AI App Market Report: Doubao Leads with 382M Monthly Users

Market researcher QuestMobile released a report on the AI app market for the first half of 2026. As of May, native AI apps had 499 million monthly active users (up 85.4%), with average monthly usage time of 183 minutes (up 40%), showing AI apps have become daily necessities.

The top three apps—Doubao, Qwen, and DeepSeek—had 382 million, 167 million, and 130 million monthly users respectively. Doubao grew 172.1%, while Qwen skyrocketed 5792.9%. Doubao's app added 13.78 million users in June, proving its paid model works.

User engagement: 27.5% of Doubao users spent over 10 minutes, along with 30% for DeepSeek and 26.1% for Kimi—all higher than last year. Native AI apps are now outpacing device-maker AI features.