Who’s winning the AI battle for user attention in 2025?

• ChatGPT is still the sun at the centre: it had 46.6b visits—more than twice all the next nine chatbots combined.
• ChatGPT may still dominate by sheer size, but rivals like Grok, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude are nipping at its heels by refining user experience and solidifying loyalty.

Each month, over 60,000 people search for the “best AI chatbot”—and that number’s only going up.

We’re at the epicentre of an AI chatbot explosion, and the sheer pace is dizzying. It’s like suddenly finding yourself at the birth of the cosmos: one spark of innovation gives way to countless new stars.

What started with a handful of promising tools has now swelled into a bustling universe with thousands of chatbots, each vying for their turn in the spotlight.

It’s easy to get lost in all these choices. Whether you’re a marketer, teacher, entrepreneur, or just chatbot-curious, the quest for what actually works can feel overwhelming.

You’re not alone if you’ve hopped onto a listicle, only to find yourself more confused than when you started. People want substance, not just more options. Many are looking for viable ChatGPT alternatives. But is ChatGPT still the king, or are broader ambitions taking root elsewhere?

Reflecting on these questions, Sujan Sarkar, Co-Founder at onelittleweb.com, described the current moment as “an AI chatbot explosion that’s reshaping how the world interacts with technology.” Sarkar’s team analysed more than 10,500 AI tools between August 2024 and July 2025—a Herculean effort to map this rapidly expanding world.

Leaders and laggards in the AI race

Over the last year, the top 10 AI chatbots drew an incredible 55.88 billion visits. That’s a 123 per cent increase over the previous year! ChatGPT is still the sun at the centre: it had 46.6 billion visits—more than twice all the next nine chatbots combined.

But look out, because not all stars rise at the same speed. Grok, once obscure, had just 51,000 visitors last year but rocketed to a mind-blowing 687 million in 12 months—an increase of more than 1,340,000 per cent! This kind of growth is almost unheard of in any tech sector.

DeepSeek’s trajectory is more of a rollercoaster. It climbed quickly to 520 million visits in February 2025 but then dropped 39 per cent by July, showing how fickle user attention can be.

Meanwhile, Google’s Gemini became a heavy-hitter, growing 156 per cent year-over-year to reach 1.7 billion visits, buoyed by better integration with Google’s ecosystem.

Claude, another rising star, claims the most engaged users: people spend an average of almost 17 minutes per session, and it’s also racked up more than 40 million app store reviews—a testament to its strength in the mobile market.

Perplexity and Claude, while still behind ChatGPT in raw numbers, are quietly building powerful, loyal user bases. Both have more than doubled traffic, each reaching the billion-visit milestone.

On the flip side, some players are losing steam: Poe saw a drop of 46 per cent in visits, and both Mistral and Meta AI are stuck in the slow lane despite relaunches and fresh branding.

All told, these ten tools account for about 59 per cent of all AI-driven web traffic. In other words, the biggest planets still rule the solar system, but the smaller ones are catching up fast.

What lit the fuse?

The dramatic jump in total traffic—from 25 billion to almost 56 billion visits year over year—didn’t happen by accident.

The hottest period for growth was between March and July 2025, with May alone smashing records at 6.4 billion visits (compared to 2.4 billion last spring).

March 2025 was an inflection point. It saw an eye-popping 141 per cent surge in visits, kicked off by platform upgrades to ChatGPT, DeepSeek’s media blitz, and the arrival of new chatbots with multimodal chops (think: handling text, images, even audio).

“Success always depends on what you measure,” said Sarkar. DeepSeek, for instance, ranks fifth in their overall model, but rockets to second if you just count annual visits. That’s a reminder: user engagement, session duration, and retention paint very different pictures than raw traffic alone.

Just as interesting—who keeps users hooked the longest? Claude reigns here, with nearly 17 minutes per session. Grok and ChatGPT also keep people engaged for more than 15 minutes on average.

There’s no single “best” AI chatbot—at least, not for everyone. ChatGPT may still dominate by sheer size, but rivals like Grok, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude are nipping at its heels by refining user experience and solidifying loyalty.

If anything, the metrics show that how you define “winning” changes depending on where you look: is it about traffic? Engagement? Rapid growth?

Whatever your perspective, there’s no denying that this is an era of AI abundance. And one thing’s for sure: the chatbot universe is still expanding—and the race for attention has only just begun.