The ZDNET Index of AI Tool Popularity
Popularity in the tech world is hard to measure. I’ve talked at length about this in my discussions of programming language popularity. It really comes down to what you use to measure popularity — and how available those metrics are to those doing the analysis.
Aggregating Multiple Data Sources
To create the ZDNET Index of AI Tool Popularity, we aggregated data from four sources: Exploding Topics, AI Tools, World Bank Group, and TechRadar Survey. Each source provided a unique perspective on AI tool popularity, and we weighted them accordingly to account for their strengths and weaknesses.
- Exploding Topics (Weight 32%, ID XPT): Exploding Topics analyzes trends based on web searches, conversations, and mentions. Their data is mostly derived from web analytics platforms.
- AI Tools (Weight 32%, ID AIT): AI Tools is an AI tools directory that catalogs over 10,000 AI tools, each categorized into one of 171 individual categories. Their data is derived from traffic analysis platforms.
- World Bank Group (Weight 22%, ID WBG): The World Bank Group published a policy research paper in March 2024, which included a ranking of generative AI tools based on traffic.
- TechRadar Survey (Weight 14% ID TRS): TechRadar conducted a survey in 2024, which they published in 2025, providing an overall ranking for both the US and UK.
Aggregated Tool List
We took the top 20 tools from each source and created an aggregated tool list. Some tools, such as ChatGPT, are represented in all four sources’ rankings, while others are only represented in one or two source lists.
Weighted Ranking for Each Source
We took the share representation of each tool and put it on a row in the spreadsheet. We then pulled in the raw percentage ranking from each source, leaving cells blank where there was no data. Once that was done, we built up the next section of the analysis, which was the weighted ranking for each source. We totaled up the values of the four weighted rankings, which gave us our aggregated ranking.
What’s it All Mean?
Before discussing the rankings, I’d like to mention that I did the whole analysis by hand, using the technology of caffeine to aid me. As popular as these many tools are, they’re tools. They’re sometimes helpful and sometimes stubborn. If you’re going to use them, you’re going to have to be able, constantly, to determine when the tool is the fastest path and when the old school way will get you there either faster or more reliably, or both.
Conclusion
ChatGPT leads the pack, followed closely by Canva. DeepL outperformed Google Translate as an AI tool, but this may be because most people don’t think of Google Translate as an AI tool. When it comes to chatbots, Gemini and Copilot, along with Perplexity and Claude, have a long way to go to catch up with ChatGPT. Apple and Facebook/Meta were missing from the table, which can’t be good.
FAQs
- What is the ZDNET Index of AI Tool Popularity?
- The ZDNET Index of AI Tool Popularity is a measure of the popularity of AI tools based on aggregated data from four sources: Exploding Topics, AI Tools, World Bank Group, and TechRadar Survey.
- How was the data aggregated?
- We took the top 20 tools from each source and created an aggregated tool list. We then weighted the tools based on their share representation, raw percentage ranking, and traffic quantity.
- What is the purpose of the ZDNET Index of AI Tool Popularity?
- The ZDNET Index of AI Tool Popularity aims to provide insight into where users are putting their attention when it comes to AI tools.
- Which AI tools are missing from the table?
- Apple and Facebook/Meta were missing from the table.
- How does the ZDNET Index of AI Tool Popularity measure popularity?
- We used a weighted ranking system, taking into account the share representation, raw percentage ranking, and traffic quantity of each tool.
