South Korea's Generative AI Users Up 19%, But Usage Time Surges 64% — ChatGPT Leads with 24.7 Million
While the number of people using generative AI apps in South Korea grew 19% over the past year, the time they spent on those apps jumped 64%. With usage time growing more than three times faster than user numbers, analysts say AI apps are transitioning from "tools you occasionally open" to "tools you hold onto and use for extended periods."
According to a September 2026 generative AI app ranking survey released by app analytics firm Wiseapp·Retail on October 13, 2026, ChatGPT maintained its No. 1 position with 24.7 million monthly users. Google Gemini and Claude took second and third place respectively, with all top three apps recording their highest-ever user counts.
Monthly active users (MAU) refers to the number of people who launched a given app at least once during a month. Wiseapp·Retail estimated these figures using a sample of Android and iOS smartphone users.
Top three apps all hit record highs... ChatGPT's dominant lead
ChatGPT's 24.7 million monthly users is roughly 2.5 times that of second-place Gemini (9.87 million). The gap between the two apps stands at approximately 14.8 million users — meaning even doubling Gemini's user base would still fall short of ChatGPT alone. Third-place Claude recorded 4.04 million users.
Fourth through tenth place were Microsoft Copilot (1.96 million), Grok AI (1.29 million), Perplexity (1.29 million), A. (1.1 million), Gemini Notebook (540,000), Wrtn (380,000), and Zenspark AI Workspace (320,000). A total of seven apps surpassed 1 million monthly users as of September.
Notably, latecomers are making strong gains. Grok AI, which launched its standalone mobile app in 2025, tied for fifth place with Perplexity at 1.29 million users — surpassing SK Telecom's AI service A. (1.1 million). Google secured two spots in the top 10 with Gemini (No. 2) and Gemini Notebook (No. 8).
The fact that the same company placed both a conversational AI and a separate dedicated app in the rankings suggests users are beginning to choose apps based on purpose rather than relying on a single all-in-one tool. The trend is toward dividing usage — handling conversations in one app while delegating document organization to another.
Users up 19% vs. usage time up 64%
In September 2026, the deduplicated user count across the top 10 generative AI apps reached 30.75 million, up 19% from 25.93 million in the same month a year earlier. Deduplicated user count refers to counting each person only once, even if they use multiple apps.
Over the same period, total usage time grew 64% from 2.8 billion minutes to 4.6 billion minutes, an all-time high. That 4.6 billion minutes equates to roughly 76.67 million hours — if all the time South Koreans spent on generative AI apps in a single month were strung together, it would span more than 8,700 years. Compared to a year ago, that's an increase of 1.8 billion minutes, or about 30 million hours, per month.
The key finding of this survey is that the usage time growth rate (64%) is more than three times faster than the user growth rate (19%). This suggests that existing users — rather than newly acquired ones — are spending significantly more time and engaging more deeply with AI apps.
The difference becomes even clearer when converted to per-user usage time. Dividing 4.6 billion minutes by 30.75 million users yields an average of about 150 minutes, or 2 hours 30 minutes, per person per month. A year earlier, dividing 2.8 billion minutes by 25.93 million users produced roughly 108 minutes (1 hour 48 minutes). That's a roughly 39% increase in the time each person spends on AI apps in just one year. While it amounts to only about 5 minutes per day, it can be read as a shift in habit — from asking a few questions and closing the app to collaboratively editing document drafts and continuing conversations.
The trend of using multiple apps simultaneously is also visible in the numbers. Simply adding up the users of the top 10 apps yields 45.49 million, but the deduplicated actual person count is 30.75 million. The difference of approximately 14.74 million means each user uses an average of 1.48 apps — indicating that a significant number of people switch between two or more apps.
However, the press release did not directly analyze the reasons behind the increase in usage time. Whether it stems from deeper work-related usage or from more time spent switching between multiple apps would require additional data to confirm.
From competing for people to competing for time
This ranking shows that the focus of the AI app market is shifting from "who attracted the most people" to "who holds people's attention the longest." Wiseapp·Retail's survey population consists of 51.39 million South Korean smartphone users — 36.7 million on Android and 14.69 million on iOS. A simple calculation based on this figure means roughly 6 out of every 10 smartphone users open a generative AI app at least once a month.
With 6 out of 10 smartphone users already using AI apps, the room to add new users is shrinking. Usage time, by contrast, grew 64% in a single year. Going forward, the decisive battleground in AI app competition may be how deeply an app embeds itself into a user's daily life, rather than download counts.
These figures are statistically estimated by Wiseapp·Retail through its panel, and the research firm noted that actual figures may differ. The survey was also limited to general-purpose conversational AI services with dedicated mobile apps, meaning people who use AI exclusively through PC web browsers are not captured in these numbers. The time a professional spends using ChatGPT all day on a work computer falls outside this 4.6 billion minutes. The actual AI usage time among South Koreans could therefore be even higher.