After OpenAI’s video-generating app Sora climbed to No. 1 in the U.S. App Store, its first week was technically better than ChatGPT on iOS, according to recent data from the app analytics provider. Applications. Estimates show that Sora saw 627,000 downloads on iOS in its first seven days of availability, compared to 606,000 iOS downloads for ChatGPT in its first week.
Shortly after this article was published, Sora’s head of OpenAI, Bill Peebles, announced that Sora reached one million downloads (across platforms, not just iOS) in less than five days. That said, it’s faster than ChatGPT even though Sora is in invite-only mode.
ChatGPT was only available in the US for its first week, while Sora is currently offered in the US and Canada at launch. Still, Appfigures’ data showed that Canada had about 45,000 installs, so Sora’s launch accounted for about 96% of ChatGPT’s launch on iOS alone if the data was based solely on US numbers.
This level of consumer adoption is worth noting because Sora requires an invitation to log in, while ChatGPT was publicly available at launch. This makes Sora’s performance even more impressive.
Appfigures says Sora saw 56,000 iOS app installs on its first day, making it the third most popular app in the US App Store. On Friday, October 3, it reached number one. This growth has already outpaced Sora’s debut of other major AI app launches, including Anthropic’s Claude and Microsoft’s Copilot, and tied it with Grok xAI’s launch.
A quick scan of social media provides plenty of anecdotal evidence to support Appfigures’ data. Sora videos, which take advantage of the recent Sora 2 video model and give users the ability to generate realistic deepfakes, seem to be everywhere. Users are even creating deepfakes of deceased people, prompting Zelda Williams, daughter of delayed actor Robin Williams, to ask people to stop sending her AI-generated photos of her father.
According to Appfigures, the app has enjoyed consistent popularity since its first day on the market on September 30, 2025. Data shows that on October 1, 2025, daily downloads on iOS peaked at 107,800 downloads. Since then, daily installs have ranged from 84,400 (October 6) to 98,500 installs per day (October 4).
While this isn’t as high as it was earlier this week, it’s still decent numbers for an app that not everyone can utilize yet.