ChatGPT Statistics 2026: Users, Usage and UK Figures
ChatGPT statistics for 2026 show more than 1 billion weekly active users (OpenAI, August 2026). About half of US adults (49%, Pew Research Center, February 2026) use an AI chatbot, and 54% of UK adults use online AI tools (Ofcom). Every figure on this page has a named source, a date and a link.
Why can you trust these ChatGPT statistics?
ChatGPT statistics are quoted everywhere, but many pages repeat numbers with no source or mix figures from different years. This page is built to be checked. Every figure comes from a named source that we opened and read on 21 October 2026, and each one has its year and a link beside it.
Where OpenAI or another body has not published a number, we say so. Where we could not verify a figure, we left it out. Last checked: 21 October 2026. Next review due: 21 November 2026.
What is on this page?
What are the key ChatGPT statistics for 2026?
Here are the five headline figures, each with its source and date. They measure different things, so read the wording in the first column before you quote one.
Statistic | Figure | Source | Date |
ChatGPT weekly active users (OpenAI announcement) | More than 1 billion | 31 August 2026 | |
Weekly users described at OpenAI DevDay | 1.2 billion | Late September 2026 | |
Consumer subscribers to ChatGPT | More than 50 million | 27 February 2026 | |
US adults who use AI chatbots | 49% | Survey 17 to 23 February 2026 | |
UK adults who use online AI tools | 54%, up from 31% a year earlier | Reported 7 April 2026 |
What this means: three different groups are being counted. OpenAI counts weekly active users worldwide. Pew asks US adults whether they use any AI chatbot. Ofcom asks UK adults about online AI tools. Do not subtract one figure from another, because the questions are not the same.
How to cite this page: please cite the original source linked beside each figure. To reference this page as well, use: WhatIsChatGPT.co.uk, ChatGPT statistics 2026, last checked 21 October 2026.
How many people use ChatGPT?
OpenAI is the only source for global ChatGPT user counts, because it is the only body that sees every account. Its figures are announcements rather than audited statistics, and each one is a floor, shown as "more than".
Statistic | Figure | Source | Date |
Weekly active users | More than 900 million | 27 February 2026 | |
Weekly active users | More than 1 billion | 31 August 2026 | |
Weekly users across ChatGPT | 1.2 billion (OpenAI's wording: "collective") | Late September 2026 | |
Consumer subscribers | More than 50 million | 27 February 2026 | |
Paying business users | More than 9 million | 27 February 2026 | |
Weekly Codex users | 1.6 million, more than tripled since the start of 2026 | 27 February 2026 |
What this means: OpenAI's own weekly count rose from over 900 million in February to over 1 billion by the end of August. Do not divide "more than 1 billion" by "1.2 billion" to work out a growth rate, because the two are rounded in different ways. We did not find a published UK-only ChatGPT user count from OpenAI, Ofcom or the ONS. For how ChatGPT works from the start, see our guide to what ChatGPT is.
Who uses ChatGPT?
The best public data on who uses ChatGPT comes from Pew Research Center, which surveys US adults. Pew asked two different questions in two different years, so we show them in separate tables.
Who has ever used ChatGPT? (US adults, 2025)
Group | Have ever used ChatGPT | Source | Date |
All US adults | 34% | Survey 24 February to 2 March 2025 | |
Adults under 30 | 58% (43% in 2024, 33% in 2023) | Survey 24 February to 2 March 2025 | |
Adults 30 to 49 | 41% | Survey 24 February to 2 March 2025 | |
Adults 50 to 64 | 25% | Survey 24 February to 2 March 2025 | |
Adults 65 and older | 10% | Survey 24 February to 2 March 2025 | |
Postgraduate degree | 52% | Survey 24 February to 2 March 2025 | |
Bachelor's degree only | 51% | Survey 24 February to 2 March 2025 | |
Some college | 33% | Survey 24 February to 2 March 2025 | |
High school or less | 18% | Survey 24 February to 2 March 2025 |
Who uses any AI chatbot? (US adults, 2026)
Group | Use AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Gemini or Copilot | Source | Date |
All US adults | 49% use, 51% never use | Survey 17 to 23 February 2026 | |
Ages 18 to 29 | 66% use, 34% never | Survey 17 to 23 February 2026 | |
Ages 30 to 49 | 61% use, 39% never | Survey 17 to 23 February 2026 | |
Ages 50 to 64 | 42% use, 58% never | Survey 17 to 23 February 2026 | |
Ages 65 and older | 23% use, 77% never | Survey 17 to 23 February 2026 |
What this means: younger and more highly educated adults are the most likely to use ChatGPT, and use falls steadily with age. The 2026 figure of 49% is wider than the 2025 figure of 34%, because it covers any AI chatbot rather than ChatGPT alone. It is not evidence that ChatGPT use grew by 15 points. Both surveys cover US adults only.
How do people use ChatGPT?
Two named sources describe how people use it. Pew shows what US adults say they use ChatGPT for. OpenAI Signals shows how behaviour changes over time inside ChatGPT's individual plans.
What do US adults use ChatGPT for?
Statistic | Figure | Source | Date |
Employed adults who use ChatGPT for work | 28%, up 20 percentage points in two years | Survey 24 February to 2 March 2025 | |
US adults who have used it to learn something new | 26% (8% in March 2023) | Survey 24 February to 2 March 2025 | |
US adults who have used it for entertainment | 22% (11% in March 2023) | Survey 24 February to 2 March 2025 | |
US adults who have heard at least a little about ChatGPT | 79% (58% in March 2023) | Survey 24 February to 2 March 2025 |
How does ChatGPT use change over time? (OpenAI Signals)
Statistic | Figure | Source | Date |
Messages sent per day, six months after signing up | 50% more than in the first 28 days | 30 June 2026 (data to 31 May 2026) | |
Distinct tasks tried, six months after signing up | Doubled | 30 June 2026 (data to 31 May 2026) | |
Active users who mainly use a language other than English | Over half | 30 June 2026 (data to 31 May 2026) | |
Leading non-English languages | Spanish, Portuguese and Arabic | 30 June 2026 (data to 31 May 2026) | |
Fastest relative growth in weekly users since July 2023 | Africa and Asia | 30 June 2026 (data to 31 May 2026) | |
Usage by typically female names | Now the majority of usage globally (an estimate from names, as OpenAI does not collect gender) | 30 June 2026 (data to 31 May 2026) |
What this means: ChatGPT has moved from a novelty to a tool many people use for work and study, and people who stay tend to use it more often and for more things. The Signals figures come from a 0.1% sample of accounts created between 15 October 2025 and 1 May 2026, they cover Free, Go, Plus and Pro plans, and they exclude users under 18, so they describe newer adult users rather than everyone.
How many UK adults use AI tools?
The UK regulator Ofcom publishes the best UK survey on this. We could not open Ofcom's report page on the day, so the figures below are as reported by The Register on 7 April 2026. Check them against Ofcom's own report before using them in print.
Statistic | Figure | Source | Date |
UK adults who use online AI tools | 54% | Reported 7 April 2026 | |
UK adults who used online AI tools a year earlier | 31% | Reported 7 April 2026 | |
Adults who read AI-generated search summaries at least sometimes | Three-quarters | Reported 7 April 2026 | |
Survey sample | 7,533 UK adults aged 16 and over | Fieldwork September to November 2025 |
What this means: more than half of UK adults now use some kind of AI tool, a big jump in one year. The figure covers all online AI tools, not only ChatGPT, and the fieldwork is almost a year old. Nobody has published a UK-only ChatGPT count that we could verify. If you want UK prices, see how much ChatGPT costs in the UK.
Why do some people not use AI chatbots?
Pew asked the US adults who never use AI chatbots why not. Privacy and accuracy worries sit close behind a simple lack of interest.
Statistic | Figure | Source | Date |
US adults who never use AI chatbots | 51% | Survey 17 to 23 February 2026 | |
Non-users: not interested in using them | 83% give this as a reason (60% a major reason) | Survey 17 to 23 February 2026 | |
Non-users: concerned about how personal information will be used | 79% (54% a major reason) | Survey 17 to 23 February 2026 | |
Non-users: do not trust them to give accurate information | 76% (45% a major reason) | Survey 17 to 23 February 2026 | |
Non-users: do not know how to use them | 55% (29% a major reason) | Survey 17 to 23 February 2026 | |
Non-users: think others will judge them | 14% (3% a major reason) | Survey 17 to 23 February 2026 | |
Non-users unlikely to use one in the next 12 months | 67% (5% say very or extremely likely) | Survey 17 to 23 February 2026 |
What this means: most non-users are not waiting to be persuaded, and about eight in ten cite privacy or accuracy as a reason. Both are fair questions, and our guide to whether ChatGPT is safe covers the privacy side.
How many people pay for ChatGPT?
OpenAI has published two paid-user figures, both from 27 February 2026: more than 50 million consumer subscribers and more than 9 million paying business users. Here are the individual plan prices on OpenAI's pricing page, checked on 21 October 2026.
Plan | Monthly price (US) | Source | Date checked |
Free | $0 | 21 October 2026 | |
Go | $8 (this plan may include ads) | 21 October 2026 | |
Plus | $20 | 21 October 2026 | |
Pro | From $100, with three usage tiers | 21 October 2026 | |
Business | Price not shown on the page; plans start at 2 users | 21 October 2026 |
OpenAI also described a Pro 500 tier at DevDay with 25 times the usage allowance of Plus (OpenAI, DevDay 2026 recap). Advertising is part of how the free tier is funded:
Statistic | Figure | Source | Date |
ChatGPT Ads annualised revenue run rate | $1 billion, reached in under 200 days after launch | 31 August 2026 | |
Advertisers using ChatGPT Ads | Tens of thousands | 31 August 2026 | |
Countries where ChatGPT Ads is available | Over 40 | 31 August 2026 |
What this means: our own arithmetic, not an OpenAI figure: 50 million subscribers against 900 million weekly users, both from the same 27 February announcement, is about 5.5%. Both numbers are "more than" figures that measure different things, so treat it as a rough scale only. OpenAI does not publish a free versus paid split. For every plan side by side, see our ChatGPT plans compared guide, or our explainer on whether ChatGPT is free.
How did we check these numbers?
On 21 October 2026 we opened each page below, read it, and copied the figure, its date and the wording of what was measured. We checked that each number sits in the source itself and not only in someone's quote of it.
OpenAI, Scaling AI for everyone (27 February 2026)
OpenAI, A milestone in expanding access to AI (31 August 2026)
OpenAI, DevDay 2026 recap (late September 2026)
OpenAI, How ChatGPT adoption has expanded (30 June 2026)
OpenAI, ChatGPT pricing page (checked 21 October 2026)
Pew Research Center, 34% of U.S. adults have used ChatGPT (25 June 2025)
Pew Research Center, Why Don't Some People Use Chatbots? (9 October 2026)
The Register, reporting Ofcom's adults' media use and attitudes findings (7 April 2026)
We also looked for a UK-only ChatGPT user count from OpenAI, Ofcom and the Office for National Statistics and found none. Ofcom's own report page could not be opened on the day, so the UK figures rest on The Register's report.
Which figures did we leave out?
Website traffic share between AI chatbots. We read a Similarweb post on this but could not tie each figure to a clean month, so we left it out.
UK business use of AI from the Office for National Statistics. We saw a figure quoted in search results but did not open the ONS release that contains it. The ONS bulletin we did open (4 June 2026) has no AI figure.
Monthly app user estimates and country-by-country user shares from third-party sites. We could not trace them to a primary source we could open.
Any UK ChatGPT user count from a blog or marketing page that cites Ofcom but that we could not match to an Ofcom publication.
What are the limits of these statistics?
OpenAI user and subscriber figures are the company's own announcements. They are not independently audited, and each is a minimum ("more than").
Surveys ask different questions. Pew's 2025 figure is about ChatGPT, Pew's 2026 figure is about AI chatbots in general, and Ofcom's is about online AI tools. They cannot be compared directly.
Surveys have sampling error and describe the weeks they were run. Pew's samples were about 5,100 US adults each, and Ofcom's was 7,533 UK adults.
OpenAI Signals uses a 0.1% sample of newer accounts and excludes users under 18. The female-names figure is an estimate from first names.
Prices are the US dollar prices on OpenAI's pricing page. UK App Store prices are in our UK cost guide.
Not published, as far as we could find: a UK-only ChatGPT user count, a free versus paid split, and user numbers by country.
How often is this page refreshed? monthly. We change a figure only when a named source publishes a newer one, and we update the last checked date each time. The next review is due on 21 November 2026.
Frequently asked questions about ChatGPT statistics
How many people use ChatGPT?
OpenAI said ChatGPT had more than 1 billion weekly active users on 31 August 2026, and described 1.2 billion weekly users at its DevDay event in late September 2026. These are OpenAI's own announcements, not audited figures. In OpenAI's Signals analysis, a user counts as active if they sent a message in the previous seven days.
How many people pay for ChatGPT?
On 27 February 2026 OpenAI said it had more than 50 million consumer subscribers and more than 9 million paying business users. We did not find a newer published figure when we checked on 21 October 2026.
What share of Americans use ChatGPT?
Pew Research Center found that 34% of US adults had ever used ChatGPT in a survey run from 24 February to 2 March 2025. A later Pew survey in February 2026 asked about AI chatbots in general and found 49% of US adults use them. The two questions differ, so the second number is not simply a rise on the first.
How many UK adults use ChatGPT?
We did not find a published UK-only ChatGPT user count from OpenAI, Ofcom or the Office for National Statistics. The closest figure is Ofcom's finding, reported in April 2026, that 54% of UK adults use online AI tools, up from 31% a year earlier. That covers all AI tools, not only ChatGPT.
Is ChatGPT free to use?
Yes. OpenAI's pricing page lists a Free plan at $0 a month, alongside Go at $8, Plus at $20 and Pro from $100. Paid plans add more messages, uploads and features. See our guide to whether ChatGPT is free for what each plan includes.
Can I cite these ChatGPT statistics?
Yes, but please cite the original source for each figure, which is linked beside it. If you want to reference this page as well, use: WhatIsChatGPT.co.uk, ChatGPT statistics 2026, last checked 21 October 2026.
How often is this page updated?
We review it monthly and change a figure only when a named source publishes a newer one. The next review is due on 21 November 2026, and the last checked date at the top changes each time.
Key Takeaways
OpenAI said ChatGPT had more than 1 billion weekly active users on 31 August 2026.
More than 50 million people were consumer subscribers on 27 February 2026, and OpenAI does not publish a free versus paid split.
49% of US adults use AI chatbots (Pew, February 2026), and younger, more educated adults use them most.
54% of UK adults use online AI tools, up from 31% a year earlier (Ofcom, as reported in April 2026).
Users who stay send 50% more messages per day after six months (OpenAI Signals, June 2026).
Always check what a statistic measures before you quote it, and cite the original source.
The bottom line
ChatGPT is used by well over a billion people a week according to OpenAI, and by roughly half of US adults according to Pew, but the exact picture depends on who is counting and what they ask. Expect these numbers to keep moving as OpenAI and independent researchers publish new data. Explore more plain-English guides on whatischatgpt.co.uk.
