Quarterly report · Q3 2026
State of AI Tools, Q3 2026
What happened across the 17,128 AI tools we track between July 2026 and September 2026: which launched, which grew, what they charge and who uses them. Built from our own catalog and third-party traffic estimates, not surveys.
5,895AI tools launched in Q3 2026 · +2306.1% vs the quarter before
11.19Bmonthly visits to 8,388 measured AI sites in September · +4.2% vs June
45.3%of tools with known pricing offer a free plan
17,057tools added to Aitoolnavio this quarter
Key findings
- Automation & Agents had the most launches: 937, or 15.9% of the quarter’s new tools.
- Chatbots & Assistants took 57.3% of all AI-tool traffic in September.
- ChatGPT stayed the most-visited AI site at 5.92B visits a month (+10.0% vs June).
- The fastest grower among sites with 1M+ visits was Akool, +762.8% quarter on quarter.
- Visitors from the United States made up 46.1% of traffic to the tools we measure.
Launches by category
Tools whose public launch date falls in Q3 2026.
Traffic by category
Monthly visits in September, share of the total, change vs June.
The 25 most-visited AI tools
| # | Tool | Category | September | June | QoQ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ChatGPT | Chatbots & Assistants | 5.92B | 5.38B | +10.0% |
| 2 | GitHub | Coding & Development | 645M | 615M | +4.9% |
| 3 | DeepSeek | Coding & Development | 357M | 373M | -4.3% |
| 4 | Notion AI | Productivity & Office | 173M | 157M | +10.3% |
| 5 | Character.ai | Chatbots & Assistants | 151M | 169M | -10.6% |
| 6 | Claude | Coding & Development | 113M | 133M | -14.9% |
| 7 | Salesforce | Business & Marketing | 110M | 111M | -1.5% |
| 8 | DeepL | Writing & Content | 97M | 109M | -11.5% |
| 9 | Perplexity AI | Chatbots & Assistants | 92M | 116M | -20.8% |
| 10 | Box | Productivity & Office | 89M | 82M | +7.7% |
| 11 | Magnific | Image & Design | 80M | 97M | -17.6% |
| 12 | Suno, Inc. | Audio & Voice | 75M | 70M | +7.4% |
| 13 | Quizlet | Lifestyle & Education | 72M | 50M | +44.8% |
| 14 | Grammarly | Writing & Content | 60M | 46M | +30.4% |
| 15 | StartPage | Chatbots & Assistants | 57M | 64M | -11.3% |
| 16 | Remove.bg | Image & Design | 54M | 58M | -6.9% |
| 17 | Square AI | Business & Marketing | 46M | 50M | -7.4% |
| 18 | Squarespace | Coding & Development | 44M | 48M | -7.9% |
| 19 | Higgsfield AI | Video & Animation | 41M | 27M | +51.3% |
| 20 | Calendly | Productivity & Office | 39M | 36M | +8.5% |
| 21 | Survey Monkey | Business & Marketing | 38M | 40M | -5.0% |
| 22 | Greenhouse | Business & Marketing | 38M | 32M | +20.5% |
| 23 | Monday | Productivity & Office | 37M | 37M | +1.0% |
| 24 | Xero | Business & Marketing | 36M | 35M | +2.1% |
| 25 | Quillbot | Writing & Content | 36M | 34M | +4.5% |
Biggest risers
1M+ visits in September, at least 500K in June.
| # | Tool | Category | September | June | QoQ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Akool | Image & Design | 4.6M | 534K | +762.8% |
| 2 | Nearpod | Lifestyle & Education | 7.9M | 1.8M | +343.8% |
| 3 | Solvely | Lifestyle & Education | 1.9M | 507K | +281.6% |
| 4 | Rodin | Image & Design | 9.7M | 3M | +217.7% |
| 5 | Free Text-To-Speech | Audio & Voice | 1.6M | 576K | +178.1% |
| 6 | OpenTrain AI | Automation & Agents | 1.3M | 512K | +157.9% |
| 7 | Pangram | Writing & Content | 3.2M | 1.3M | +148.3% |
| 8 | Artificial Analysis | Coding & Development | 10M | 4.4M | +134.5% |
| 9 | Magic School AI | Lifestyle & Education | 2.8M | 1.2M | +134.4% |
| 10 | DaVinci AI | Image & Design | 5.4M | 2.3M | +133.3% |
Biggest fallers
Same rules, largest declines.
| # | Tool | Category | September | June | QoQ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | NotebookLM | Productivity & Office | 1.7M | 31M | -94.6% |
| 2 | Skywork.ai | Productivity & Office | 1.2M | 3M | -62.0% |
| 3 | Skywork | Automation & Agents | 1.2M | 3M | -62.0% |
| 4 | Google Labs | Audio & Voice | 28M | 68M | -58.6% |
| 5 | PopVid AI | Video & Animation | 2.3M | 5.4M | -56.9% |
| 6 | Pollo AI | Video & Animation | 3.8M | 8.4M | -54.5% |
| 7 | WeShop AI | Image & Design | 1.1M | 2.4M | -54.1% |
| 8 | Immersive Translate | Productivity & Office | 2.6M | 5.4M | -51.1% |
| 9 | JustDone | Writing & Content | 1.8M | 3.5M | -47.5% |
| 10 | OpenClaw | Automation & Agents | 2.6M | 4.7M | -45.3% |
How AI tools charge
All listings with a known pricing model.
Where the traffic comes from
Each tool’s visits split by its top countries, summed.
How we measured
- Launches use each tool’s public launch date (Product Hunt, then the Wayback Machine), not the date we listed it.
- Traffic is Similarweb’s monthly estimate for each tool’s website. Quarter-on-quarter compares September 2026 with June 2026. A change is shown only when the earlier month had at least 500K visits, so tiny sites can’t post four-digit percentages.
- Pricing is the model shown on each listing, checked against the tool’s own pricing page.
- The report updates itself each quarter. Free to cite with a link to this page; the underlying data is CC BY 4.0.
See also the monthly AI website ranking and new AI tools.