Deepseek Users & Downloads (January 2025)

There are no official data from Deepseek, but based on analysis of a range of combined data sources, we estimate Deepseek as of January 2025 has an estimated total user-base of between 5-6 million users worldwide, based on it's 2.6 million app downloads and a peak of 7 millions daily Google searches.

We estimate Deepseek has an total user-base of between 5-6 million users worldwide across mobile app and web.

Deepseek Users & Downloads Analysis

While we don't have official numbers just yet, our deep dive into various data sources and indicators paints the picture of an explosive growth in user numbers.

The Deepseek app has been downloaded around 2.6 million times (doubling from 1 million downloads on Friday), and we estimate the global user base across mobile app and web is somewhere between 5 and 6 million people.

This underlines that Deepseek is not just gaining traction; it's on a upward trajectory on the back of the hype going on these days globally around the company.

Our estimation is grounded in a combined analysis of multiple available data sources, each offering different data-views into Deepseek's user growth.

App Store Positions

Monday January 27th 2025 got the #1 positions in 57 different countries around the world, including US, UK and Australia and pushing ChatGPT down to #2 position

As of Monday morning, DeepSeek's app had 2.6 million downloads across the App Store and Google Play, doubling from 1 million downloads on Friday.

For reference it takes around 200,000 app downloads in a single day (in US) to achieve the #1 position in the Apple App Store in the US App Store.

Some facts;

• The app is in the Top 10 list for free apps in 111 countries on the App Store and 18 countries on Google Play.
• Over 80% of DeepSeek's total downloads occurred in the past seven days.
• DeepSeek saw nearly 300% more downloads than Perplexity in the same timeframe.
• It moved to the No. 1 spot on the U.S. App Store on January 26, up from No. 31.
• On Google Play, it climbed to No. 5 from No. 133 on January 24.
• Daily active users increased by over 110% globally and in the U.S. from January 24 to 25 compared to the previous week.
• China is the largest market for DeepSeek, accounting for 23% of downloads, followed by the U.S. (15%) and Egypt (6%).
• Reaching the No. 1 position on the App Store involves factors beyond just downloads, such as the velocity of installs.

Google Trends and Brand Searches

The classic search volume databases does not provide the search volume of Deepseek AI yet. But we can get the search amount out by extracting the trend data from Google Trends, and compare it to ChatGPT.

ChatGPT is getting searched 216 million times per month, equalling around 7 million searches per day.

As we can see the Deepseek search now equalling the daily searches of ChatGPT, its safe to assume it is now getting around the same level of searches.

Comparison to OpenAI's ChatGPT Launch

Introduced in November 2022, ChatGPT attracted 1 million users in just the first five days after its release. A record for any new technology.

Within three months of its debut, OpenAI's chatbot had already built up 100 million active users each month.

While Deepseek have not yet announced any official user numbers, we might suspect they in a short period might actually have gotten more attention than OpenAI did in it's launch.

But where OpenAI created a whole new category - the AI chat - with it's launch, Deepseek is getting the momentum from the media attention, the lower cost and how it required less compute to develop (resulting in Nvidia's stock value dropping by nearly 17%).

I estimate the user growth will flat-line quite soon, and do not see it go mainstream in the same that ChatGPT did.

This table provides a clear snapshot of the impressive growth and current standing of Deepseek in comparison to ChatGPT's initial launch metrics.

Facts Table

I have collected some of the key Deepseek user and downloads stats in this table.