ChatGPT Dominates AI Market with 80% Traffic Share in May 2025

ChatGPT has emerged as the dominant force in the generative AI market, commanding an overwhelming 80% of all traffic with 5.5 billion visits in May 2025. This figure dwarfs the combined traffic of its closest competitors, including Google's Gemini, DeepSeek, Grok, Perplexity, and Claude. The sheer scale of ChatGPT's user base underscores its status as the default AI assistant for hundreds of millions of users worldwide.

ChatGPT's resilience is evident in its ability to bounce back from a brief dip in traffic during early 2025, quickly reversing the trend and surging to new heights. This recovery highlights the platform's enduring appeal and the strength of its user base. OpenAI's partnership with Microsoft has undoubtedly contributed to this success, but the scale of ChatGPT's user adoption suggests a more fundamental shift in user preferences towards conversational AI that just works.

Another notable player in the AI market is the Chinese startup DeepSeek, which has seen a remarkable 13-fold increase in monthly visits, from 33.7 million in January to 436 million by May. Despite operating at a fraction of the cost of Western models and using lesser Nvidia H800 chips due to export restrictions, DeepSeek has built an empire in markets that Western AI companies have barely touched, with over 51% of its users coming from China, India, and Indonesia.

Google's AI performance, despite its vast resources and integration across its ecosystem, has been relatively pedestrian. Gemini's 527.7 million visits barely edge out DeepSeek, and its growth in popularity remains to be seen. Claude, backed by Amazon and Google, has also struggled to translate its technical superiority into mass adoption, attracting less than 100 million visits in May 2025. This disconnect between technical capabilities and user adoption highlights the importance of user experience and practical utility in the AI market.

The rise of AI has had a significant impact on traditional internet businesses, with platforms like Chegg, Quora, and freelance sites like Fiverr experiencing substantial declines in traffic. Chegg's traffic collapsed by 64% as students turned to ChatGPT for better homework help, while Quora plummeted by 51% and freelance platforms dropped by 14%. In contrast, AI-powered tools such as DevOps and code completion tools, voice generation platforms, and automation tools have seen significant growth, surging by 41%, 14%, and 12% year-over-year, respectively.

The data from Similarweb delivers a brutal truth to the AI industry: technical superiority means little without user adoption. While competitors like Claude and Gemini may impress researchers and academics, ChatGPT has captured the imagination of users worldwide with its practical utility and ease of use. OpenAI's focus on being useful has paid off, with ChatGPT crossing the finish line in the race for global adoption. The real competition now is for second place, as the AI market continues to evolve and new players emerge.