Claude’s daily active users triple as Pentagon standoff drives consumer growth

TL;DR: Claude’s daily active users hit 11.3 million on 2 March, up 183% since January. The app is topping the US App Store and seeing over 1 million daily sign-ups, while ChatGPT’s app uninstalls have been growing.

Anthropic’s refusal to let the Pentagon use Claude for mass surveillance or autonomous weapons got the company labelled a supply-chain risk. But the consumer response has gone the other direction entirely.

The numbers

Appfigures data shows Claude’s US mobile downloads reached 149,000 per day as of 2 March, ahead of ChatGPT’s 124,000. Similarweb puts Claude’s daily active users across iOS and Android at 11.3 million, up from roughly 4 million at the start of the year and 5 million at the beginning of February.

Claude’s web traffic rose 43% month-over-month in February and 297.7% year-over-year. ChatGPT, by comparison, saw a 6.5% month-over-month drop in web traffic.

The gap remains large in absolute terms. ChatGPT had 250.5 million daily active users on 2 March. But Claude is now ahead of Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot on daily active users, and closing ground.

App Store dominance

Anthropic says Claude is the number one app on the US App Store and holds the top spot in 15 other countries, including the UK, Germany, France, and Canada. The company reports breaking its own sign-up record every day since early last week in every market where Claude is available.

Anthropic confirmed that daily active users have more than tripled since the start of 2026, and paid subscribers have doubled.

Looking forward

Whether this consumer surge lasts beyond the news cycle is the open question. Brand loyalty in AI chatbots is still weak, and users switch freely between products. But Anthropic has shown that taking a public stance on ethics can translate directly into user growth — at least in the short term.