ChatGPT rebounds with 81.4% of six chatbots' traffic

By Sophie Lindqvist

ChatGPT accounted for 81.4% of worldwide visits to six leading AI chatbots in July–September 2026. Graphite, a research and growth marketing firm, calculated the figure from Similarweb data covering worldwide web and mobile-app traffic.

Early in 2026, signs pointed to weakening OpenAI dominance as Google and Anthropic gained momentum. The new research instead shows a rebound. Graphite's bottom line is blunt: “The AI market is still expanding rapidly, and ChatGPT remains overwhelmingly dominant.”

What does the rebound mean for users?

For users, the immediate change is that ChatGPT has regained reach rather than surrendered it. Monthly visits rose nearly 20% to a record 61.35 billion in September, ending a seven-month plateau after ChatGPT surged through the first half of 2025.

The rebound is not happening in a shrinking market. Total monthly visits to major AI services reached 76 billion worldwide, up 37% year over year, so smaller rivals can grow quickly while ChatGPT still gains traffic.

That distinction matters because traffic share and absolute growth measure different things. A service can add users from a small base without closing a gap measured in tens of percentage points.

Graphite's research, led by CEO Ethan Smith, puts the distance between ChatGPT and its rivals in plain terms:

• ChatGPT: 81.4% of worldwide visits.
• Claude: 6.8%.
• Gemini: 5.0%.
• DeepSeek: 4.0%.
• Grok: 1.9%.
• Perplexity: 0.9%.

No competitor reached even 10%. Claude recorded extraordinary growth over the past year, while Gemini expanded quickly too. Both had been viewed as serious threats to OpenAI, but their gains came from much smaller starting points.

ChatGPT now sends traffic beyond its own site

The service is not only attracting visitors; it increasingly sends them to other websites. Worldwide referral traffic from AI services jumped 92% over the past year, with ChatGPT responsible for 60% of those visits. For publishers, that makes ChatGPT a significant route to outside pages rather than simply another destination.

The number also changes the commercial picture around AI search. ChatGPT has both the largest measured audience and the largest share of traffic sent onward. OpenAI's position therefore extends beyond the time users spend inside the chatbot.

Search changes as AI adoption moves abroad

Google's AI Overviews, which place AI-generated answers directly in search results, appeared in 62% of US searches. Google's AI Mode, which supports more conversational interactions with Search, attracted 491 million US web visits in August. Together, these products show AI moving deeper into the search journey.

Generated answers and follow-up conversations now appear directly in Google Search. That gives the company a larger role in how people discover and assess information.

The geographic split is more striking. Despite America's leadership in developing the technology, the United States accounts for just 8.8% of worldwide AI traffic. More than 90% of usage happens elsewhere, making the chatbot market much broader than the country that leads its development.

Reporting by Katie Notopoulos last week put ChatGPT at 1.2 billion weekly users. That figure offers another view of the same scale, alongside September's monthly visit record. It also puts the gap with Claude and Gemini in context: both rivals are expanding, but neither approaches ChatGPT's measured reach.

For people choosing an assistant, the practical answer is that alternatives merit attention, but they have not displaced the leading option in measured traffic. For outside websites, ChatGPT's 60% share of AI referrals matters as much as its audience share. It now sits at the center of the path from an AI answer to an external visit.