US app uninstalls of ChatGPT’s mobile app jumped 295% daily on Saturday, February 28, as consumers responded to the news of OpenAI’s deal with the Department of Defense (DoD), which has been rebranded under the Trump administration as the War Department.

This data, which comes from a market intelligence provider Sensor Towerrepresents a significant improvement compared to ChatGPT’s average daily uninstall rate of 9%, as measured over the past 30 days.

Meanwhile, US downloads for OpenAI competitor Anthropic’s Claude jumped 37% daily on Friday, February 27, and 51% on Saturday, February 28, after the company announced it. will not cooperate with the US defense department. Anthropic said it could not agree to the terms of the deal because of concerns that AI could be used to survey Americans and be used in fully autonomous weapons, which AI is not yet ready to do safely.

A set of consumers seem to favor Anthropic’s position on this matter, the data suggests.

Additionally, ChatGPT’s download growth was affected by the news of its DoD partnership, with US downloads falling 13% daily on Saturday, shortly after news of its deal went public. Downloads continued to fall on Sunday, when they fell by 5% daily. (Before the partnership was announced, app downloads grew 14% day-to-day on Friday.)

These rapid changes are also reflected in Claude’s App Store ranking, say the app hit No. 1 in the US App Store on Saturdaywhere it continues to sit as of Monday, March 2. That’s a jump of more than 20 ranks compared to almost a week before (February 22, 2026).

Consumers also shared their opinions about the OpenAI deal in app ratings, where 1-star reviews for ChatGPT jumped 775% on Saturday, then grew 100% daily on Sunday, Sensor Tower said. Five-star reviews declined over the same period, falling by 50%.

Other third-party data providers back up Sensor Tower’s findings.

Appfiguresfor example, it was noted that Claude’s total US daily downloads on Saturday surpassed ChatGPT for the first time. It also saw an increase in US downloads of Claude, but its estimates put a much higher figure: at 88% daily on Saturday.

Noted that Claude is now the No. 1 free iPhone app in six countries outside the US, including Belgium, Canada, Germany, Luxembourg, Norway, Switzerland.

A third market intelligence provider, Similar websays Claude’s downloads in the US last week were about 20x what they were in January, but that could be due to other factors beyond political issues, it cautioned.