Apple reveals the most popular free iPhone apps of 2025, and there’s a surprise runner-up behind ChatGPT

Apple has already crowned the 2025 App Store winners: a relatively short list of 17 featured apps and games on each of its platforms (iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, Apple TV, and Vision Pro included). But today, the Cupertino-based tech giant also shares a bit of the people’s vote in the app space.

We have top 10 lists, along with expanded rankings within the App Store, for the most downloaded apps and games on iPhone and iPad, divided into free and paid. There’s even a list of the most downloaded Apple Arcade titles. And while we all could have guessed that OpenAI’s ChatGPT would rank high, it ranks as the number one free app for iPhone. Still, there are some surprises when looking at the lists.

In the number two spot among the most downloaded free iPhone apps is Threads, yes, the still new Meta platform that Mark Zuckerberg hopes will steal the spotlight from X (formerly Twitter and Bluesky). That means a significant number of people have downloaded it, whether they discovered it on their own or through recommendations from the Instagram app.

Instagram itself isn’t far down the list at number six, and TikTok, which remains in a somewhat awkward position here in the United States, comes in at number four. You can see the full list below, but it’s worth noting that Google also had a strong presence in the top ten, with Gemini, YouTube, Google’s flagship app, and Google Maps.

On the iPad side, although Instagram finally arrived on the platform, it did not enter the top 10 free apps for iPadOS. As expected, it is a list full of streaming, with Disney+, HBO Max, Netflix and Amazon Prime Video securing important spaces. YouTube is in first place and Google Chrome is not far down the list. Also appearing is the ever-popular GoodNotes, a note-taking app with a suite of AI features, including handwriting cleanup and extensive folder organization.

You can keep scrolling to see the full 10 lists of the top free and paid apps for iPhone and iPad, the best games in each, and the overall list of the most downloaded Apple Arcade titles. It’s always fun, and often eye-opening, to explore these end-of-year lists to see what people use the most, or in some cases, download it and open it just once.