Jagran Josh’s roundup that purports to name “the most-used AI chatbots in 2025” landed in inboxes and social feeds with a punchy list—ChatGPT at the top with a jaw‑dropping 46.59 billion “users,” followed by a clutch of U.S. and China‑based rivals—but a closer look shows the headline numbers don’t survive basic verification and important nuance is missing from the snapshot. This feature article verifies the key claims, cross‑checks them against independent telemetry, and parses what the real market dynamics and risks mean for Windows users, enterprises, and everyday consumers navigating the AI assistant landscape.
AI chatbots are now mainstream productivity tools and research assistants, and 2024–2025 saw adoption accelerate as major platform vendors embedded conversational agents into search, office suites, and mobile apps. That rapid adoption created demand for market telemetry—and a new genre of rankings—but measuring “most‑used” is complex: metrics can mean monthly visits, active users, query volume, referrals to websites, or cumulative sessions, and different measurement platforms report different slices of the traffic picture.
Independent global telemetry from StatCounter shows a clear leader: ChatGPT dominates chatbot referral and traffic share in 2025, with a market share on the order of 80–83% in several snapshots, while Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini, and smaller players trail by large margins. This pattern is corroborated by StatCounter’s public dashboard and related PR summaries. (prnewswire.com)
At the same time, media reporting in 2025 highlighted a rapid rise from a China‑originated chatbot stack—DeepSeek—whose early technical claims and fast adoption inside China drew both market headlines and regulatory scrutiny. Independent outlets documented both DeepSeek’s technical claims and the controversy around data practices and censorship. (theguardian.com)
The upshot: high‑level platform dominance is real, but absolute user counts and some vendor‑reported metrics in commercial roundups require careful verification.
These numbers are attention‑grabbing—and they circulated quickly. But numbers that big require context and corroboration.
Multiple independent outlets and data aggregators report Perplexity monthly visits in the low‑hundreds of millions (e.g., ~120–150 million visits/month in 2025), and Perplexity’s active user base is measured in the low tens of millions of MAU by third‑party trackers—nowhere near a billion‑plus scale on a monthly active user metric. (demandsage.com)
However, Jagran Josh’s claim that ChatGPT has “46.59 billion users” is not corroborated by any independent metric found in public telemetry or vendor reporting. The figure is implausible as a unique‑user count in 2025 because it exceeds world population and even large cumulative query counts typically reported by vendors are expressed as sessions or queries, not unique users. No reputable vendor or measurement provider publishes a 46.59 billion “users” figure for ChatGPT in 2025. That specific number should be treated as unverified and likely a misinterpretation or a conflation of sessions, impressions, or an arithmetic error. Flagged as unverifiable. (prnewswire.com)
But the Jagran Josh figure for DeepSeek (2.74 billion users and astonishing percentage growth) is likewise unsupported by independent global telemetry. No major measurement provider shows a global monthly‑active user count at that scale for DeepSeek in early 2025. DeepSeek’s rapid growth inside Chinese app ecosystems and usage spikes are well documented, but absolute counts in the billions should be treated skeptically unless the publisher explains the metric and cites primary data. Flagged as unverifiable. (theguardian.com)
Background / Overview
AI chatbots are now mainstream productivity tools and research assistants, and 2024–2025 saw adoption accelerate as major platform vendors embedded conversational agents into search, office suites, and mobile apps. That rapid adoption created demand for market telemetry—and a new genre of rankings—but measuring “most‑used” is complex: metrics can mean monthly visits, active users, query volume, referrals to websites, or cumulative sessions, and different measurement platforms report different slices of the traffic picture.Independent global telemetry from StatCounter shows a clear leader: ChatGPT dominates chatbot referral and traffic share in 2025, with a market share on the order of 80–83% in several snapshots, while Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini, and smaller players trail by large margins. This pattern is corroborated by StatCounter’s public dashboard and related PR summaries. (prnewswire.com)
At the same time, media reporting in 2025 highlighted a rapid rise from a China‑originated chatbot stack—DeepSeek—whose early technical claims and fast adoption inside China drew both market headlines and regulatory scrutiny. Independent outlets documented both DeepSeek’s technical claims and the controversy around data practices and censorship. (theguardian.com)
The upshot: high‑level platform dominance is real, but absolute user counts and some vendor‑reported metrics in commercial roundups require careful verification.
What Jagran Josh reported — the quick claims
Jagran Josh published a top‑10 list for “most‑used AI chatbots in 2025” that included the following headline items and specific numeric claims:- ChatGPT — 46.59 billion users (claimed)
- DeepSeek — 2.74 billion users (claimed)
- Gemini — 1.66 billion users
- Perplexity — 1.47 billion users
- Claude — 1.15 billion users
- Microsoft Copilot — 957 million users
- Grok — 686 million users
- Poe — 378 million users
- Meta AI — (listed in top 10)
- Mistral — (listed in top 10)
These numbers are attention‑grabbing—and they circulated quickly. But numbers that big require context and corroboration.
Verifying the headline numbers: what the data actually shows
The key problem: “users” vs. visits vs. referrals
When a roundup lists billions of “users,” the first question is: what metric is being used? Are they counting:- Unique users (daily, monthly, or cumulative)?
- Visits / sessions (page visits)?
- Search referrals sent to websites by chatbots (a StatCounter metric)?
- API calls or queries?
Multiple independent outlets and data aggregators report Perplexity monthly visits in the low‑hundreds of millions (e.g., ~120–150 million visits/month in 2025), and Perplexity’s active user base is measured in the low tens of millions of MAU by third‑party trackers—nowhere near a billion‑plus scale on a monthly active user metric. (demandsage.com)
ChatGPT’s dominance is real — but “46.59 billion users” is not corroborated
StatCounter and related reporting confirm ChatGPT’s overwhelming lead in July 2025 across chatbot referrals and measured traffic, generally in the 80%+ range, and many analysts cite ChatGPT as the most heavily used conversational AI by a very wide margin. That high‑level finding is robust. (prnewswire.com)However, Jagran Josh’s claim that ChatGPT has “46.59 billion users” is not corroborated by any independent metric found in public telemetry or vendor reporting. The figure is implausible as a unique‑user count in 2025 because it exceeds world population and even large cumulative query counts typically reported by vendors are expressed as sessions or queries, not unique users. No reputable vendor or measurement provider publishes a 46.59 billion “users” figure for ChatGPT in 2025. That specific number should be treated as unverified and likely a misinterpretation or a conflation of sessions, impressions, or an arithmetic error. Flagged as unverifiable. (prnewswire.com)
DeepSeek: legitimate story, but absolute user counts are murky
DeepSeek emerged in early 2025 as a highly discussed Chinese entrant, attracting attention for technical claims, app‑store downloads, and geopolitical concerns about censorship and data flows. Reputable outlets documented its sudden popularity and the attendant debates about data handling and compliance. That narrative is real. (theguardian.com)But the Jagran Josh figure for DeepSeek (2.74 billion users and astonishing percentage growth) is likewise unsupported by independent global telemetry. No major measurement provider shows a global monthly‑active user count at that scale for DeepSeek in early 2025. DeepSeek’s rapid growth inside Chinese app ecosystems and usage spikes are well documented, but absolute counts in the billions should be treated skeptically unless the publisher explains the metric and cites primary data. Flagged as unverifiable. (theguardian.com)
