Business and economy·October 5, 2026, 23:56

Claude's downloads in the US more than halved since the March peak

AI-generated and checked against the sources listed below.

Claude's US downloads reached 7.42 million in March but had fallen to 3.26 million in September, data from Apptopia shows. At the same time, the app has gained a much larger share of daily users.

The Claude app from Anthropic was downloaded 7.42 million times in the US in March 2026. In September, the figure had fallen to 3.26 million. That is shown by data from the analytics firm Apptopia, which Big Technology reviewed ahead of Anthropic's expected IPO.

The March peak came during a period when Claude received a lot of attention and for a time sat at the top of the App Store's free chart in the US. So it is a clear decline from the peak, but downloads are only one measure of how an app is doing.

More active users despite fewer downloads

At the same time, Claude's share of daily users across AI apps has risen from 1.4 percent in January to 14.9 percent in September. ChatGPT's share fell from 41.8 to 30.7 percent over the same period, according to the same figures.

That means that even though fewer people are downloading the app now, a larger share of AI users use it actively every day. One explanation may be that many of those who wanted to try Claude already downloaded it in the spring.

Time and habits

According to Big Technology, an active Claude user spends on average 27 minutes a day in the app, compared with 23.1 minutes in ChatGPT. Users who download Claude also spend 13.5 percent less time in ChatGPT.

More than 80 percent of users use only one chatbot. That is an advantage for Claude once people have chosen it, but it also makes it harder to win new users.

Strong growth on the web and in business too

Traffic to Claude's website rose 540 percent year over year through August and accounted for 9.6 percent of traffic to AI assistants. ChatGPT had 57 percent. Business use, measured by logins via companies' shared login system (SSO), has according to the count roughly quadrupled since March.

What does it mean for you?

The figures apply to the US and say nothing directly about Denmark. They do show, however, that competition between AI assistants such as Claude and ChatGPT is in motion and that a high download figure in a single month does not decide who wins in the long run. It is habits and daily use that count.