After a tiff with the Pentagon, Anthropic found itself on the outs with the US government, and its arch-competitor, OpenAI, swooped in to pick up the pieces. And yet the tiff has been good business for Anthropic, which saw its Claude AI-powered app reach the top spot among free apps on Apple’s App Store for the first time, thanks (ostensibly) to users who approved of Anthropic’s stand against the Pentagon’s desire to use Claude for lethal purposes.
a swift run to the top
“The Claude iOS app has gained momentum this month,” read a CNBC article from February 28, 2026. “On Jan. 30, it was ranked No. 131 in the U.S., and it bounced around the top 20 for much of February, according to data from analytics company Sensor Tower. The data shows ChatGPT has held on to the No. 1 spot for most of February.”
OpenAI announced soonafter that it’d reached an agreement with the U.S. Department of Defense that would allow the DoD to use its ChatGPT model.
Much of the public took Anthropic’s stand against the DoD’s demands and OpenAI’s unspecified acquiescence to the DoD as a sign that the two companies shared distinct value systems.
Having used ChatGPT and Claude extensively and consistently over the years (alongside their main competitors), I’d say the two are neck-and-neck in effectiveness. Swapping out ChatGPT for Claude is as easy as downloading a new app. Both have free versions and paid versions that cost about the same.
Deleting one app in favor of another that more closely matches one’s values is hardly a difficult hurdle to clear. When I reviewed Claude last year, I called it a gentler alternative to ChatGPT, thanks to Anthropic’s strong guardrails and ethical guidelines.
The post Anthropic’s Claude Hits No. 1 in the App Store as Users Ditch ChatGPT Amid Recent Backlash appeared first on VICE.
