ChatGPT’s 900 million weekly users handle billions of daily queries, each using 10× Google search energy: Study

Did you know? A single query in ChatGPT consumes at least ten times more energy than a simple Google search. As AI adoption increases, people use the chatbot and ask billions of questions every day, now you can imagine how much electricity AI consume in just a single day.  

According to a study by financial research platform BestBrokers, ChatGPT's annual energy use is 22,150 gigawatt-hours (GWh) per year. This amount of energy is enough to handle about 1.17 trillion prompts annually. To put that in perspective, this accounts for more electricity than entire countries consume in a year.

ChatGPT’s trillion queries

According to the study, ChatGPT has reached 900 million weekly active users, which includes over 50 million paid subscribers. These users are estimated to generate close to 3.2 billion queries daily, based on an estimated 25 prompts per user per week. 

Now, to process this volume of prompts, ChatGPT consumes about 60.7 gigawatt-hours of electricity every day. For context, it is equivalent to the power consumed by a mid-sized country daily. 

The data said, “the average U.S. household uses about 29 kilowatt-hours of electricity per day. This means the power consumed by ChatGPT on an annual basis could easily satisfy the electricity demands of 2.11 million households. Every day, ChatGPT consumes as much power as a country such as Puerto Rico or Croatia.”

The study further stated that OpenAI’s latest GPT-5 model, which was launched in August 2025, consumes up to eight times more electricity than the previous model, with each medium-length prompt using between 2 to 45 watts of power. 

Considering the complex nature of the GPT-5 model, which is designed to resolve PhD-level scientific problems, complex coding tasks, and multi-step reasoning. Hence, it uses extra computing power to perform internal reasoning steps.

ChatGPT electricity consumption

The study further compared ChatGPT’s electricity consumption to factors such as household, smartphones, countries’ electricity use, and EV charging as well. 

The average household in the US is said to use about 10,500 kWh of electricity per year. In comparison, ChatGPT’s annual energy consumption could power more than 2.11 million American homes for an entire year.

In addition, ChatGPT could fully charge about 4.23 billion iPhones every day for a year, revealing that it uses an enormous amount of electricity.

BestBrokers further estimates the cost of OpenAI's subscription tiers, and its ability to pay the huge amount of electricity bills. It was reported that OpenAI could be generating approximately $1.3 billion from paid subscriptions every month,  which is about $15.8 billion per year.

This means the annual electricity bill for handling user queries could be covered by less than three months of subscription revenue. This showcases how the business model has become so popular, despite its energy demands continuing to climb.