Claude’s daily active user numbers are increasing on mobile devices, and the number of new app installations is also increasing following the company’s conflict with the Department of Defense. The AI model provider behind Claude was marked as a supply chain risk 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.
But data shows that Anthropic’s stance has led many consumers to support the model.
App intelligence provider Appfigures reports that Claude’s mobile app continues to outnumber ChatGPT downloads in the United States. According to the latest numbers from March 2, Claude had 149,000 daily downloads and ChatGPT had 124,000, company estimates show.
While downloads are a metric that tells you how many new users are installing your app for the first time, active users tell you how many people are actually using your app.
In this regard, Similarweb, another market intelligence provider, found that Claude’s app on iOS and Android devices had 11.3 million daily active users on March 2nd. This is a 183% increase from the beginning of the year, when usage was around 4 million, and up from 5 million daily active users at the beginning of February.
Claude’s growth has helped it surpass other AI apps like Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot in terms of daily active users, but falls behind other top competitors like ChatGPT. This is partly due to the fact that Claude’s usage began to spike later that month, coinciding with news of tense negotiations between Anthropic and the Department of Defense. If this trend continues throughout March, there is a possibility that it will be ranked even higher.
Of course, ChatGPT still dominates the market by a large factor, as it had 250.5 million daily active users across iOS and Android on March 2nd.
Similarweb also reports that Claude’s web traffic is increasing.
Although still far behind other top AI providers in terms of web traffic, Claude’s web traffic increased by 43% month-over-month in February and by 297.7% year-over-year. At least some of this growth may have come at the expense of ChatGPT, whose web traffic was down 6.5% month over month during the same period. Gemini also rose slightly by 2.1%, slowing its growth from the previous month.
Anthropic itself has been touting Claude’s progress, noting that its AI chatbot became the No. 1 app on the U.S. App Store last weekend and remains in that position, now recording more than 1 million sign-ups per day. The app is also #1 in 15 other countries including Austria, Belgium, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Singapore, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.
The company also noted that Claude has been breaking its own registration records every day since early last week in every country where Claude is available.
Meanwhile, a previous report found that the number of ChatGPT app uninstalls is increasing.
Anthropic said it does not comment on third-party data, but a spokesperson noted that daily active users have more than tripled and paid subscribers have doubled since the beginning of 2026.
Updated with Anthropic’s comment after publication.
