The AI for work landscape is accelerating again this month, with total traffic up by almost 15%, led by key gains in research (Perplexity) and chatbot (ChatGPT) categories.

This month’s report reflects the practical value of AI in the workplace, with standout growth in tools across purposes. I’ve spotted new data shedding light on whether Perplexity could realistically replace Google and which tools you should embrace now to stay productive and ahead at work.

We created this monthly list to understand which tools are popular and, therefore, what you should check out if you’re implementing AI in your workplace.

Join Lead with AI to get support from a thriving community of leaders responsible for AI in their organizations, or check out our recommendations for the best generative AI courses.

Here are highlights of the top 100 AI tools ranking in October, based on Similarweb website traffic and search traffic (by name) in September 2024.

1. Perplexity Continues to Win Users and Dominates AI Research Space

In recent months, Perplexity has faced scrutiny over its AI-driven scraping practices by major media outlets, most recently with The New York Times and News Corp. Many headlines were around whether Perplexity risks damaging its reputation.

However, from a consumer standpoint, the convenience and efficiency that Perplexity provides in researching have outweighed these controversies.

Evidence of its popularity is clear: monthly traffic has surged 25%, and searches have increased by 24%, boosting Perplexity’s ranking by two spots in the top 10 AI tools for work.

Since our first tracking in December, Perplexity has maintained steady growth, now boasting one and a half times the users it had nine months ago.

In comparison, Perplexity has surpassed and now more than triples its closest competitor, Liner (#11). Though both offer similar features (live web browsing, structured answers, cited sources, suggested follow-up questions, and an academic paper filter), Perplexity appears to be the most preferred tool in the AI research category.

Perplexity Commands Over 60% of AI Research Traffic

Perplexity dominates the AI research tool category, capturing 61.64% of all traffic. This is no surprise, given its ability to deliver a faster, smarter search experience, marking it as a leader in AI-powered technology.

Fun fact: Perplexity serves over 100M search queries a week, per Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas.

Perplexity’s Appeal is Global, Especially in…Asia

While the US remains Perplexity’s largest market by absolute number, almost 80% of its traffic comes outside the US.

Notably, significant traffic sources are Asian countries, including India (7.96%), Indonesia (7.65%), the Philippines (3.77%), and Japan (3.51%). 

Considering the population and the percentage of those who have access to the internet, the Philippines and Indonesia—where the online population is about 75% and 40% smaller than the US—are close behind in adopting this cutting-edge search engine, with shares of 3.14% and 2.83%, respectively, compared to the US at 4.79%. 

Is Perplexity a Google killer? Data Says Otherwise.

Similarweb shows that Perplexity’s traffic distribution is driven almost entirely by direct visits (67.92%) and branded organic searches (93% of 29.68%), with virtually no traffic coming from ads, paid search, or referrals. 

This aligns with the behavior of users who see Perplexity as the new Google: they’re bookmarking the site, going directly to it when they need to search, or deliberately typing its name. You’ll see this same traffic pattern across other Google alternatives like Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, and even ChatGPT and You.com.

But, is Perplexity really a “Google killer”? 

When put side by side, Perplexity’s usage is less than 0.1% of Google’s volume. This suggests that, even though many are favoring Perplexity and the platform is truly redefining how we search and interact with information, it isn’t yet competing on the same scale.

With recent announcements of new knowledge management and collaboration features, it will be interesting to see how Perplexity pursues its vision to “serve the entire planet’s unbounded curiosity.”

2. LLMs Surge by 16.56% as ChatGPT Fuels a Boom; French Startup Leaps Up the Ranks

The LLM category reached 3.6 billion monthly visitors, a 16.56% increase from the previous month. Unsurprisingly, ChatGPT accounted for much of this rise, contributing over 500 million visits alongside a 15% increase in search volume.

Other key competitors, including Google Gemini, Claude, and Microsoft Copilot, also saw gains with 6.9 million, nearly 1 million, and 5.6 million additional visits, respectively.

However, as competitive as the generative AI market is, these traffic surge volumes weren’t enough to secure their positions among the high-ranking segment, resulting in slight down rankings as other generative AI tools achieved larger traffic gains.

Meanwhile, the French generative AI chatbot startup Mistral Le Chat recorded a 10% traffic gain, helping it climb nine spots to rank #76. The company recently released new models, Ministral 3B and Ministral 8B, designed for AI deployment on edge devices, prioritizing privacy, efficiency, and offline functionality, which I assume contributed to its 15% increase in branded search traffic.

3. AI Image Creation Leads the Way as the Most Useful AI Application for Work Nine Months Straight

The Image Generators & Editors category continues to lead in monthly visits, with over 270 million visitors in September, accounting for 5.94% of traffic across the top 100 AI for work tools.

This trend highlights AI for image creation as the most helpful task-specific application of AI. Fun fact: from 2022 to 2023, over 15 billion AI-generated images were created, with 34 million images produced daily.

Other top applications that followed in popularity include Writing & Editing (+12.59%), Research (+22.55%), and Programming & Coding (for customizing open-source AI models to build your own apps and tools) with a notable +23.05% growth.

4. Gamma AI Leads the Pack in AI Presentation Tool, Outpacing Competitors by 9x in Traffic

As you can spot from the chart, another rapidly expanding category is Presentation Generators, which saw a 26.9% increase in traffic. 

The primary driver of this growth is Gamma AI, which achieved a 39% boost in traffic and a 29% rise in searches. 

As one of the best AI PowerPoint generators for business leaders with a unique approach in UX design, Gamma always sparks discussion in our Lead with AI community with Beautiful.ai as the main alternative.

In fact, Gamma outpaces Beautiful.ai with 9.5 times more visits and significantly higher brand recognition (91% vs. 39%).

The closest competitor of Gamma AI in the top 100 is Visme (#65), which caters more specifically to marketers and educators. 

5. Highest Gainers of the Month Features Blackbox, You.com, Quillbot, and Runway

I took a closer look at AI platforms that grew fast this past month with significant traffic gains that pushed them up several rungs. There appear to be six standouts, with the AI research category registering two.

Besides Perplexity and Gamma AI, which I already mentioned, there are:

• Blackbox (+39%): An AI coding assistant that helps you quickly generate and autocomplete code snippets. You can ask it to find code solutions, debug errors, or provide code examples for various programming tasks. 

• You.com (+23%): An AI-powered search engine that gives access to different LLM models to facilitate real-time answers to user queries, including live web search.

• Quillbot (+21%): An AI writing and editing tool that provides customizable paraphrasing modes and intelligent vocabulary enhancement with a built-in thesaurus.
• Runway (+19%): An AI video generator and editor using proprietary Gen-3 Alpha AI model to enable text-to-video, realistic effects, and AI-generated visuals with your uploaded footages.

The full Top 100 AI Tools in October

For the full Top 100 AI Tools in October, please see below:

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Methodology

We reviewed over 400 AI tools referenced in news, online directories, and lists to create this overview. 

Our starting point is usage data from the only standardized source, Similarweb. While no publicly available data source is perfect, Similarweb has scored well in comparative benchmarks. 

Based on their September data, we made our calculations as follows:

• For web traffic, we took the September monthly visits.
• For branded searches (as a proxy for true popularity), we multiplied the percentage of the September web traffic by the percentage of branded searches.
• For the % gained (or lost), we took the September monthly visits and compared it to the August traffic.

We focused on company, enterprise, and individual contributor-focused platforms that bring Generative AI to the workplace. Platforms with an outspoken consumer focus (which may be used at work too, like Character.AI, the number #4 in our AI Top 150) are not included.

Reversely, there may be platforms here that have real utility for work, but consumers also use them. Just look at ChatGPT, which students highly use. We aim to showcase all the great AI technology that can help people work smarter, so we still included such platforms. 

Finally, because of the data source (Similarweb web traffic and branded searches), it also means that huge tools that millions use, but are administered by a few (like most HR tech - see our AI in HR Top 40 and AI for HRIS Software) are lower in the ranking.

We may have overseen some tools, but we believe that this is a comprehensive selection. If we erroneously left out any platforms, please submit your listing for our next report.

We excluded tools that existed before Generative AI unless they were significantly transformed. 

For platforms with fairly significant AI features, like Canva, Notion, and Figma, we applied an estimated percentage of their total traffic that could be attributed to their AI features. 

Often, this is based on statements from the company, like Canva, noting how people have produced over 4 billion AI creations over the past year. Otherwise, we took a standard 2–10% of total web traffic.

Where applicable, like in the case of Grammarly, we used the 'app' version of the website, which is where the actual usage happens. 

Whenever a platform had multiple use cases besides general GPTs, we listed it under its apparent most-used case, analyzed from search data or sub-URL popularity. This is why Canva is under Image Generators, even though it also has a significant presence in the video and presentation generator categories. (Psst, Canva, feel free to contact us with the real data ;))

All of the above paints an obvious picture: this is very much an imperfect view of AI tools' popularity, driven by our curiosity. 

For some web tools, the proxies we've taken for usage could be solid, as web traffic and search dominance likely reflect how often people use a tool like Quillbot, which all takes place on the website.

For others, like software you can download (Descript, the Office version of Microsoft Copilot) and tools that mostly get used through plugins (Grammarly) or apps, this is only a tertiary indication of potential popularity.

In future months, we'd love to include real usage numbers, as reported by these platforms, to create better rankings.

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