How many people use ChatGPT? Hint: OpenAI sees more than 1 billion prompts per day.

OpenAI provided new insight this week into just how much people use its signature AI chatbot on a daily basis.

If you guessed that people entered 1 billion prompts into ChatGPT every day, you still wouldn’t be close. You’d have to double that figure, and then add a half billion more, to arrive at the true sum.

That’s according to an Axios scoop, which revealed that 2.5 billion prompts are made every day in ChatGPT, OpenAI’s signature chatbot.

On Monday, Axios published a report detailing OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s plans this week in Washington, D.C., where he’ll be lobbying for the AI industry. OpenAI gave Axios some eye-opening numbers about ChatGPT’s daily usage statistics in advance of that trip. In addition to 2.5 billion daily prompts (a number that can’t be independently verified), the company also claims at least 330 million of those prompts come from U.S. users.

How many people use ChatGPT?

So, how many people use ChatGPT daily? In terms of total users, the company has reported since April that it has 500 million active weekly users, per Forbes.

And according to popular web analytics company SEMRush, ChatGPT is now the fifth-most-visited website in the world, with about 4.6 billion visits in May 2025. In addition, analytics company Backlinko reports that ChatGPT gained 100 million users in its first three months, and it now “accounts for 62.5% of the market share for AI tools” with about 10 million paid subscribers.

Axios also reported that a majority of ChatGPT users rely on the free version of the AI chatbot, which shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Since its explosive debut, ChatGPT has become a hugely influential tool, and many users now rely on it instead of Google to answer questions and find information online. While AI chatbots like ChatGPT have dedicated true believers, outlets like The Economist also report that “AI is killing the web.” On top of that, an article in The Wall Street Journal recently referred to an “AI Armageddon,” reporting that “Chatbots are replacing Google’s traditional search, devastating traffic for some publishers.”

Disclosure: Ziff Davis, Mashable’s parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.