Over half of active ChatGPT users now predominantly use a language other than English, as reported in consumer usage data released by OpenAI. The most common non-English languages are Spanish, Portuguese, and Arabic.
The figures include individual ChatGPT plans, such as Free, Go, Plus, and Pro, but do not cover Codex, Enterprise, or education products. This means they don’t reflect total usage in workplaces, technical fields, or classrooms. Among this consumer group, OpenAI says that usage in non-English languages has increased alongside the platform’s overall growth since its launch in 2022.
What The Data Shows #
OpenAI’s Signals program tracks how consumers use their plans over time. Measured against a July 2023 baseline, ChatGPT’s weekly active users have grown across every continent, with the fastest relative growth in Africa and Asia.
OpenAI reports that lower-HDI countries had the fastest relative growth over that period, and notes that it continues to provide low-cost access through Free and Go plans.
Within that non-English activity, smaller languages are growing the fastest. In June 2026, Uzbek, Kazakh, and Burmese saw the largest increases in active users among languages with over 1 million users.
A separate analysis shows that after six months on ChatGPT, people send about 50% more messages daily and try twice as many unique tasks. This data, taken from a small 0.1% sample of accounts created between mid-October 2025 and early May 2026, offers a glimpse into recent user activity up to the end of that period. Keep in mind, though, it doesn’t showcase the platform’s entire history.
OpenAI estimates that people with typically feminine names now lead usage among classifiable names, after reaching parity last year, by broadening inferred demographics using name-to-gender matching rather than user data.
Why This Matters #
The ChatGPT user base has shifted from mostly English speakers to a more geographically diverse group, less English-centric than early adopters.
That sits awkwardly with how the retrieval layer behaves. I covered a report earlier this year showing that ChatGPT Search often runs background fan-out queries in English, even when the original prompt isn’t in English, meaning a Spanish or Arabic question can still pull from English sources before reaching an answer.
This is the second time in under a year that OpenAI has released consumer usage data through policy-facing research. When the company published an earlier large-scale look at consumer usage with Harvard last September, the takeaways were a narrowing of the gender gap and faster growth in lower-income countries. This release extends that picture.
Looking Ahead #
Signals is an ongoing release, so it’s interesting to see how the non-English majority evolves from here.
The stakes are particularly high for businesses that focus on an English-speaking audience. When most of the people inside ChatGPT are using another language, an English-only audience isn’t the audience anymore.