Written by Admin Alex · Fact-Checked by M.Ali · Info Verified September 2026
We review and update this article regularly as new information becomes available.
TL;DR: Meta’s new AI assistant app, Muse, pulled in an estimated 1.8 million iOS downloads in the US and Canada during its first 12 days, according to tracking firm Apptopia. That’s ahead of the 1.3 million iOS downloads ChatGPT logged in the same window after its own launch. Muse also briefly hit number one on the US App Store, and Meta got there mostly by pointing its own massive user base at the new app.
1.8 million versus 1.3 million. That’s the headline number Apptopia put out this week comparing Muse’s first 12 days on iOS in the US and Canada against ChatGPT’s own opening 12 days on iOS in the same two countries. Muse also drew 2.8 million installs worldwide across iOS and Android in that same stretch, and its daily active users hit 642,000 on US mobile versus 231,000 for ChatGPT at a comparable point after launch.
A caveat worth stating plainly: Apptopia doesn’t have access to Meta’s or OpenAI’s internal numbers. These are third-party estimates built from device panels and app store signals, not confirmed figures from either company. Still, the methodology lines up fairly closely, comparing iOS-only performance in the same two markets over the same 12-day window, which makes this one of the more apples-to-apples comparisons available right now.
The real story isn’t the app. It’s the distribution.
Muse didn’t win by being a better product than ChatGPT, at least not yet. It won because Meta has three billion-plus-user platforms it can point at a new app overnight. Apptopia’s data shows 95 percent of early Muse users also use Facebook, and 63 percent use Instagram. Meta cross-promoted Muse aggressively through Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp in the run-up to launch, the same playbook that helped Threads cross 500 million users faster than almost any social app in history.
ChatGPT, by contrast, launched with no built-in distribution network at all back when it first shipped on iOS. It grew almost entirely on word of mouth and press coverage, which makes its original numbers arguably more impressive pound for pound, even if the raw totals now favor Muse. There’s also a market difference to flag: Muse launched in the US and Canada only, on both iOS and Android, while ChatGPT’s original iOS launch went out globally on day one. Comparing a two-country launch to a worldwide one isn’t perfectly clean, even with the iOS-only filter applied.
What this actually proves
Download charts are a vanity metric until they turn into retained, paying users, and nobody has that data yet for Muse. What this comparison does prove is that Meta’s distribution advantage is real and immediate. Any AI product Meta ships from here forward starts with a running head start that OpenAI, Anthropic and Google all have to build without. That’s the actual competitive story here, not whether Muse’s chatbot is smarter than ChatGPT’s.
Bottom Line: Muse beating ChatGPT’s early download numbers says more about Meta owning the biggest social megaphone on the planet than it says about the app itself. The number that will actually matter is how many of those 2.8 million installs are still opening the app a month from now, and nobody outside Meta knows that yet.
