OpenAI’s video generation app Sora technically had more first-week sales than iOS’s ChatGPT after rocketing to No. 1 in the U.S. App Store, according to new data from app intelligence provider Appfigures. According to its estimates, Sora had 627,000 iOS downloads in its first seven days of availability, while ChatGPT had 606,000 iOS downloads in its first week.
Shortly after this article was published, Bill Peebles, Head of Sora at OpenAI, announced that Sora had reached 1 million downloads (across platforms, not just iOS) within five days. He said this was faster than ChatGPT, even though Sora is in invite-only mode.
While ChatGPT was only available in the US for the first week, Sora is now available in the US and Canada at launch. Still, Canada contributed about 45,000 installs, according to Appfigures data, so Sora’s launch would represent about 96% of ChatGPT’s launches on iOS alone if the data were based on U.S. numbers alone.
This level of consumer adoption is notable because ChatGPT was open to the public at launch, whereas Sora requires an invitation to use. That’s what makes Sora’s performance even more impressive.
According to Appfigures, Sora quickly recorded 56,000 iOS app installs on its first day, pushing the app into the top three overall in the U.S. App Store. By Friday, October 3, it reached number one. This jump has already put Sora’s debut ahead of other major AI app launches, including Anthropic’s Claude and Microsoft’s Copilot, and on par with the launch of xAI’s Grok.
A quick look at social media reveals plenty of anecdotes that support Appfigures’ data. Sora videos, which use the new Sora 2 video model and allow users to generate realistic deepfakes, seem to be everywhere. Users are even creating deepfakes of dead people, prompting Zelda Williams, the daughter of the late actor Robin Williams, to ask people to stop sending 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. According to that data, daily downloads on iOS reached a high of 107,800 downloads on October 1, 2025. Since then, daily installs have hovered between a low of 84,400 (October 6th) and 98,500 (October 4th).
It’s not as high as it was earlier this week, but it’s still a good number for an app that isn’t available to everyone yet.
This post has been updated since its original publication on October 8 to include new information shared by OpenAI’s Bill Peebles.
