A Few New Faces! The Most Downloaded Apps in the World in October

Ariel Ariel
Nov. 15

This is a single insight from This Week in Apps - It Finally Happened!. Check out the full article for more insights.


October is behind us so we crunched the numbers and ranked the most downloaded mobile apps in the world. While I don't have anything nearly as exciting to announce as I did with the highest-earning apps, there are a few new faces on our list I want to highlight.

But first, Instagram was the most downloaded app in the world in October, maintaining the position it held every single month this year except for one. Our App Intelligence shows it made its way into 52M more devices through the App Store and Google Play in October, which is actually a teeny tiny bit lower than September.

"Rival" TikTok came in 2nd with 48M downloads, according to our estimates. A tad higher than September, but not enough to dethrone Instagram.

Facebook, WhatsApp, and Temu round out the top five in October - all with more downloads than in September. And if you're curious where Threads is, it didn't go far. It fell out of the top five but only by one spot "thanks" to Temu's downloads rising 13% in October.

But let's talk about ChatGPT and Meesho.

ChatGPT rose one spot into 7th place on our combined downloads chart in October. That's nice, but what's nicer is that its downloads rose to 32M up from 24M in September, according to our App Intelligence. Let's see if this growth is sutainable now that Google's Gemini has its own iOS app.

Meesho, a shopping platform similar to Temu serving India that has yet to show its icon on our charts, made its way into the 10th spot with 21M estimated downloads. Unlike Temu, which placed 5th in October, Meesho is a social commerce platform that its transactions happening over social platforms and not directly.

The rise is likely a direct result of Meesho's mega sale, which ran between the end of September and the beginning of October.

According to our App Intelligence, the top 10 most downloaded apps in the world got 339M in October, up a smidge from September.

App Intelligence for Everyone!

The insights in this report come right out of our App Intelligence platform, which offers access to download and revenue estimates, installed SDKs, and more! Learn more about the tools or schedule a demo with our team to get started.

Are you a Journalist? You can get access to our app and market intelligence for free through the Appfigures for Journalists program. Contact us for more details.

All figures included in this report are estimated. Unless specified otherwise, estimated revenue is always net, meaning it's the amount the developer earned after Apple and Google took their fee.


Related Resources

Google Gemini Finally Comes to the App Store - Can it Catch Up ChatGPT?
Insights
Google Gemini Finally Comes to the App Store - Can it Catch Up ChatGPT?

Google has finally released Gemini, its ChatGPT competitor, as a standalone app on the App Store and I'm very curious to...

The REAL Reason Disney Stopped Subscriptions on the App Store…
Insights
The REAL Reason Disney Stopped Subscriptions on the App Store…

It's been almost two months since Disney and Hulu stopped accepting new subscriptions on the App Store, joining other ap...