The AI tools landscape has consolidated faster than almost anyone predicted. Just three years ago, the market was wide open — today, two tools alone account for more than half of all monthly active users globally. But look past the top two and the picture gets more interesting: a Chinese chatbot most Western users have never heard of sits in the top ten, a design platform most people don’t think of as an AI tool commands 210 million users, and the most-hyped image generators are nowhere near as widely used as their cultural footprint suggests.
The chart below ranks the 20 most used AI tools in the world by monthly active users (MAU) as of mid-2025. Use the category filters to explore by tool type.
ChatGPT’s lead is larger than it looks
With 557 million monthly active users, ChatGPT doesn’t just lead the ranking — it has more users than the next four tools combined. OpenAI’s sustained dominance reflects both first-mover advantage and the compounding effect of being the default answer when anyone asks “which AI tool should I use?” That brand position is extraordinarily difficult to dislodge, even as competitors close the capability gap.
Gemini is closer than the headline numbers suggest
Google’s Gemini sits at 420 million MAU — a figure that looks like a comfortable second place until you consider that a significant portion of that usage comes from Gemini being embedded directly into Android devices and Google Workspace, rather than chosen independently. The distinction between active preference and passive availability matters when reading these numbers.
The most surprising tool in the top five isn’t an AI chatbot
Canva AI at 210 million users is the chart’s most instructive data point. Most coverage of the AI tools market focuses exclusively on chatbots and LLMs — but Canva demonstrates that AI embedded into a workflow people already use daily reaches scale that standalone AI products struggle to match. It’s a model that Microsoft Copilot (160M) and Grammarly (110M) are also executing successfully.
DeepSeek’s position understates its 2025 story
DeepSeek appears at number seven with 97 million MAU — but that figure masks a dramatic arc. The Chinese model surged to over 300 million users in early 2025 following the release of its R1 model, before declining sharply as the initial wave of curiosity subsided. Its current position reflects a stabilised user base rather than the trajectory that briefly made it the most downloaded app in history.
Image and video generators are less mainstream than they seem
Midjourney (60M), Adobe Firefly (16M), Suno (12M), and Pika (8M) all appear in the lower half of the ranking despite generating disproportionate media coverage. Creative AI tools have passionate, high-engagement user bases — but converting cultural visibility into mass-market monthly active users remains a challenge the category hasn’t yet solved.
A note on methodology
Monthly active user figures combine web traffic data from Similarweb, mobile app MAU from We Are Social’s Digital 2026 report, and the Andreessen Horowitz Top 100 Gen AI Consumer Apps ranking (January 2026). Where sources reported ranges, mid-point estimates have been used. Figures reflect global usage across web and mobile platforms and should be treated as estimates rather than audited data. This chart will be updated as new data becomes available.