Claude.ai reached an estimated 950 million visits in August 2026, up 540% year on year, according to Similarweb’s new analysis. Paid channels accounted for just 0.46% of visits that month, compared with 3.5% at ChatGPT and 6.8% at Gemini.
The report tracks worldwide desktop and mobile web traffic alongside app usage. Its web estimates cover visits, including repeat use, rather than individual people or paying subscribers.
Searchers already know Claude’s name
Similarweb classified 97.9% of August’s search clicks to Claude as branded. Across July and August, direct traffic supplied 73.6% of website visits, with organic search contributing 12.3%.
That gives search marketers a more specific reading of the growth: search is largely helping users reach a product they already know. The keyword figures offer little evidence of Claude acquiring its audience through broad, non-branded searches.
The expansion also slowed. Monthly web visits have stayed near 950 million since May, although unique visitors and app usage continued to reach new highs.
The Super Bowl complicates the attribution
The small paid-channel share leaves the influence of offline advertising unresolved. Similarweb links Anthropic’s February Super Bowl campaign with increases in app activity and sign-up-page visits. Anthropic also acknowledges running advertising campaigns.
Someone who sees a television ad and later searches for Claude can arrive through organic search. A returning user can then generate dozens of direct visits. Both routes increase the unpaid share while the advertising that first introduced the product sits outside that web attribution.
For marketers, the useful finding is that Claude has built substantial demand by name and repeat usage. Calculating how cheaply it acquired that audience would require campaign spending and acquisition data beyond this traffic report.
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