Sora’s downloads in its first week were almost as big as ChatGPT’s launch

After OpenAI’s video generation app Sora hit the top spot on the US App Store, it has now technically had 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 to 606,000 iOS downloads for ChatGPT in its first week.

This isn’t the fairest comparison, however, as ChatGPT was only available in the US during its first week, while Sora is currently offered in the US and Canada at launch. Still, Appfigures claims that Canada contributed about 45,000 installs, so the Sora launch accounted for about 96% of ChatGPT’s launch, if the data had been based on U.S. numbers alone.

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

In its first day, Sora recorded 56,000 app installs in a short time, which propelled the app to become the third overall app on the US App Store. On Friday, October 3, it reached No. 1. This surge had already put Sora’s debut ahead of other major AI application launches, including Anthropic’s Claude and Microsoft’s Copilot, and put it on par with the launch of xAI’s Grok.

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

According to Appfigures, the app has seen steady adoption since its first day on the market on September 30, 2025. Its data indicates that daily downloads on iOS reached a peak of 107,800 downloads on October 1, 2025. Since then, it has seen a low of 84,400 daily installs (on October 6) and 98,500 daily installs (on October 4).

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