Meta's Muse joins a 12-app club with 10M US downloads in 40 days

Muse’s first-40-days haul puts it alongside a short list that Sensor Tower Senior Insights Analyst Kara Lee says includes mostly mobile games such as Fortnite, PUBG Mobile and Pokémon GO; the only other non-game app to join that group before Muse was Disney+, and the most recent entrant was Meta’s own Threads, back in July 2023. Meta is leaning on the same playbook that worked for Threads — cross-promoting a new app across its roughly 3.6 billion daily active users on its other services — while also, in Muse’s case, pouring more money into paid advertising: Sensor Tower data shows Meta allocated 39% of its total ad spend to Muse in October, up from 23% in September, pushing the app to the 21st-largest brand in the U.S. by ad impressions this month, up from 73rd.

Spending alone doesn’t explain the download numbers, though — retention is holding up better than for Muse’s AI rivals. In the U.S., Muse posted a 30% day-7 and 23% day-14 retention rate, versus an average of 19% and 16%, respectively, for competitors including ChatGPT, Claude and Grok, per Sensor Tower. Daily active users hit 2.5 million for the first time on October 16, up 15% week over week, a sign Meta reads as active engagement rather than just installs.

Those download totals still trail ChatGPT’s own launch, which pulled in about 15 million downloads globally in its first 40 days — but Sensor Tower notes that isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison, since Muse is currently limited to the U.S. and Canada while ChatGPT’s app drew users from markets like Japan, Brazil and Germany, with Japan alone accounting for 25% of its global installs in that window. Within the U.S., ChatGPT saw 3.7 million downloads in its first 40 days, while Grok and Claude saw only 500,000 and 200,000, respectively — figures Muse has outpaced. Since launch, Muse has held the No. 1 spot on the U.S. App Store every day except October 19, when streaming app Kick briefly overtook it before Muse reclaimed the top spot by Tuesday; it has also led Google Play over the past 30 days.

Why it matters

Muse’s combination of fast download growth and above-average retention suggests Meta’s cross-app distribution advantage can translate into AI products that actually stick with users, not just apps that spike and fade — a distinction that matters more for AI companions than for one-off hits.