Meta’s Muse hits No. 1 on the App Store, but daily habits are harder to win

Meta’s personal AI agent app, Muse, climbed to the No. 1 spot on the US iOS App Store free apps chart by September 18, 2026. That was just ten days after launch.

What Muse does and how fast it spread

Meta launched Muse on September 8, 2026, for users aged 18 and older in the US. The pitch is an agent, not a chatbot.

A chatbot answers questions, while an agent is meant to go do things on your behalf. Muse is built to handle tasks like booking reservations, managing email, and working toward user goals across services such as Gmail and Spotify.

Cumulative US downloads passed 5 million within 22 days of launch, according to Sensor Tower.

Estimates put Muse’s daily active users at around 700,000 by late September 2026. The app was also reportedly handling over 1 million daily prompts.

Five million downloads against roughly 700,000 daily users means most people who installed Muse are not opening it on any given day.

The retention problem

Muse’s open rates sit significantly below those of established apps like ChatGPT and Instagram, which points to a retention challenge.

Meta has started integrating Muse with WhatsApp, which puts the assistant inside an app many people already open constantly.

Growing pains on the infrastructure side

Meta adjusted token limits early on because usage ran ahead of internal expectations.

A smaller group of heavy users can stress the system even as the broader download base stays quiet: both can be true at once.

How Meta plans to make money

Muse comes with a free tier, though it is limited. Beyond that, Meta offers two paid plans.

• Power: $20/month
• Maximum: $100/month

Meta is also considering transaction-based monetization in addition to its advertising revenue.

What this means for Meta

Muse’s early chart run has lifted sentiment around Meta’s AI spending. The company has invested heavily in AI, and a No. 1 app gives investors something tangible to point at amid rising competition from other AI products.

The WhatsApp integration is probably the clearest thing to watch. It tests whether Meta’s biggest asset, the daily habits people already have across its apps, can be transferred to a new product. Meanwhile, how Meta manages token limits will show whether it can keep heavy users happy without letting computing costs outrun subscription revenue.