In summary: ChatGPT remains the default AI in nearly every country, yet its share of referrals has fallen in 87% of them, and the assistant picking up the most ground almost everywhere is Google Gemini.
ChatGPT is the world's most popular AI chatbot, but it no longer has as much of the field to itself. The overall number of people using Large Language Models (LLMs) keeps expanding, and our latest analysis shows that this growth is being shared across more assistants than ever.
For this post, we've calculated which AI chatbot has gained the most market share over the past year in almost every country.
- The AI chatbot gaining the most market share is Google Gemini, the biggest riser in 143 of 179 countries, more than every other assistant combined.
- ChatGPT remains number one in 192 of 197 countries (97%), while its share of referrals fell in 87% of them over the year.
- ChatGPT's average country share slipped from about 78% to 71%. Its own user numbers grew over the same period, so the total pool of AI referrals expanded faster than ChatGPT's portion of it.
- Gemini is the settled number two, with a foothold (≥5% share) in 169 countries, far ahead of Claude, Perplexity and Copilot.
- The AI audience is diversifying. A year ago one assistant took roughly four in five AI referrals in the average country. Today it takes closer to seven in ten.
目次
What this data measures (and what it doesn't)
Throughout this article, market share means the share of AI-chatbot referral traffic to the open web, no revenue, valuation or subscriber numbers. Referral share data is provided by StatCounter, and is one of the few measures of AI usage available for almost every country on a consistent basis, which is what makes a 197-country comparison possible.
A few things follow from that. The measure is zero-sum, so a falling share can simply mean rivals grew faster. It under-counts assistants that answer in-app instead of sending people onward. And the panel is self-selected and unweighted.
It also leans towards consumer browsing. A growing share of AI use now runs through enterprise and workplace accounts, such as ChatGPT Enterprise, Gemini in Google Workspace and Copilot in Microsoft 365, where answers tend to stay inside the app.
Gemini is now the clear challenger
The assistant gaining the most referral share, in the most countries, is Google Gemini, by a clear margin. Over the past year it picked up more referral share than any rival in 143 of the 179 countries where the sample supports a verdict, more than every other assistant combined. (Of the 197 countries with data, 18 are greyed out as low-sample and China is excluded.)
Gemini's advantage also holds when you look at depth of adoption alongside the number of countries won. Count the countries where each challenger has crossed a genuine 5% and 10% share and the gap widens:
Challenger depth: countries above 5% and 10% share
Number of countries where each challenger assistant holds at least 5% and at least 10% of AI-chatbot referrals.
StatCounter AI-chatbot referral share, May-Jun 2026 average, 197 countries.
Gemini clears 5% in 169 countries and 10% in 96, well ahead of any rival at the deeper threshold, and it is the runner-up to ChatGPT in 124 countries. Claude has climbed quickly from a tiny base and now sits above 5% in 41 countries, though its adoption remains wide and shallow, clearing 10% in only four.
Why Gemini? It helps to separate two things Google ships. On the search side, AI Overviews and AI Mode are counted as Google Search, not Gemini, so they do not lift the Gemini line here at all. What StatCounter records as Gemini is the standalone assistant, and over this year Google changed how people reach it.
Two of those changes line up closely with the window in this data. Google built Gemini into Chrome as a persistent sidebar in the world's most-used browser, reaching general availability in October 2025 and then more than fifty countries, and a browser-based assistant sends people out to the open web in a way an in-app chatbot does not. It also began replacing Google Assistant with Gemini across Android, default on the Pixel 10 and rolling into Wear OS, Android Auto and Google Home. That fits the pattern in the numbers, where Gemini's share runs highest in high-Android Asian markets (19% in Taiwan, 17% in South Korea, 16% in Japan). This is timing rather than proven cause, but it points to distribution rather than simply Google's size.
ChatGPT still leads almost everywhere, while its share of referrals declines
None of this dislodges ChatGPT from the top. It remains the most-used AI chatbot in 192 of 197 countries (97%), and where it leads it accounts for an average of 71% of AI-chatbot referrals. Few consumer software categories are this lopsided:
Average share of AI-chatbot referrals by assistant
Average country-level share of AI-chatbot referrals to the open web, May-Jun 2026.
StatCounter AI-chatbot referral share, averaged across 197 countries. Values are approximate.
The mix has moved, though. The average country's ChatGPT share slipped from about 78% to 71% over the year, falling in 172 of 197 countries, 87% of them.
A falling share does not mean fewer people are using ChatGPT. Over the same period OpenAI's reported user numbers rose (see the FAQ). Both facts hold together once you separate share from volume: the pool of AI referrals is growing, and ChatGPT's portion of that growing pool is getting smaller.
In short, AI use is diversifying. A year ago a single assistant took roughly four in five AI referrals in the average country. Today it takes about seven in ten, still a dominant position, but no longer close to all of it.
The pace varies considerably by market. Among major markets the change is largest in Australia, Italy, Japan and South Korea at around 15 to 17 points, runs 10 to 13 points across the US, Canada, Germany, France and the UK, and barely moves in India at about three.
How the shift looks region by region
Broken into regions, the pattern holds: ChatGPT's share has fallen in every region, by 6 to 13 points on average, with Gemini taking up most of the slack. Only the pace differs from place to place.
ChatGPT decline vs Gemini gain, by region
Average percentage-point change in referral share per region, May-Jun 2025 to May-Jun 2026.
Negative bars: ChatGPT's average annual share change. Positive bars: Gemini's average annual gain.
| Region | ChatGPT (year) | Gemini | Next-biggest riser |
|---|---|---|---|
| Middle East & North Africa | -12.8 | +12.2 | Claude +2.6 |
| North America | -12.4 | +8.6 | Claude +5.2 |
| Eastern Europe & Central Asia | -10.8 | +10.8 | Claude +3.6 |
| Western Europe | -9.4 | +5.5 | Claude +4.5 |
| Asia-Pacific | -8.7 | +10.6 | Claude +2.4 |
| Sub-Saharan Africa | -8.5 | +8.4 | Claude +2.7 |
| Latin America & Caribbean | -5.9 | +8.3 | Claude +2.4 |
Average percentage-point change in referral share per region, May to June 2025 to May to June 2026.
Three things stand out across those regions. The shift is broad, averaging 6 to 13 points everywhere, largest in the Middle East and North America and gentlest in Latin America. Gemini's rise is universal and peaks in the Middle East and Asia-Pacific at around +11 to +12 points. And the race for second place has consolidated: Claude is now the number-two riser in all seven regions, while Microsoft Copilot is the second-biggest riser in none of them.
The United States moved from 77% to 66% over the year (−11.7 points) and the United Kingdom from 78% to 68% (−10.1).
Where ChatGPT's share fell furthest, and the rare places it rose
The country tables below use a tighter filter than the map. They include only countries with at least five million people, and drop markets where heavy VPN use or documented internet blackouts make StatCounter's readings unreliable: China, Iran, Syria, Sudan, Yemen and Libya. That leaves 165 large, open-internet markets, in which ChatGPT's share fell in 159 and rose in just 6. The sharpest moves came at both ends of that range.
Largest falls in share
ChatGPT's share of AI-chatbot referrals, May-Jun 2025 to May-Jun 2026.
| ChatGPT share | ||
|---|---|---|
| Benin | 89% to 61% | -28.0 |
| Burkina Faso | 80% to 53% | -26.6 |
| Ukraine | 91% to 67% | -24.3 |
| Niger | 80% to 56% | -23.1 |
| Taiwan | 86% to 63% | -22.6 |
| Tunisia | 91% to 69% | -22.0 |
Percentage-point change in ChatGPT's referral share.
The rare rises
The only markets where ChatGPT's share grew over the year.
| ChatGPT share | ||
|---|---|---|
| Indonesia | 75% to 82% | +7.1 |
| Tanzania | 74% to 81% | +6.8 |
| Venezuela | 5% to 10% | +5.8 |
| Rwanda | 74% to 77% | +3.7 |
Percentage-point change in ChatGPT's referral share.
The steepest drops share a common feature: ChatGPT began the year almost unchallenged in those markets. The countries at the top of the table all started close to a monopoly, often above 85% or 90%, so they had the furthest to fall as people tried other assistants. Across the 165 markets, the higher a country's starting share, the larger its fall tended to be. West African markets sit at the top for that reason, alongside Ukraine (−24.3), Taiwan (−22.6), Tunisia (−22.0) and Israel (−20.3), which all began the year with ChatGPT well above 85%.
The rare rises. ChatGPT's share grew in only six of these markets, and by small amounts next to the falls. The largest is Indonesia, up 7.1 points from an already high 75%, one of the few big markets where ChatGPT gained rather than lost ground over the year. Tanzania and Rwanda moved in the same direction on a smaller scale. Venezuela's rise runs from a low base, 5% to 10%, in a market where Gemini leads.
DeepSeek: extensive coverage, almost no referrals
DeepSeek is where referral share and real usage part company. In referral terms it barely registers: outside China it clears 1% share in only one country and 5% in none, and its worldwide referral share has fallen over the year.
That does not mean it is little used. DeepSeek has reported user numbers in the hundreds of millions, and independent web-traffic estimates place the majority of its traffic outside China. The gap between those two facts is explained by how it is used: DeepSeek is app-heavy and tends to answer in full rather than send people onward, so it generates substantial usage and very few outbound referrals.
What this means if you want your brand found by AI
The AI chatbot audience is fragmenting even as it grows. A year ago, being visible in ChatGPT was a fair proxy for being visible in AI. Today a quarter to a third of AI referrals in most Western markets come from elsewhere, and that proportion is climbing.
These engines also do not cite the same sources. In our own data at Searchable, we looked at the 2.6 million web domains that ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews each cited regularly over the last 90 days.
17%
Only about one in six were cited by all three engines.
64%
Nearly two-thirds were cited by just a single engine. Being a source one AI trusts is no guarantee of being visible in the others.
Optimising an AEO strategy for ChatGPT is just one piece of a larger puzzle for brands to solve.
Your customers are fragmenting across AI assistants
Measure where your brand actually appears across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and every other assistant your customers use, and close the gaps.
Want to chat with an expert? Book a demo
AI-chatbot referral-share change by country
Change in each model's share of AI-chatbot referrals, in percentage points, comparing May to June 2025 with May to June 2026. Hover a cell for the start and end shares, click a column to sort, or filter by country and region.
Methodology
- Source
- StatCounter Global Stats, "AI Chatbot" category, per country. Referrals are detected from the HTTP referrer header on page views to sites in StatCounter's tracking panel.
- Window
- Two-month averages a year apart: mean(May, June 2025) against mean(May, June 2026). A season-matched 12-month comparison using only fully-complete months. April 2025 is excluded because Microsoft Copilot was not fully tracked in the category until May 2025, and the partial July 2026 is excluded because it was still accumulating.
- Metric
- Percentage-point change in referral share. We avoided relative growth, which flatters tiny-base models: on that measure 0.2% to 2% would outrank an assistant that captured ten times more actual share.
- Exclusions
- China is excluded from every figure (VPN distortion). 18 countries whose month-over-month ChatGPT volatility exceeds 15 points are flagged low-sample and shown on the map without being credited with a winner. That leaves 197 countries with data and 179 scoreable. The named country-level rankings in "Where ChatGPT's share fell furthest" apply a stricter bar still: a five-million population floor, plus the removal of six markets where VPN use or internet blackouts distort the readings (China, Iran, Syria, Sudan, Yemen and Libya). That leaves 165 markets. The bar is higher there than on the map because naming a country in a ranking makes a stronger claim than shading it.
- Robustness
- The headline holds across every window we tested: Gemini leads the gain leaderboard on an April-2025 baseline (104 countries), a three-month window to March 2026 (141), a three-month window to July 2026 (147), and the final two-month year-over-year window (143).
- Known limitations
- Referral share should not be read as usage share. The panel is self-selected and unweighted by StatCounter's stated policy. Grok is absent from the dataset. AI browsers report as Chrome, and in-app browsers frequently strip referrers. Assistants that answer in-app, and use inside enterprise accounts, are systematically under-represented. Copilot's May 2025 entry into the category means our baseline sits at the edge of a tracking change, which biases the measured ChatGPT shift towards zero and makes it a conservative floor.