Sora's first week on iOS in the US was nearly as big as ChatGPT's | TechCrunch

After OpenAI’s video-generating app Sora surged to the No. 1 position on the U.S. App Store, it has now, technically, experienced a bigger first week than ChatGPT on iOS, according to new data from app intelligence provider Appfigures. Its estimates show that Sora saw 627,000 iOS downloads in its first seven days of availability, compared with ChatGPT’s 606,000 iOS downloads during its first week.

This isn’t the fairest comparison, however, because ChatGPT was available only in the U.S. during its first week, while Sora is currently offered in the U.S. and Canada at launch. Still, Appfigures says that Canada contributed about 45K installs, so the Sora launch was about 96% of ChatGPT’s launch, if the data had been based on the U.S. numbers only.

This level of consumer adoption is worth noting because Sora remains an invite-only app, while ChatGPT was more publicly available at launch. That makes Sora’s performance more impressive.

During its first day, Sora had seen 56,000 app installs in short order, bumping the app to become the No. 3 Top Overall app on the U.S. App Store. By Friday, October 3, it reached No. 1. That surge had already put Sora’s debut ahead of other major AI app launches, including Anthropic’s Claude and Microsoft’s Copilot, and put it on par with xAI’s Grok launch.

A quick scan of social media provides plenty of anecdotes that support Appfigures’ data. Sora videos, which uses the new Sora 2 video model and gives users the ability to generate realistic deepfakes, seem to be everywhere. Users are even creating deepfakes of dead people, a use case that has prompted Zelda Williams, daughter of the late actor Robin Williams, to ask folks to stop sending her AI generated images of her father.

Per Appfigures, the app has seen steady adoption since its first day on the market, September 30, 2025. Its data indicates that daily downloads on iOS hit a high mark of 107,800 downloads on October 1, 2025. It has since seen between lows of 84,400 daily installs (on Oct. 6) and 98,500 daily installs (on Oct. 4).

While that’s not quite as high as earlier in the week, it’s still decent numbers for an app that not everyone can yet use.