Google’s AI assistant Gemini has reportedly surpassed the mark of one billion monthly active users for the first time, according to its parent company. CEO Sundar Pichai described the app as the fastest-growing product in the company’s 28-year history. Gemini is thus only the fourteenth Google service to ever reach this threshold.
Google reports fastest growth in company history
The leap to one billion users comes just a few weeks after the last official figure. In the quarterly report in July, Alphabet still reported 950 million monthly active Gemini users, while in October 2025 there were only 650 million according to PYMNTS. In May 2025, the figure was even only 400 million according to TechCrunch; the number of users has more than doubled since then. In its official blog post, Google states that Gemini is the fourteenth of its own services to ever reach the billion mark – after established offerings like Search, Gmail, Android, Maps, Chrome, Play, and YouTube. None of these products reached the mark as quickly as the AI app. Faster and cheaper models like Gemini 3.6 Flash, which Google introduced over the summer, likely contributed to the user growth: more free queries are possible without waiting time, the price of Flash dropped from nine to 7.50 dollars per million tokens over the summer, and the AI is now deeply embedded in services like Google Drive.
Voice control and images shape daily use
How people use the app has shifted significantly in recent months. 63 percent of users speak their queries instead of typing them, with the share even higher among heavily involved parents. More than 150 million images are generated daily through the app, a significant increase compared to previous figures. Actions in more than 40 linked programs can now be triggered automatically via Gemini, such as sending messages or creating appointments. In one out of every five interactions with the live feature, users also bring in the camera or screen sharing to show the AI directly what they mean. On iOS, the company counts more than 100 million active users, while on Mac computers, the number of queries per user is even twice as high as on other platforms. The figures suggest that Gemini is no longer just a chat tool for many people, but increasingly handles tasks independently in the background.
Growth intensifies the race with ChatGPT
The milestone fits into a tight race for the largest AI user base. TechCrunch reports that OpenAI’s ChatGPT surpassed the mark of one billion monthly users as early as June 2026, more than two months before Gemini. For comparison: Anthropic’s assistant Claude recently reached around 56 million monthly users worldwide according to PYMNTS, a fraction of the reach of Gemini and ChatGPT. Both major providers count their user numbers according to their own methodology, so a direct comparison is only partly possible – the figures mentioned have not been independently verified. Google benefits from an advantage that OpenAI does not have: Gemini is built into products like Search, Android, and Workspace, which are already used billions of times over. Users encounter the AI frequently without actively opening the app. For companies using Google Workspace or Android devices, the growing footprint mainly means that an AI assistant is now available in everyday work without a separate login.
It remains open how many of the one billion users pay for paid extra features. Neither Pichai’s announcement nor the company’s blog post gives a number for the Google AI Pro and Ultra subscriptions. For the revenue side of the business, reach is thus only half the story for now. The next test will likely come in October, when Alphabet presents its third-quarter figures and has to show whether reach also translates into revenue.
