According to TechCrunch, citing new data from Sensor Tower, ChatGPT’s user growth is starting to slow down. As of November 2025, ChatGPT still leads with 50% of global mobile downloads and 55% of global monthly active users, but its monthly active users only grew about 6% from August to November, reaching roughly 810 million. In contrast, Google’s Gemini saw its monthly active users jump around 30% in that same period, driven by its new Nano Banana image model. The report also notes Gemini is outpacing ChatGPT in download growth and user engagement time, with Gemini users now spending 11 minutes daily in the app. This shift has prompted internal concern at OpenAI, highlighted by a recent “code red” memo from CEO Sam Altman focusing on product improvements.
The Saturation Point
Here’s the thing: hitting a growth plateau was inevitable for ChatGPT. It basically had a two-year head start and became a verb. When you’re already on nearly every tech-savvy person’s phone and browser, where do the next users come from? That ~6% quarterly growth figure is the real story—it suggests the low-hanging fruit is gone. Now, growth has to come from stealing users from other apps, or from deeper engagement with existing users. And that’s a much tougher game. OpenAI’s “code red” memo, which The Independent reported on, makes perfect sense in this light. The initial wave of novelty has worn off.
Gemini’s Android Advantage
But let’s talk about Google’s real weapon, and it’s not just Nano Banana. The report found that twice as many U.S. Android users engage with Gemini through the OS itself than use the standalone app. Think about that. That’s a massive, structural advantage. Gemini isn’t just an app you have to seek out; it’s getting baked into the fabric of the device for billions of users. It’s like having a store on every main street versus one in a mall people have to drive to. If this integration deepens—and why wouldn’t it?—ChatGPT could be facing a distribution monster it simply can’t match. Google lost the initial AI mindshare battle, but it might win the war through sheer platform dominance.
The Wider Competitive Squeeze
And ChatGPT isn’t just looking over its shoulder at Google. The Sensor Tower data shows it’s getting squeezed from all sides. Perplexity and Claude saw triple-digit year-over-year growth. ChatGPT’s global download growth (85%) lagged the overall cohort average (110%). Its share of global monthly active users dropped 3 percentage points in just four months. This isn’t a two-horse race anymore; it’s a crowded field where niche players are carving out loyal followings. People are starting to choose the right tool for the job—Perplexity for search, Claude for writing, maybe Gemini for Android integration—instead of defaulting to ChatGPT for everything. That’s a huge shift.
What Growth Looks Like Now
So what does “growth” even mean in a maturing market? It’s less about new downloads and more about engagement and utility. The fact that Gemini’s daily time-in-app more than doubled to 11 minutes, while ChatGPT’s barely budged and even dipped recently, is a huge red flag for OpenAI. It means Google found a hook—image generation—that makes people stick around. ChatGPT needs its own version of that, fast. The memo’s focus on personalization and reliability is the right idea, but is it exciting enough? Probably not. They need a killer new feature, not just incremental improvements. The data from Sensor Tower paints a clear picture: the era of ChatGPT’s unchallenged dominance is over. The race is on, and it’s going to be fought feature-by-feature, minute-of-engagement by minute-of-engagement.
