Following disagreements with the U.S. Department of Defense, Claude has seen an upward trend in both daily active users on mobile and new app installations. Previously, Anthropic's CEO, Dario Amodei, refused to allow the U.S. government to use its artificial intelligence system for mass surveillance of American citizens or to power fully autonomous weapons. As a result, the provider of the AI model behind Claude was categorized as a supply chain risk.
However, data shows that Anthropic's stance has instead made the model more appealing to many consumers.
App data service provider Appfigures reported that downloads of the Claude mobile application in the United States have consistently surpassed those of ChatGPT. The company estimated that the latest data on March 2 showed Claude had 149,000 daily downloads compared to ChatGPT's 124,000.
Download figures reflect the scale of new users installing the app for the first time, while active users indicate the actual number of people using it.
In this regard, market intelligence firm Similarweb found that on March 2, Claude's daily active users on iOS and Android reached 11.3 million, representing a 183% increase from approximately 4 million at the beginning of the year and surpassing 5 million daily active users recorded in early February.
Claude’s growth has allowed its daily active users to surpass other artificial intelligence applications such as Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot, though it still lags behind leading competitors like ChatGPT. One reason for this surge in usage is that Claude’s popularity began rising late in the month, coinciding with reports of stalled negotiations between Anthropic and the Pentagon. If this trend continues through March, its ranking could improve further.
Of course, ChatGPT still dominates the market by a wide margin: on March 2, its daily active users across all platforms (iOS + Android) reached 250.5 million.
Similarweb also reported that web traffic for Claude is growing.
Although web traffic remains far behind other leading artificial intelligence companies, Claude’s web traffic surged 43% month-on-month in February and skyrocketed 297.7% year-on-year. Part of this growth came at the expense of ChatGPT—whose web traffic declined by 6.5% over the same period. Meanwhile, Gemini’s traffic increased slightly by 2.1%, showing slower growth compared to previous months.
Anthropic’s official channels are also promoting Claude’s progress: Over the weekend, the AI chat application topped the overall rankings in U.S. app stores and currently maintains the top position. It has also ranked first in 15 countries, including Austria, Belgium, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Singapore, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.
The company also stated that since the beginning of last week, Claude has set new records for daily registrations in all launched countries.
Previous reports indicated that the uninstallation rate of the ChatGPT application has continued to rise.
Anthropic declined to comment on third-party data but a spokesperson revealed that year-to-date 2026, daily active users have grown more than threefold and paying subscribers have doubled.
Editor/Stephen
