Updated Oct 4, 2026
Short answer: the Play Store shows a rounded band, the exact figure sits behind it in the listing's own page data, and AppCurves records that exact figure every night. Apple publishes no download numbers at all.
Open the app's listing in the Play Store app or on play.google.com. Next to the rating you will see Downloads with a band such as 10M+ or 1B+. That band is the only download count the Play Store shows, and it only changes when the app crosses the next threshold. Today ChatGPT's listing shows 1,000,000,000+.
Every listing also carries an exact lifetime download counter in its page data. It is not printed on screen. Today ChatGPT's counter reads 1,697,056,027, as of Nov 5, 2026.
AppCurves reads that counter for every app on a Google Play chart, once a night, and keeps every reading — so you can see the exact count and how it is changing. Search any Android app by name, package id or Play link.
Developers see their own install numbers in Google Play Console. Those metrics are defined differently from the public counter, so the two will not match — here is why. For comparing apps with each other, use the public counter: every app is measured the same way.
The App Store shows no download count, and Apple does not publish one. Any number you find for an iOS app is an estimate from a market-intelligence vendor.
They model downloads they cannot see — per country, per platform — and sell the model. That is the only way to get country splits or revenue, because no public source has them. For one Android app's lifetime downloads, the public counter is Google's own figure, so there is nothing to estimate. How a recorded figure differs from an estimate.
See the 100 most downloaded Android apps, ranked by the exact counter rather than the store's band.