ChatGPT’s mobile app hit record $4.58M in revenue last month, but growth is slowing

There’s some good news and bad news for ChatGPT’s mobile efforts. On the positive side, the AI chatbot continues to see the number of app installs and its revenue grow, with September setting a new record on both fronts: 15.6 million downloads and nearly $4.6 million in gross revenue across its iOS and Android apps worldwide. However, according to new data from market intelligence firm Appfigures, revenue growth has now begun to slow. While over the past couple of months, revenue growth was topping 30% — 31% in July and 39% in August — that dropped to 20% growth as of September.

Slowing revenue growth could be the first indication that ChatGPT is nearing saturation in terms of how many mobile users are willing to pay for the upgraded ChatGPT+ subscription service — a fairly hefty $19.99 per month in-app purchase that offers faster response times, priority access at peak times and early access to new features and improvements. The subscription has sold well so far, as ChatGPT on mobile brought in gross revenues of $2.1 million in June, increasing to $2.74 million in July, then $3.81 million in August, and now, the latest record, $4.58 million in September.

Surprisingly, however, ChatGPT is not the largest AI app by revenue. A competitor called Ask AI is making more thanks to heavy ad spending, rising from $6.48 million in May, when ChatGPT mobile launched, to a peak of $6.55 million in August, Appfigures’ data indicates. It dropped slightly in September, down to $5.51 million — but that’s still larger than ChatGPT. Other competitors like Genie and AI Chat Smith have not grown as big as Ask AI.

Net revenue may be a different story, given Ask AI’s ad spend, of course. As for ChatGPT, it netted around $3.2 million in September after Apple and Google took their cut of the in-app purchase revenues.

In addition to its revenue record, ChatGPT saw 15.6 million installs in September, bringing its lifetime total to 52.2 million, Appfigures estimates. Google Play is driving the downloads, accounting for 9 million in September while the App Store accounted for the other 6.6 million.

But the App Store, not surprisingly, is driving revenues — or $3 million of the total in-app purchases last month. The U.S. is the largest market for the AI chatbot app, accounting for 60% of ChatGPT’s revenues.