ChatGPT handles 2.5 billion prompts daily, surging toward Google-like scale

ChatGPT

OpenAI’s ChatGPT is now fielding a staggering 2.5 billion prompts every single day, according to the company’s disclosure to Axios. Of those, around 330 million come from US-based users, highlighting not just a domestic foothold, but a truly global explosion in usage.

To put that in context, Google — still the undisputed heavyweight of search — handles about 14 to 16 billion searches per day, depending on who you ask. Alphabet, Google’s parent company, hasn’t shared exact daily figures, but their most recent estimate puts annual search queries at 5 trillion, or roughly 13.7 billion a day. Independent researchers, in the past, have pegged the number to be higher, around 16.4 billion daily, according to multiple reports.

While ChatGPT still has a long way to go to match those numbers, the pace of growth is certainly impressive. In December 2024, CEO Sam Altman said the AI model was seeing over 1 billion queries per day. That means usage has more than doubled in just eight months.

It’s a major milestone for OpenAI, especially as the lines between AI assistants and traditional search engines blur. With GPT-4o powering the experience and deep integrations into web browsers, phones, and productivity tools, ChatGPT is becoming part of the fabric of how people find information, brainstorm, and solve problems.

And while Google’s still dominant, this surge suggests a changing tide: the internet’s next billion questions may not be typed into a search bar, but into a chat box.