Meta’s AI companion Muse reached 10.2 million U.S. downloads in its first 40 days, putting it among a small group of apps to reach that mark so quickly. The early figures point to strong demand, but downloads are only one measure of an app’s performance: whether people keep returning matters too.
A fast start, backed by Meta’s reach
Since its September debut, Muse has recorded 10.9 million downloads in total, according to market intelligence provider Sensor Tower. The United States accounted for 10.2 million of them. Sensor Tower Senior Insights Analyst Kara Lee said only 11 other apps had reached this kind of post-launch milestone. The most recent was Meta’s Threads, in July 2023; many of the other apps were mobile games.
Meta has ways to put a new app in front of a large audience. The company promotes Muse across its services, which include 3.6 billion daily active users. It used a similar approach with Threads, which was built on Instagram’s social graph, with content integrated into both Instagram and Facebook.
Muse’s launch has also received a substantial advertising push. Sensor Tower’s data puts Meta’s share of its total advertising spend allocated to Muse at 39% in October, up from 23% last month. Muse climbed from 73rd place in September to 21st among U.S. brands by advertising impressions this month.
Early signs that users are returning
A large first wave of downloads does not, by itself, show whether an app will hold people’s attention. Muse’s early retention figures offer another way to assess its launch: in the United States, 30% of users remained after 7 days and 23% after 14 days.
Sensor Tower’s data puts the average for ChatGPT, Claude, and Grok at 19% after 7 days and 16% after 14 days. Muse’s figures are higher at both points. They describe how users behaved during the app’s early period, though they do not establish how retention may change over time.
Daily active users provide a separate signal of ongoing use. Muse reached 2.5 million daily active users for the first time on October 16, a 15% week-over-week increase. Taken together, downloads, retention, and daily activity show different parts of the launch: how many people installed the app, how many returned, and how many used it on a given day.
Comparisons depend on where an app is available
In the United States, Muse’s first 40 days brought more downloads than the corresponding launch periods for the AI competitors named in the report. ChatGPT had 3.7 million U.S. downloads, while Grok had 500,000 and Claude had 200,000, according to Sensor Tower. Muse also rose to No. 1 on the App Store and, at one point, outpaced some of the metrics ChatGPT recorded after its launch.
The global figures tell a different story. ChatGPT reached around 15 million global downloads in its first 40 days, more than Muse. But the two apps did not have the same geographic reach: Muse is available only in the U.S. and Canada for now, while ChatGPT drew users in markets including Japan, Brazil, and Germany. Japan alone accounted for 25% of ChatGPT’s global installs during that period.
That difference matters when interpreting the totals. U.S. downloads compare the apps in one market; global downloads include places where Muse was not available. The figures show Muse’s strength in its current footprint without establishing how it would perform in other markets.
Rankings underline momentum, not durability
Muse held the No. 1 position on the U.S. App Store on every day after its launch except October 19, when streaming app Kick briefly passed it. Muse reclaimed the top spot as of Tuesday, and it had also been No. 1 on Google Play over the past 30 days.
Those rankings and the advertising figures help explain the scale of Muse’s early visibility. Retention and daily active users add evidence that some people are continuing to use the app after installing it. The early results set a high bar for the launch; the available figures, however, cover only the opening stretch, so they cannot show whether Muse will sustain its audience over time.