OpenAI’s Sora app for AI movies is a viral hit, regardless of being invite-only for now and restricted to customers within the U.S. and Canada at launch. On its first day, Sora noticed 56,000 downloads, and is now ranked because the No. 3 Prime Total app on Apple’s U.S. App Retailer, based on new information from app intelligence supplier Appfigures. On Friday, October 3, it became the No. 1 app on the U.S. App Retailer.
That places it forward of Google Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
The agency estimates Sora’s iOS app pulled in a complete of 164,000 installs throughout its first two days, September 30 and October 1.
The day-one determine additionally places Sora’s debut forward of the efficiency of different main AI app launches, together with Anthropic’s Claude and Microsoft’s Copilot, and places it on par with xAI’s Grok launch. In the meantime, OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini iOS apps had considerably stronger launches, with every reaching a minimum of 80,000 downloads on day one.
Since Sora continues to be invite-only, this is probably not the fairest comparability, we’ll admit. It’s doable the brand new video app might have attracted even extra installs if it had been open to all customers.
Regardless of this restriction, it’s a reasonably robust displaying for the brand new launch, indicating demand for AI video instruments in customers’ fingers in additional of a social networking-like expertise. (That is a lot to the chagrin of some at OpenAI, who need the corporate to concentrate on fixing tougher issues that profit humanity. However who’s to say that humanity isn’t benefiting from deepfakes of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman asking, “Are my piggies having fun with their slop?”)
To match Sora’s early success to different AI apps, Appfigures needed to run an evaluation that solely seemed on the different AI apps’ U.S. and Canadian downloads. That’s as a result of the completely different AI apps in the marketplace have pursued completely different launch methods. For example, ChatGPT initially launched on iOS and restricted itself to U.S. customers on the time, whereas Grok restricted its iOS-only launch to the U.S., Australia, and India. Anthropic, in the meantime, didn’t point out there have been geographic restrictions when it first introduced its Claude app to iOS final 12 months.
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For extra of an apples-to-apples comparability, Appfigures crunched the numbers to focus solely on every app’s U.S. downloads, plus these in Canada, if the app had been accessible there at launch.
It discovered that ChatGPT and Gemini had bigger launches than Sora, with 81,000 and 80,000 day-one iOS downloads, respectively. Sora tied with Grok for day-one installs, at 56,000. And it simply beat out the launches from AI apps Claude and Copilot. The previous pulled in 21,000 day-one downloads, whereas the latter solely noticed 7,000.
Sora additionally hit the U.S. App Retailer’s prime charts, changing into the No. 3 total prime app by day two. For comparability, ChatGPT reached No. 1 on its second day, whereas Grok was No. 4, Gemini was No. 6, Copilot was No. 19, and Claude was No. 78.
This publish was initially revealed on October 2, 2025, 11:24 AM PT. It was up to date to replicate the app’s larger rating on Friday.