Generative AI apps have seen tremendous growth in both downloads and in-app revenue in the first half of 2025, a report from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower said. Users downloaded GenAI apps 1.7 billion times, compared to 1 billion in H2 2024. These apps doubled in-app revenue, bringing in $1.87 billion in H1 2025, as compared to $932 million in H2 2024.
The report noted that users spent over 15.6 billion hours on GenAI apps in the first half of 2025, a jump from 8.5 billion hours in H2 2024. This time was recorded over 426 billion sessions.
Asia was the fastest-growing market for GenAI apps, and also took the lead for market share in terms of downloads with 42.6%, thanks to markets like India and Mainland China. Download growth in Asia was 80% in H1 2025, as compared to 51% in Europe and 39% in North America.
While LatAm registered the highest growth for in-app purchases for GenAI apps, North America still holds the lead in terms of market share with 40%.
ChatGPT’s continued growth
Sensor Tower noted that ChatGPT was the leading app for in-app revenue in every country, bar China. However, China’s DeepSeek performed better in terms of the number of downloads in weeks after the launch.
People are also spending more time with different AI assistants, with ChatGPT leading the pack. People used the app for more than 12 days on average in a month for H1. Other popular apps were Character AI, PolyBuzz, DeepSeek, and Perplexity.
ChatGPT’s stickiness has been impressive. Sensor Tower said that people are using OpenAI’s app as much as X and Reddit. Only Google has a better rate for the average number of days used per month. The report also mentioned that, as compared to last year, ChatGPT’s weekend usage has also improved, signaling that people are relying on the AI-powered chat app beyond work.
“This development makes its app usage patterns more akin to Google’s, which consumers rely on as a primary search tool both during and outside of work hours,” the report said.
Over time, the gap between usage of ChatGPT and usage of apps in the top search engine and browser categories has decreased. For instance, in H1 2025, ChatGPT had 16 minutes of average daily usage as compared to 18.2 minutes for the top search engine and browser.
Beyond search, users are also using ChatGPT for health and wellness, shopping, personal finance, and meal prep advice. The report said that more than a third of prompts used on ChatGPT in Q2 2025 were related to lifestyle and entertainment.
Sensor Tower noted that ChatGPT is gaining users across both mobile apps and platforms. It said that more than 15% of ChatGPT users in the U.S. access it across the web and mobile, higher than other platforms like Temu and Threads. While ChatGPT has shown progress, it is still behind other platforms like Google, Facebook, YouTube, Google Docs, and Amazon, which have more than 25% of users accessing the service both on the web and mobile.
Apps are adding “AI,” literally
The intelligence firm said in its report that the term AI now appears over 100,000 times in app descriptions on both the App Store and the Play Store. Users downloaded apps mentioning AI 7.5 billion times in H1 2025, which accounted for around 10% overall downloads.
In the last 12 months, a growing number of apps in categories like AI assistant, AI content generation, Photo Editing, Nutrition & Diet, Test Prep, Tutoring & Studying, Translation, and Other Hobbies & Interest Services have added AI-related terms.
An increasing number of apps in the top charts for different categories now have “AI” in their names. However, this addition only has a short-term boost in downloads.
“Unsurprisingly, apps that added terms like ‘AI’ or ‘LLM’ to their app names or descriptions experienced a notable boost in downloads over the subsequent months,” Sensor Tower said.
