Chatbot competition heats up, ChatGPT returns to market share growth for the first time
The generative AI technology arena has undergone significant upheaval in the past year, and the latest data reveals a fascinating picture of power struggles and trend shifts among the major players.
While OpenAI's ChatGPT still holds the lead, we are witnessing consistent and impressive growth from Google's Gemini, which is rapidly gaining market share.
The current situation (as of January 16) of user traffic distribution in the AI market shows clear gaps, but also increasing competition from new players:
- ChatGPT: Still leads with 64.6% (a slight increase from 64.5% in recent days).
- Gemini: Holds 22.0% (growth from 21.5% in the last two days). - Grok: Captures a 3.5% share.
- DeepSeek: Stands at 3.3%. - Claude: With only 2.1%. - Perplexity: Holds 1.9%.
- Copilot: Closes the list with 1.1%.
The long-term trend: The big change. To understand the magnitude of the change, it is important to look at the journey of the two main players over the past 12 months.
Market share is measured at time points of 12 months, six months, three months, one month, and today:
ChatGPT: From near-absolute hegemony to a halt
About a year ago, ChatGPT dominated the market unchallenged with 86.6% of traffic.
Since then, there has been a consistent decline to 78.3% six months ago, 72.9% three months ago, and down to 66.8% a month ago.
Now, for the first time, the decline appears to be slightly halted as it stabilizes at 64.6%, and even shows very slight signs of recovery (a 0.1% increase in the last two days).
Gemini: Google's surge
The main story is Google's meteoric rise.
A year ago, Gemini (or its earlier versions) held a modest share of just 5.3%.
Within six months, it rose to 8.7%, jumped to 13.3% three months ago, reached 19.5% a month ago, and today it commands 22.0% of the market.
This represents a fourfold increase within one year.
Significance of the data
The market no longer belongs to a single player.
While ChatGPT is succeeding for the first time in a long while to show signs of stability and return to the fight for traffic, Gemini continues to consistently expand its presence.
At the same time, services like Claude are showing signs of weakening in traffic metrics, while players like Grok and DeepSeek are managing to establish an initial foothold.