Epoch opens a window into how people actually use ChatGPT

Most claims about how people use ChatGPT come from the company itself. Epoch AI has now published something closer to independent evidence: an interactive explorer built on 8.3 million messages across roughly 660,000 conversations, shared by 5,000 US panelists recruited through YouGov who agreed to hand over their chat histories. The data runs from November 2022 to December 2025, so it captures the shift from novelty to habit.

The headline pattern is intensification. The median active user sent 14 messages a month in January 2023 and 36 by December 2025, while the mean climbed much faster, from 31 to 158, because a thin slice of people do most of the work. The most active 10% of panelists accounted for 63% of all prompts. Daily use spread too: the share of people active on 21 or more days a month quadrupled, from 2.6% to 10.5%. Individual conversations stayed short, with a median of two prompts, though the average length grew from 3.7 to 5.8.

Epoch is careful about the limits. The panel only includes people still active in 2026, so anyone who tried the product and quit is missing, and the group skews older and more educated than ChatGPT's full user base. The explorer lets you slice the numbers yourself rather than take a single summary on faith.

Why it matters

If you build or invest in chat products, you now have a public baseline for engagement instead of vendor charts, and a clear warning: a handful of heavy users can carry your averages, so watch the median and the quit rate, not just the mean.