Chatgpt became the most commonly downloaded application in the world in March, excluding games, at the top of ordinary pretenders to first place, Instagram and Tiktok. For the first time, the application exceeded the monthly download charts and the largest CHATGPT month. According to recent data, CHATGPT installations increased by 28% from February to March to achieve 46 million recent downloads in March, application interview supplier Appfigures Recently reported.
This meant that the application slightly before Instagram, which fell to position No. 2. Tiktok followed number 3.
Perhaps by helping in running the installation, ChatgPT noticed some significant updates in March, including the first vast update of the possibility of generating an image for over a year. This led to the viral moment of chatgpt at the turn of March and April, when users discovered that they could generate images and memes in the style of Studio Ghibli, the popular Japanese animation studio for films such as “My Neighbor Totoro” and “Spirited Away”.
Opeli also removed some security for the rules of content moderation for photos in March and updated the function of the voice of AI Chatgpt.
Appfigures noted that CHATGPT installations increased by 148% year on year, comparing the first quarter of 2021 with quarter 2025.
However, the company speculates that recent functions were not the main driver of the popular Chatbot this month.
“It seems that Chatgpt becomes a verb, like Google in 2000, to the extent that many do not think” AI “but” chatgpt ” – said the founder and general director of the APPFigures Ariel Michał. “So when the excitement of AI appears – even for competition, such as Grok, Manus AI or Deepseek – many who do not swim in this topic, come for artificial intelligence, but really download chatgpt.”
Due to the diagnosis of the ChatgPT brand, it can be more arduous for other AI chatbots. In part, that’s why Claude from Anthropica has worse performance on this front than ChatgPT. That is why Grok can cope better than other chatgpt rivals – not necessarily because it is better, but because someone is known for sales with Elon Musk and a vast distribution platform from X.
Meanwhile, on Instagram there was a place for second place in the Apple App Store and Google Play in both January AND February this year, while Tiktok remained No. 1.
To some extent, the escalate in Tiktok downloading at the beginning of this year was caused by fears of a potential ban on the US, because consumers rushed to download the application in case it disappeared from applications. Now this prohibition is detained when President Trump intends to limit the contract with China, in which the Tiktok Parent Bytedance is based to make the application available to US users.
Before this, Instagram regularly beat Tiktok in the first place in global application stores, being application No. 1 (different) in 2024. Instagram popularity on the American market is growing, remaining favorite among the US teenagers.
For example New US teenagers study Piper Sandler released this week stated that Instagram is the most used social application, with 87% monthly utilize, compared to 79% for Tiktok and 72% for Snapchat.
In March, other social applications, including meta, rounded the highest charts, and Facebook and WhatsApp filled the top five, and others, such as Capcut, Telegram, Snapchat and Meta in the top ten, next to this.
A total of the 10 best applications were downloaded by collective 339 million times in March, higher than February 299 million.