After OpenAI’s video-generating app Sora surged to the No. 1 place on the U.S. App Retailer, it has now, technically, skilled an even bigger first week than ChatGPT on iOS, in response to new knowledge from app intelligence supplier Appfigures. Its estimates present that Sora noticed 627,000 iOS downloads in its first seven days of availability, in contrast with ChatGPT’s 606,000 iOS downloads throughout its first week.
Shortly after the publication of this text, OpenAI’s head of Sora, Invoice Peebles, introduced that Sora reached one million downloads in below 5 days. He mentioned that it was quicker than ChatGPT, regardless of Sora being in invite-only mode. (Sora is iOS-only for now.)
ChatGPT was accessible solely within the U.S. throughout its first week, whereas Sora is at present supplied within the U.S. and Canada at launch. Nonetheless, Appfigures knowledge indicated that Canada contributed about 45,000 installs, so the Sora launch was about 96% of ChatGPT’s launch on iOS alone, if the information had been based mostly on the U.S. numbers solely.
This stage of shopper adoption is price noting as a result of Sora requires an invitation to get in, whereas ChatGPT was publicly accessible at launch. That makes Sora’s efficiency extra spectacular.
Throughout its first day, Sora noticed 56,000 iOS app installs briefly order, bumping the app to grow to be the No. 3 Prime Total app on the U.S. App Retailer, Appfigures mentioned. By Friday, October 3, it reached No. 1. That surge had already put Sora’s debut forward of different main AI app launches, together with Anthropic’s Claude and Microsoft’s Copilot, and put it on par with xAI’s Grok launch.
A fast scan of social media offers loads of anecdotes that assist Appfigures’ knowledge. Sora movies, which makes use of the brand new Sora 2 video mannequin and offers customers the power to generate practical deepfakes, appear to be in every single place. Customers are even creating deepfakes of lifeless individuals, a use case that has prompted Zelda Williams, daughter of the late actor Robin Williams, to ask of us to cease sending her AI-generated pictures of her father.
Per Appfigures, the app has seen regular adoption since its first day in the marketplace, September 30, 2025. Its knowledge signifies that day by day downloads on iOS hit a excessive mark of 107,800 downloads on October 1, 2025. It has since seen between lows of 84,400 day by day installs (on October 6) and 98,500 day by day installs (on October 4).
Whereas that’s not fairly as excessive as earlier within the week, it’s nonetheless first rate numbers for an app that not everybody can but use.
This publish was up to date after unique publication on October 8 to incorporate new data shared by OpenAI’s Invoice Peebles; we clarified that Sora continues to be iOS-only.
