OpenAI’s free GPT-4o model drives ChatGPT to new heights with 96% year-over-year growth
After nearly a year of stagnation, ChatGPT has reached new visitor records, leaving its competitors far behind.
According to estimates from Similarweb, ChatGPT set a new visitor record in June 2024. The chatgpt.com website recorded 2.9 billion visits that month, a 15.6% increase from the previous record of 2.5 billion visits in May 2024.
Compared to the previous year, this is an increase of 96%. In the U.S., the growth is even more significant, with a year-over-year increase of 135.8% (5.55% month-over-month).
Similarweb reports that ChatGPT’s mobile application is also growing. The number of daily active users in the US increased by approximately 13% to 3.2 million in June.
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It will be interesting to see if ChatGPT loses traffic again during the summer months. This pattern occurred last year, suggesting heavy use by students and working professionals.
OpenAI has made some structural changes recently. These include switching from the subdomain chat.openai.com to the independent domain chatgpt.com in May 2024.
Additionally, a new model, GPT-4o, was introduced in May and made available for free. This marks the first time a company offers free access to a GPT-4 class model.
Both actions likely contributed to increased web traffic, although the GPT-4o’s much-anticipated real-time speech capabilities won’t be widely available until the fall at the earliest. This feature could spur further growth.
Competitors are struggling to keep up with ChatGPT’s growth. Google’s AI chatbot Gemini, formerly known as Bard, saw a 16.6% drop in visitors in June compared to the previous month.
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On a year-over-year basis, however, Gemini is up 150%. Similarweb notes that the change from bard.google.com to gemini.google.com may cause inaccuracies in web statistics.
With only about 400 million monthly visits, Gemini can hardly compete with ChatGPT. However, Google has an ace up its sleeve with the implementation of Gemini in services like Search and Android, which are not included in these statistics. So Google’s models and AI services are more than just Gemini usage.
But OpenAI models are also used via APIs for numerous applications, including many of Microsoft’s AI services. This usage is also not included in the ChatGPT statistics.
Character.ai, a chatbot system focused on personalization and entertainment, remains a phenomenon. In June, it increased its visitor numbers by 62% year-over-year and 11.5% month-over-month to 309 million. According to Similarweb, Character.ai’s mobile app is approaching ChatGPT’s 3.2 million daily active users in the US.
