Cutoff Date of February 2026, the most recent of the bunch (see the chart above for every model). All current models can additionally access up-to-date information via web search, unlike the original ChatGPT 3.5, which only knew data up to September 2021.
8. How Many Characters Can ChatGPT Generate?
With GPT-5, the limit was significantly increased: Up to 128,000 tokens output is possible (approximately 96,000 words). For free users, the limit is 8,000 tokens; for Plus users, it's 32,000 tokens.
9. What Types of Content Are Prohibited with ChatGPT?
According to OpenAI's Content Policy, generating the following content is prohibited:
- Hate
- Harassment/Threats
- Violence
- Self-harm (e.g., suicide or eating disorders)
- Sexual content (except informational content)
- Political influence (e.g., election interference)
- Spam (mass-generated content that disrupts)
- Deception or misleading content
- Malware
10. Who Is Behind OpenAI?
OpenAI as a company has its own fascinating story: roughly $190 billion in total funding, an $852 billion valuation (March 2026), and investors ranging from Microsoft and SoftBank to Amazon and Nvidia.
The full breakdown of investors, funding rounds, valuation trajectory, revenue, employees, and infrastructure lives in a dedicated article: OpenAI Statistics 2026: Key Numbers, Data & Facts. That's where I keep all corporate metrics in one place.
11. What Alternatives Are There to ChatGPT?
The following alternatives come into question for ChatGPT:
- Neuroflash
- Chatsonic (by Writesonic)
- Microsoft Copilot
- Google Gemini
- Claude
- Perplexity AI
More details about these tools can be found in the following article: The Best ChatGPT Alternatives
11.1 Available GPT Models and Their Features
OpenAI offers various GPT models with different capabilities. For Codex, OpenAI currently recommends Sol, Terra, and Luna. GPT-5.3 Codex is already deprecated when you sign in with a ChatGPT account, while API access is separate. The official Codex model overview contains the current status details:
More information about the different models can be found in our article: All ChatGPT Versions Overview
11.2 Performance Metrics
ChatGPT's technical performance is impressive:
12. Subscription Plans and Pricing
ChatGPT offers various pricing models:
Detailed information about the different plans can be found here: ChatGPT Free vs. Plus vs. Team vs. Enterprise. For OpenAI corporate revenue, valuation, and funding history, see the separate article OpenAI Statistics.
13. Usage Behavior and Use Cases
13.1 Most Common Use Cases
An OpenAI study (published as an NBER Working Paper) analyzed 1.5 million randomly selected ChatGPT conversations. The most common use cases:
73% of all messages are for private, non-work-related purposes. For work-related messages, writing dominates at around 40% of all conversations. About two-thirds of writing requests involve editing existing texts rather than creating new content.
13.2 Usage by Demographic Group
According to Pew Research and McKinsey, different groups use ChatGPT at varying intensities:
14. Market Position and Competition
14.1 Market Share in the AI Chatbot Segment
ChatGPT dominates the AI chatbot market by web traffic share, but has been losing ground to rivals. Gemini has nearly doubled its share compared to early 2025, and Claude has more than doubled to 8.9% (SimilarWeb, May 2026):
The month-over-month shift among the four biggest chatbots, side by side:
A detailed comparison of the different alternatives can be found here: The Best ChatGPT Alternatives Compared
15. Interesting Facts and Records
Some remarkable facts about ChatGPT, each with comparison data:
15.1 Fastest App to 100 Million Active Users
ChatGPT reached 100 million monthly active users in just 2 months. No other service has ever achieved this so quickly. Threads (Meta) was downloaded by 100 million people in 5 days, but daily usage collapsed immediately afterward.
15.2 Daily Operating Costs
In early 2023, OpenAI spent an estimated $700,000 a day just to run ChatGPT, according to SemiAnalysis (see the chart below). Since then, costs have exploded: total inference spend hit around $1.8 billion in 2024, and total costs for 2025 are estimated at around $22 billion.
15.3 Training Data
Over 570 GB of compressed text data (approx. 300 billion tokens) was used for GPT-3 (OpenAI GPT-3 paper). Since then, the data volumes have grown massively:
15.4 Energy Consumption per Query
According to an analysis by Epoch AI (February 2025), a typical ChatGPT query (GPT-4o) consumes approximately 0.3 Wh. This is significantly lower than older estimates of 3 Wh (Alex de Vries, 2023), but still roughly 7x higher than a modern Google search (approx. 0.04 Wh).
15.5 GPU Capacity
According to CEO Sam Altman, OpenAI's goal was to have over 1 million GPUs for training and inference by end of 2025 (Tom's Hardware). Other AI companies are also ramping up massively:
15.6 AI-Generated Code
According to GitHub, 46% of code from Copilot users is generated with AI assistance. At launch in 2022, the figure was just 27%. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella also stated that 20-30% of Microsoft's internal code is now AI-generated.
15.7 ChatGPT in Education
According to Pew Research, the share of US teenagers using ChatGPT for schoolwork roughly doubled year over year, and a follow-up study found the number climbing even further for AI chatbots broadly. See the chart below for the exact year-by-year figures.
15.8 Fortune 500 Companies
92% of Fortune 500 companies use OpenAI products (ChatGPT, API, or Enterprise). The number of paying business users has grown rapidly:
15.9 Paying Subscribers
In February 2026, ChatGPT had over 50 million paying subscribers (Plus, Pro, and Business). OpenAI stated that January and February 2026 were the strongest months for new sign-ups in the company's history.
15.10 Daily Queries
In July 2025, ChatGPT processed around 2.5 billion queries per day (TechCrunch), more than double the 1 billion from December 2024. Compared to other platforms:
