ChatGPT Dominates 2025 AI Chatbots—Why Billion-Scale Claims Need Verification

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.

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. (gs.statcounter.com, 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. (wsj.com, 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.

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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)

The Jagran Josh piece also described growth rates (e.g., ChatGPT +106% in one year; DeepSeek +49,000%) and made qualitative assessments of each product’s strengths and user base.
These numbers are attention‑grabbing—and they circulated quickly. But numbers that big require context and corroboration.

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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?

StatCounter’s public data—one of the few large independent trackers for chatbot web referrals—reports percentage market share (referrals and traffic share) rather than an absolute cumulative user count. For July 2025 StatCounter shows ChatGPT with roughly 82.7% global chatbot market share, Perplexity ~8.1%, Microsoft Copilot ~4.6%, Gemini ~2.2% and smaller shares for others—data that aligns with multiple industry summaries in mid‑2025. That market‑share slice is the most consistent independent telemetry available for global chatbot traffic. (gs.statcounter.com, prnewswire.com)
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. (explodingtopics.com, 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. (gs.statcounter.com, 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. (gs.statcounter.com, 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. (wsj.com, 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. (wsj.com, theguardian.com)

Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Copilot and others: relative ranking checks out, absolute counts do not​

Multiple independent trackers and industry writeups place Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini, and Anthropic Claude as notable traffic players behind ChatGPT; StatCounter ranks Perplexity as a distant but meaningful follower, and Perplexity’s own traffic is verifiable in the low‑hundreds of millions of visits per month rather than billions of unique users. Anthropic and Microsoft have strong enterprise traction for Claude and Copilot respectively, but public traffic/MAU numbers in Jagran Josh’s billions range do not match independent reports. (gs.statcounter.com, explodingtopics.com, demandsage.com)
For example:

• Perplexity has been reported at ~120–160 million visits per month in 2025 by third‑party trackers—useful growth metrics but far from 1.47 billion unique users. (explodingtopics.com, demandsage.com)
• StatCounter shows Copilot and Gemini well behind ChatGPT in share; their user counts are significant but measured differently (integrations, referrals, or in‑app usage) and are not published as consistent global “user” totals in the billions. (gs.statcounter.com)

In short: the ranking direction in Jagran Josh (ChatGPT first, then a U.S. and China mix) is broadly consistent with independent telemetry, but the absolute user numbers listed are not supported by public, independent data and should be regarded as suspect unless the publisher documents the metric source.

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Deep dive: platform‑by‑platform verification and commentary​

ChatGPT — claim vs. reality​

• Jagran Josh claim: ChatGPT — 46.59 billion users; +106% growth.
• Verified reality: ChatGPT is the dominant chatbot in 2025 by traffic/referral share (StatCounter ~80–83% in mid‑2025), and OpenAI reports hundreds of millions of active users across products in various public statements, but no independent source corroborates a 46.59 billion unique‑user figure. The StatCounter market share is the clearest independent metric that supports ChatGPT’s dominance. (gs.statcounter.com, prnewswire.com)

Strengths and risks:

• Strengths: broad capability set, deep ecosystem integrations, enterprise Enterprise tier guarantees (SOC‑2, admin controls) that have helped business adoption.
• Risks: hallucination, data‑handling concerns when using public tiers, dependency and outage risk for critical workflows. Mitigations include enterprise plans, human verifiers, and multi‑vendor fallbacks.

DeepSeek — claim vs. reality​

• Jagran Josh claim: DeepSeek — 2.74 billion users; 49,000% growth.
• Verified reality: DeepSeek is a legitimate and newsworthy Chinese entrant that gained fast adoption and technical attention in early 2025; however, credible independent metrics do not support multi‑billion user counts. Reporting also documents real concerns about censorship and data handling that should temper global adoption narratives. (wsj.com, theguardian.com)

Strengths and risks:

• Strengths: cost‑efficient training claims, strong domestic adoption inside China, potential for localized integrations.
• Risks: censorship behavior, regulatory and privacy concerns, and lack of independent metric transparency. Analysts recommend caution for cross‑border use. (wsj.com, theguardian.com)

Google Gemini — claim vs. reality​

• Jagran Josh claim: Gemini — 1.66 billion users.
• Verified reality: Gemini is Google’s flagship generative model and is integrated into Google Search and Workspace. StatCounter places Gemini far behind ChatGPT in referral share. Gemini’s user base is large due to Google’s reach, but independent public metrics do not support the 1.66 billion unique‑user number as presented. (gs.statcounter.com)

Strengths and risks:

• Strengths: real‑time web access, tight Workspace integration, multimodal features.
• Risks: fragmentation of Google AI initiatives historically, and the perennial privacy vs. product tradeoffs inside Google’s ecosystem.

Perplexity — claim vs. reality​

• Jagran Josh claim: Perplexity — 1.47 billion users.
• Verified reality: Perplexity has seen explosive growth in 2024–2025, and third‑party trackers peg monthly visits in the low hundreds of millions and active users in the millions—not billions. Perplexity’s strength is citation‑first answers and live web retrieval. (explodingtopics.com, demandsage.com)

Strengths and risks:

• Strengths: transparency with sources, designed for verifiable research tasks.
• Risks: narrower use cases than generalist chatbots; monetization and scaling pressures.

Claude (Anthropic), Microsoft Copilot, Grok, Poe, Meta AI, Mistral — summary​

• Claims: Jagran Josh assigns mid‑ to high‑hundreds of millions or billions to these platforms.
• Verified reality: These products each have real and measurable user/enterprise traction, but independent metrics typically express usage as percentage shares or monthly visits far below the multi‑billion counts listed in the Jagran Josh table. Anthropic, Microsoft, and xAI all continue investing in safety, enterprise controls, and vertical integrations; Grok’s integration with X gives it social‑trend advantages; Poe had an early aggregator advantage but has seen traffic shifts as direct vendor apps matured.

Bottom line: vendor and independent telemetry align on ranking direction and relative popularity; absolute numeric claims in Jagran Josh require corroboration and metric definitions from the publisher.

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Why these discrepancies matter: measurement, incentives, and reader caution​

• Different metrics, different stories: Without a publisher‑provided definition of “users,” any raw number is ambiguous. Unique users, sessions, API calls, and referrals are all valid but non‑interchangeable metrics. Independent measurement providers (StatCounter, SimilarWeb, etc.) generally report share or visits, not cumulative global unique users in the tens of billions. (gs.statcounter.com, explodingtopics.com)
• SEO and attention economics: Roundups with sensational large numbers attract clicks and drive SEO. That incentive can lead to repackaged vendor claims or misinterpreted telemetry. Readers and IT decision‑makers must demand metric transparency.
• Regional nuance matters: Chatbot adoption is highly regional. For example, StatCounter shows ChatGPT dominance in G20 markets except China, where domestic models and app ecosystems dominate. Any global list should clarify geographic splits. (gs.statcounter.com)
• Vendor marketing vs. independent telemetry: Vendors may report internal cumulative metrics (queries served, impressions) that are not directly comparable to independent traffic trackers. Always seek primary documentation or independent corroboration when absolute counts are cited.

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Practical takeaways for Windows users, IT teams, and power users​

• Trust the ranking, verify the metric: Use independent trackers (StatCounter, SimilarWeb) for relative market share and traffic. Treat absolute “user” numbers in press roundups as provisional unless a primary data source is cited. (gs.statcounter.com, explodingtopics.com)
• Choose by task, not headline rank:
• Research and fact‑checked answers → Perplexity (citation‑first approach).
• Broad creative and productivity tasks → ChatGPT (largest ecosystem, rapid iteration).
• Workspace‑embedded workflows → Microsoft Copilot or Google Gemini depending on your ecosystem.
• China‑centric integrations → DeepSeek (with privacy and compliance caveats).
• Governance and safety first for enterprises:
• Start with a pilot and narrow scope.
• Enforce SSO, MFA, retention policies, and disable model training on sensitive data where available.
• Add human verification for customer- facing outputs and legal/financial decisions.
• Watch for evolving pricing models: “Unlimited” tiers are becoming less common as inference costs rise; prepare for quota and per‑token pricing surprises.

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Risks and where the market needs more transparency​

• Hallucinations and misinformation: Generative models still invent plausible‑sounding falsehoods. Use citation‑aware assistants when accuracy is essential, and require human review in mission‑critical contexts.
• Data privacy and jurisdictional risk: Vendor enterprise contracts vary. Consumer tiers may be used to train models; enterprise tiers often offer data‑use exclusions. Be cautious sharing regulated data. DeepSeek’s early appearances raised real regulatory flags about data flows—a practical reminder of cross‑border risk. (wsj.com)
• Metrics transparency: Publishers, vendors, and trackers must be explicit about what “users” means. Without that, infographics and lists are marketing not measurement.
• Vendor lock‑in: Tight integration into Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 boosts productivity but increases the cost of switching vendors. Architect connectors with portability in mind.

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Final assessment and recommendations​

• The broad narrative in Jagran Josh—that ChatGPT remains the dominant global chatbot and that new entrants like DeepSeek and platform‑embedded assistants (Copilot, Gemini) are meaningful alternatives—is directionally correct and consistent with independent telemetry. StatCounter and contemporaneous industry reporting corroborate ChatGPT’s overwhelming share of measured chatbot traffic in mid‑2025. (gs.statcounter.com, prnewswire.com)
• The specific absolute numbers presented in the Jagran Josh piece (multi‑billion “users” per platform and extreme growth rates) are not supported by independent public metrics and should be treated as unverified until the publisher provides the underlying metric definitions and sources. Flagged as unverifiable.
• For readers and IT buyers, the practical question isn’t “which chatbot has the most users” but “which assistant best fits my task mix, privacy requirements, and ecosystem.” Select tools by capability (research vs. productivity vs. real‑time social intelligence), governance features, and measurable KPI improvements from pilots.

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Short checklist for readers when evaluating future chatbot rankings​

• Does the article define the metric (MAU, sessions, visits, referrals)?
• Are the numbers sourced to an independent telemetry provider or to vendor press releases?
• Are regional differences and platform integrations disclosed?
• Are growth rates shown with baseline and time window?
• Is potential bias (SEO/publisher incentives) disclosed?

If any of these are missing, treat numeric claims as provisional and prefer vendor documentation or independent trackers for procurement decisions.

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The 2025 landscape cements conversational AI as a core computing interface: market share telemetry confirms one dominant player and a handful of specialists that fill essential niches. But the industry still needs clearer, standardised metrics and better public transparency from both vendors and reporters. For Windows users and enterprise buyers, pragmatic pilots, governance controls, and an emphasis on verifiable outputs will separate useful adoption from costly missteps.

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Source: Jagran Josh The Most-Used AI Chatbots in 2025