OpenAI's ChatGPT has emerged as India's favourite AI chatbot by a huge margin over the other chatbots in what is widely seen as a fight for AI chatbot users in India—the second-biggest smartphone market in the world.
As of December 8, ChatGPT had about 7.3 crore daily active users (DAUs) in India—vastly overpowering Google's Gemini, which had just 1.7 crore DAUs, a Reuters article said, citing a Sensor Tower report. This is a 607 per cent year-on-year increase, the report added.
Some stunning stats since the India-only debut of premium freebies from ChatGPT n Gemini:
— Munsif Vengattil (@MunsifV) December 17, 2025
Daily active users of ChatGPT in India surged 607% year-on-year to 73 million as of last week - more than double the number in the U.S, according to Sensor Tower.
28% of Gemini's 61… pic.twitter.com/aj3zGrMspW
Though Perplexity's DAUs in India were much lower than that for Gemini, the report said that more than one-third of Perplexity's global user base were from here—an increase from just seven per cent last year.
The report also shows that AI chatbot usage in India was more than twice that in the US—ChatGPT had just 3.6 crore DAUs in the US, as compared to 7.3 crore in India, while Gemini had just 30 lakh in the US, as compared to 1.7 crore in India.
The freebies race
While India's large smartphone usage and low mobile data tariffs are one reason for the high AI chatbot adoption in India, the report points out that the freebies offered by OpenAI, Google, and Perplexity in recent times were another important reason.
Just last month, OpenAI announced it was offering ChatGPT Go, the premium version of its flagship AI chatbot just below the Pro version (worth Rs 399), for Indian users, completely free for a one-year period.
Earlier this week, Google launched its 'AI Plus' plan for Gemini at just Rs 199 per month for a six-month trial period in India, in addition to making the Gemini AI Pro plan free for a one-month trial period.
This comes after Jio offered an 18-month Gemini Pro free trial for all its unlimited 5G users, just last month.
From September this year, Airtel also began offering a one-year Perplexity Pro free trial for all its customers—prepaid, postpaid, broadband, and DTH.
