Claude’s consumer growth surge continues after Pentagon deal debacle
Source: TechCrunch
Claude’s daily active users are on the rise on mobile devices, as are its new app installs, following the company’s fallout with the Pentagon. After Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei refused to allow the government to use its AI systems for mass surveillance of Americans or to power fully autonomous weapons, the AI model provider behind Claude was marked as a supply‑chain risk. Anthropic’s stance, however, led many consumers to favor the model, data shows.
Mobile App Downloads
App intelligence provider Appfigures reports that U.S. downloads of Claude’s mobile app continue to surpass those of ChatGPT. The most recent figures from March 2 show Claude with 149,000 daily downloads, compared with 124,000 for ChatGPT, according to the company’s estimates.
Image credit: Appfigures
Daily Active Users
Another market‑intelligence provider, Similarweb, found that Claude’s app on iOS and Android devices recorded 11.3 million daily active users on March 2, up 183 % from the start of the year (around 4 million) and up from 5 million at the beginning of February.
Claude’s growth put it ahead of other AI apps such as Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot in daily active users, though it still trails the market leader, ChatGPT. On March 2, ChatGPT logged 250.5 million daily active users across iOS and Android.
Image credit: Similarweb
Web Traffic
Similarweb also reports that Claude’s web traffic is growing. While still far behind other top AI providers, Claude’s web traffic was up 43 % month‑over‑month in February and up 297.7 % year‑over‑year. During the same period, ChatGPT’s web traffic dropped 6.5 % month‑over‑month, and Gemini saw a modest increase of 2.1 %.
Image credit: Similarweb
App Store Rankings & Sign‑Ups
Anthropic has been touting Claude’s progress, noting that its AI chatbot is now seeing more than 1 million sign‑ups per day after becoming the No. 1 app on the U.S. App Store over the past weekend—a position it still holds. The app also ranks No. 1 in 15 other countries, including Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Singapore, Switzerland, and the U.K.
Claude has broken its own sign‑up record every day since early last week in every country where it is available.
In contrast, ChatGPT’s app uninstalls have been rising, according to an earlier report.
Anthropic was asked for comment, but none was available at the time of publication.