Gemini’s monthly active user base grew 5x faster than ChatGPT, new data shows

Gemini, on the other hand, saw global MAU surge by 30 per cent over the same period, with its new AI image generation model, Nano Banana, said to be behind the increased adoption, the firm found.

The Sensor Tower data on chatbot usage indicates that Google is catching up to the market leader, OpenAI, which has reportedly delayed its ad efforts to focus on shipping a new AI model, codenamed ‘Garlic’, expected to outperform Gemini 3 in coding- and reasoning-heavy tasks.

In an internal memo declaring ‘code red’, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman instructed staff to focus on improving the company’s AI products, particularly in areas like personalisation, reliability, image generation, and more. The Information first reported the memo.

While OpenAI has had a first-mover advantage in the AI race since the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, Google’s competitive advantage in the global market comes from its vast distribution network. It owns the dominant web browser and search engine, both of which integrated Gemini 3 from day one. Twice as many users in the US are accessing Gemini directly through Google’s Android operating system as compared to using the standalone Gemini app, as per Sensor Tower’s report.

This is significant given that Android users also dominate the Indian smartphone market.

“Google appears to be the best positioned of its peers to monetise AI investment internally and externally,” Jeffrey Wlodarczak, an analyst at Pivotal Research Group, was quoted as saying by CNBC. “Search is a resilient cash cow with pricing power, a powerful driver of [Google’s] best-in-class Gemini AI, with an opportunity to leverage AI [to] take massive costs out of the search business,” he added.

Gemini’s gains: Key figures

As of November 2025, ChatGPT’s global MAU has climbed by 180 per cent year-over-year (YoY), while Gemini’s global MAU is up by 170 per cent YoY.

Gemini’s share of the overall AI chatbot market has increased compared to top AI chatbot apps like ChatGPT, Copilot, Claude, Perplexity, and Grok. From May-November 2025, Gemini grew its share of global MAU by three percentage points, Sensor Tower estimates.

By comparison, ChatGPT saw its global MAU share drop by three percentage points over the past four months (August-November 2025). Meanwhile, Perplexity and Claude saw 370 per cent YoY growth and 190 per cent YoY growth, respectively, in 2025.

In terms of global downloads, Gemini saw 190 per cent YoY growth, and ChatGPT recorded 85 per cent YoY growth as of November 2025. However, Perplexity saw the largest growth, up 215 per cent YoY, with the overall cohort’s average growth at 110 per cent YoY.

Until November this year, Gemini app users were spending 11 minutes per day in the app, up by 120 per cent from March, indicating that Gemini has more than doubled its users’ in-app time over the past few months.

This is likely due to the popularity of Nano Banana, its image-generation model, in September, Sensor Tower said. ChatGPT users’ daily time spent only increased by 6 per cent during the same time frame.