China's AI App Market Surges to 499 Million Monthly Users — Doubao Leads at 382 Million

There’s a numbers game happening in China’s AI app market, and the latest data from QuestMobile’s H1 2026 report makes the scale impossible to ignore. As of May, AI native apps on mobile had reached 499 million monthly active users — an 85.4% jump from the same month last year. That’s not a niche anymore. That’s mass adoption.

ByteDance’s Doubao sits comfortably at the top with 382 million MAU, a 172.1% year-over-year increase that added 13.78 million new users in May alone. Alibaba’s Qwen follows at 167 million MAU — and here’s the striking number: Qwen grew 5,792.9% year-over-year, a reflection of how small its base was a year ago and how fast the second-tier players are scaling once they hit product-market fit. DeepSeek rounds out the top three at 130 million MAU.

The engagement metrics tell a deeper story. Doubao users spend more than 10 minutes per session 27.5% of the time; for DeepSeek it’s 30.0%, for Kimi it’s 26.1%. All three numbers are up from last year. Across the whole category, monthly per-user time landed at 183 minutes — 40% higher than a year ago. Three hours a month inside AI apps means these tools have crossed from curiosity into routine.

QuestMobile’s report also breaks the market into five segments: AI native apps (499M MAU), AI app plugins (644M), device-side AI apps (755M), PC web AI (172M), and PC client AI (18M). The native apps category was the only one showing strong positive growth — plugins and PC web both shrank year-over-year. The story there is straightforward: people want their AI in their phones, as standalone apps, not buried inside other software.

Doubao’s performance is particularly telling. The app’s user base held steady even after ByteDance introduced a paid tier last year — the freemium model is working. Monthly per-user interactions hit 92.7 for native apps, far outpacing the other categories — device-side apps managed just 51.4 per user.

The market has consolidated fast. Doubao, Qwen, and DeepSeek have pulled away from the rest of the field, and growth is concentrating among them. QuestMobile’s analysts call it the Matthew effect — the biggest apps get bigger, and the gap between first and tenth place keeps widening.

The full report is available from QuestMobile, but the headline number speaks for itself: China’s AI app market crossed half a billion monthly users in May, and at 85% year-over-year growth, there’s no sign the curve is flattening.