Measurement firm: ChatGPT hit 1.06 billion users — a fourth consecutive record
The figure comes from Similarweb itself, not from OpenAI, and no other source confirms it. But several independent growth signals — one billion mobile users, 48 percent more visits from the U.S. — point in the same direction.
Measurement firm: ChatGPT hit 1.06 billion users — a fourth consecutive record
The figure comes from Similarweb itself, not from OpenAI, and no other source confirms it. But several independent growth signals — one billion mobile users, 48 percent more visits from the U.S. — point in the same direction.
Measurement firm Similarweb wrote on its verified X account on September 8, 2026 that "ChatGPT broke its MAU record for the 4th consecutive month in August, reaching 1.06B MAUs" (Similarweb on X). That is the core of the news: according to the firm's own estimates, ChatGPT set a new record in monthly active users (MAU) in August 2026 — for the fourth month in a row.
What we can — and cannot — verify
The 1.06 billion figure is Similarweb's own estimate, not an announcement from OpenAI. The short X post contains no methodology, no figures for prior months, and no month-over-month growth. Which four months made up the streak of records, and how large each increase was, cannot be established from the available evidence. No independent source confirms the specific number.
Supporting signals — measuring different things
Two other recent analyses point in the same direction, but they measure something other than Similarweb's total user figure:
- Mobile milestone — OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar wrote in a January 2026 blog post (reproduced by CryptoBriefing) that the ChatGPT app grew from 40 million to over one billion monthly active mobile users in three years. The milestone was reportedly confirmed by analytics firm Sensor Tower. Note that the CryptoBriefing article was published in September 2026 but ties the figure to the January post — exactly when "today" applies is unclear.
- Web traffic from the U.S. — Semrush data reported by Search Engine Land on September 4 shows that ChatGPT.com was up 48.38 percent year over year in visits from the U.S. as of July 2026, with 1.09 billion monthly visits. That placed the website ninth among U.S. websites, ahead of DuckDuckGo and Bing. This is visits to a single website in one country — not global MAUs.
The company's own trajectory
OpenAI itself has painted a rising picture: over 900 million weekly active users by February 2026, and an annualized revenue run rate that reportedly went from $2 billion (2023) via more than $20 billion (2025) to $40 billion in August 2026 — according to Friar, as reproduced by CryptoBriefing. The run-rate figures are the company's own, forward-looking statements, not verified financial accounts.
A striking tension — and a lot that's missing
There is an apparent contradiction in the evidence: CryptoBriefing reports that the mobile app alone reportedly passed one billion MAUs, while Similarweb's estimate for all channels combined is 1.06 billion. The figures come from different firms, with different methodologies, and from different points in time (the January blog post versus the August data). The available sources do not clarify the difference, and they should not be conflated.
The competitive context is also missing: the evidence contains no data on other AI chatbots' user growth, so it is impossible to say whether the record streak is due to growth in the whole market or ChatGPT-specific gains.
The safest conclusion is therefore sober: an established measurement firm still estimates record growth for ChatGPT, and several independent indicators point the same way — but the headline number rests on one actor's estimate alone.