If the AI wars of 2025 had a scoreboard, one name would easily be head and shoulders above the rest of the pack here in India: ChatGPT. According to fresh data by Sensor Tower, India isn’t just another battleground for AI chatbots, it’s increasingly becoming the arena where winners and losers will be decided. As of mid-December, ChatGPT’s daily active user count in India has surged to an estimated 73 million, a breathtaking 607% year-on-year jump that not only races past its own US numbers but solidifies its grip as the most widely used GenAI service in the country.
By contrast, Google’s Gemini AI – despite a massive free-tier push through a tie-in with Reliance Jio – logged roughly 17 million daily users in India, itself a respectable figure but still less than a quarter of ChatGPT’s footprint, according to Reuters.
Perplexity AI, too, has seen meaningful gains, with India now constituting more than one-third of its global daily active users – but in relative terms its base remains far behind the runaway leader.
What’s remarkable isn’t just the gap in raw numbers, but the engagement patterns beneath them. Sensor Tower’s data shows nearly half of ChatGPT’s monthly Indian users open the app daily, compared with roughly 20% for Perplexity and just 14% for Gemini – a decisive metric for India, especially, where habitual use often predicts long-term loyalty.
This snapshot of user adoption reframes the entire conversation around “free AI” in India. In the fall of 2025, Silicon Valley giants and nimble startups alike began showering Indian users with premium chatbot access at no cost – OpenAI with its year-long free ChatGPT Go access, Google with 18 months of Gemini AI Pro via the Jio network, and Perplexity with a free Pro tier for Airtel users.
Yes, the freebies have unlocked unprecedented scale – but they’ve also unlocked something even more coveted. A trove of behavioural and linguistic data unique to the Indian market. Many AI architects view this as a kind of linguistic terraforming – where tomorrow’s general-purpose LLMs are being shaped with the learnings from millions of Indian users.
Yet this frenetic data harvest raises its own questions. Some users, conscious of privacy entanglements, are opting out of training-data sharing even while embracing free access. Meanwhile, India’s policymakers are wrestling with proposals to compensate content creators whose work feeds these generative models.
Looking ahead to 2026, the big question isn’t just who climbs or slips on the leaderboard – it’s who owns the broader generative AI experience in India. Will ChatGPT’s early lead translate into lasting domination? There’s reason to think it might. But Google’s deep pockets and integration with Android, search and cloud infrastructure could yet give Gemini a rebound path, especially if it ties into how Indians actually work and live online. Perplexity’s niche strength – research-oriented tools and a hybrid search-chat interface – could carve out a loyal sub-community, even if its mass market appeal looks difficult.
And then there’s the wildcard I’m certainly not discounting just yet – an Indian AI champion of indigenous origin. With startups sprouting in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune and beyond, and with increasingly sophisticated local R&D, the idea of a general-purpose AI chatbot built by Indians for Indians that gets used by millions in different parts of the country isn’t fantasy. If such a platform could tap India’s linguistic diversity and cultural nuance more authentically than any global player, it might just rewrite this leaderboard entirely.
Also read: Free ChatGPT Go, Gemini Pro, Perplexity Pro for India: Generosity or desperation?
