ChatGpt became the world's most downloaded app in March, excluding games and tops regular candidates, Instagram and Tiktok. This is the first time the app has surpassed the monthly download chart and the biggest month of ChatGpt. According to new data, CHATGPT installations rose 28% from February to March to reach 46 million new downloads during March, App Intelligence Provider AppFigures recently reported.
This led the app to go slightly ahead of Instagram and drop to second place. Tiktok continued at number 3.
Image credits: AppFigures
Perhaps helping to drive the installation, ChatGpt saw some notable upgrades in March. This includes the first major upgrade to image generation capabilities in over a year. This brought ChatGpt to a viral moment from late March to early April. Users have discovered that images and memes can be generated in the style of Studio Ghibli, the popular Japanese animation studio behind films like “My Neighbor Totoro” and “Spirited Away.”
Openai also removed some safeguards on the image content moderation policy in March and upgraded ChatGPT's AI voice capabilities.
AppFigures noted that when comparing the first quarter of 2021 and first quarter of 2025, ChatGpt installations increased by 148% year-on-year.
However, the company speculates that the new features are not the main driver behind the growth of popular chatbots this month.
“ChatGpt is beginning to feel like it's becoming a verb that's very similar to how Google did it in the 2000s. “So when you're excited about AI, there are a lot of people who aren't swimming on this topic, even about competitions like Grok, Manus AI, Deepseek, etc., but actually download ChatGpt.”
Due to ChatGpt's brand recognition, it may be difficult for other AI chatbots to take off. That's partly why Claude of Mankind performs less in this respect than ChatGpt. That's also why Grok can do better than other ChatGpt rivals. Not necessarily because it's better, but because there are people who are well known to sell it on Elon Musk.
Meanwhile, Instagram previously ranked second in both the Apple App Store and Google Play in both January and February of this year, but Tiktok remained No. 1.
To some extent, Tiktok's download growth earlier this year was driven by concerns over a possible US ban as consumers rushed to download the app in case they disappeared from the app store. Now, President Trump is making the app available to our users as he aims to cut down on deals with China, which is based on Tiktok Parentdance.
Prior to this, Instagram was the No. 1 (non-game) app throughout 2024, Instagram has been growing popularity in the US market and regularly beat Tiktok in its No. 1 position across the global app store, which has remained a favorite among US teens.
For example, in a new US teenager survey released this week by Piper Sandler, Instagram is the most popular social app, with 87% of use per month, with 79% on Tiktok and 72% on Snapchat.
In March, other social apps, including Meta's, rounded out the top charts, with Facebook and WhatsApp filling out the top five, filling in Meta's threads alongside Temu, including Capcut, Telegram, Snapchat and Meta's threads.
In total, the top 10 apps were downloaded in a massive 339 million times in March, exceeding 299 million in February.