Meta's Muse AI Agent App Hits 730,000 Downloads, Overtakes ChatGPT on iOS Charts

Meta's Muse AI agent app collected 730,000 downloads in the roughly five days following its September 8 launch, overtaking OpenAI's ChatGPT as the top free app on Apple's U.S. iOS App Store, according to analytics firm Sensor Tower. As of Monday, Muse ranked ahead of ChatGPT, Anthropic's Claude, xAI's Grok, and Meta's own Meta AI app in the free app category.

Sensor Tower said Muse's cumulative post-launch downloads exceeded those of ChatGPT, Claude, and Grok during comparable windows after each app's release, though the firm cautioned that staggered rollout schedules between Apple's App Store and Google Play affect direct comparisons.

Muse is powered by Meta's Muse Spark family of AI models and is designed to let users direct autonomous digital assistants that complete tasks across the web, including filling out online forms and organizing email inboxes. The launch represents Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's most significant entry yet into the AI agent category, a space that gained developer attention earlier this year following the release of the open-source OpenClaw tool.

Meta offers Muse for free but also sells monthly subscriptions priced at $20 and $100 depending on usage tier — a potential new revenue stream separate from the company's advertising business.

The app's early traction coincided with an 11% surge in Meta's stock price on Monday. Wells Fargo raised its price target on Meta shares to $796, according to multiple reports. Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon told CNBC that Muse and similar agent products may be reaching "more broad-based adoption" beyond the developer and enthusiast audiences that have driven prior agentic tools.

The rollout has not been without friction. GeekWire reported late Sunday that Amazon blocked Muse's bot from accessing its site, citing privacy and security concerns. An Amazon spokesperson said third-party applications making purchases on behalf of customers "should operate openly and respect service provider decisions about whether or not to participate." Shopify took the opposite approach: CEO Tobias Lütke announced Monday that the company is partnering with Meta to enable agentic checkout for Muse within Shopify's online stores.

Muse's debut also arrives against a backdrop of intensifying scrutiny over AI safety and data privacy. Meta recently agreed to pay approximately $17 billion to settle a lawsuit brought by a coalition of state attorneys general alleging the company misrepresented harms to children and teenagers from its Facebook and Instagram products. Rasgon noted uncertainty about how much Meta prioritizes user privacy relative to security in a data-intensive product like Muse.

Whether Muse sustains its early momentum remains an open question. Meta's own Vibes AI video tool and OpenAI's Sora both generated download spikes at launch before user interest cooled. Sensor Tower's download figures reflect installs, not active usage or retention, so Muse's longer-term standing against ChatGPT, Claude, and Grok is not yet established.

What this means: Download charts are a weak proxy for product durability — Meta has been burned before by launch-week spikes that faded fast. The more consequential signal here is business model: Meta is testing whether users will pay $20–$100 a month for an agent that acts on their behalf across the web, a wager on subscription revenue that sits outside its advertising core. The Amazon block also previews a coming fight over whether agentic commerce tools get to interact with e-commerce platforms at all, or whether each retailer decides individually — as Amazon and Shopify just demonstrated with opposite answers.