OpenAI’s video-generating app Sora has surged to the number one position on the U.S. App Store. According to new data from app intelligence provider Appfigures, it has technically experienced a bigger first week than ChatGPT on iOS. The 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 is not 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. Appfigures notes that Canada contributed about 45,000 installs. This means the Sora launch was about 96 percent of ChatGPT’s launch when considering U.S. numbers only.
This level of consumer adoption is notable because Sora remains an invite-only app, while ChatGPT was more publicly available at launch. That makes Sora’s performance particularly impressive.
During its first day, Sora had 56,000 app installs, quickly making it the number three top overall app on the U.S. App Store. By Friday, October 3, it reached the number one position. This surge put Sora’s debut ahead of other major AI app launches, including Anthropic’s Claude and Microsoft’s Copilot, and placed 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 model and give users the ability to generate realistic deepfakes, seem to be everywhere. Users are even creating deepfakes of deceased people, a use case that has prompted Zelda Williams, daughter of the late actor Robin Williams, to ask people 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. The data indicates that daily downloads on iOS hit a high mark of 107,800 downloads on October 1, 2025. It has since seen daily installs ranging from a low of 84,400 on October 6 to 98,500 on October 4. While that is not quite as high as earlier in the week, it is still a decent number for an app that not everyone can yet use.