ByteDance’s Doubao Hits 419M Users; Daily Base 6x Qwen’s

ByteDance’s Doubao had 419.08 million monthly active users in September, 2.6 times the 158.17 million of Alibaba’s Qwen app, according to QuestMobile’s September ranking of China’s AI-native apps, as reported by Kuai Keji on 20 October. DeepSeek was third with 122.65 million.

On daily use the gap is wider. QuestMobile’s third-quarter AI app report puts Doubao’s daily active users at 181 million on 30 September and Qwen’s at 29 million: 6.2 times, by our arithmetic. That single day equals about 43% of Doubao’s September monthly base and about 18% of Qwen’s, also our arithmetic.

Where the Top Three Moved in Six Months

QuestMobile’s quarterly reports give three readings for the top three. Doubao went from 345 million monthly users in March to 382 million in June and 419 million in September. Qwen went from 166 million to 167 million, then 158 million. DeepSeek went from 127 million to 129 million, then 123 million.

By our arithmetic, Doubao’s lead over Qwen widened from 179 million users in March to 261 million in September. From June to September, Doubao added about 37 million users, while Qwen lost about 9 million and DeepSeek about 6 million.

Year on year, the September ranking shows Doubao up 143.6%, Qwen up 5076.6% from a small base and DeepSeek down 15.2%, Kuai Keji reported. Quarter on quarter, only Doubao (up 9.6%), Ant Group’s Ant AiFu (up 20.1%) and Doubao Aixue (up 9.5%) grew; the rest of the top 10 declined, according to the same report.

Doubao’s 419.08 million is 66 million more than the next four apps combined (Qwen, DeepSeek, Tencent’s Yuanbao at 37.33 million and Ant AiFu at 34.79 million), by our arithmetic. QuestMobile’s autumn report, published on 3 November, puts all AI-native apps at 546 million monthly users in September, up 82.1% year on year.

Monthly Reach Versus Daily Habit

Qwen’s monthly base was built fast. QuestMobile’s first-quarter report says Qwen added 126 million users in the quarter, rising from sixth place in November 2025 to second, and that Qwen downloads reached 170 million in February. The report’s section heading on that period reads “红包是流量起点”, which we translate as: red packets are the starting point of traffic.

The daily numbers moved less. After the Spring Festival peak, the same report says, Doubao’s daily users held at about 140 million and Qwen’s at about 30 million. By 30 September, Doubao was at 181 million and Qwen at 29 million: Doubao up about 41 million, Qwen roughly flat, by our arithmetic.

QuestMobile’s own first-quarter metric points the same way. It gives an average activity rate across the quarter of 33.5% for Doubao, 17.1% for Qwen and 21% for DeepSeek, without defining the measure in the summary we read.

Usage per user also differs. In September, QuestMobile says, Doubao users opened the app 72.0 times a month for 132.5 minutes; DeepSeek users 65.9 times for 136.7 minutes; Yuanbao users 38.7 times for 78.6 minutes.

The Contest Moves to Fulfilment

QuestMobile frames the third quarter as a shift from scale to delivery. Its report says the AI-native app market has entered a stage of “规模有梯队、增长有分化、经营看交付”, which we translate as: scale in tiers, diverging growth, and operations judged on delivery.

The report sorts the players into two camps. AI-native apps such as Doubao and Qwen start from the chat and add services and fulfilment; super apps such as Alipay and WeChat build AI on top of their existing base. It says Alibaba, Tencent and ByteDance each first run the chat-to-fulfilment-to-payment loop inside their own ecosystems.

Office work follows the same map. QuestMobile counts 32.353 million active users for Tencent’s WorkBuddy, 9.77 million for Baidu Dazi and 7.905 million for Qwen Office in September. It describes WorkBuddy as connecting through WeChat and WeCom, Qwen Office as built on DingTalk, and Doubao’s work tools as embedded in Feishu.

Both leaders now charge. QuestMobile’s first-half report says Doubao launched a paid version on 24 June, and the third-quarter report says Doubao and Qwen held their user scale after their paid tiers went live. Neither report gives a revenue figure.

Business Pill · Distribution Advantage

An evergreen Business Engineer explainer on distribution advantage: how an incumbent’s existing reach shapes what it can launch. It teaches the general idea only and does not discuss Doubao, Qwen or QuestMobile.

Connecting the Coverage

Qwen’s reach is also being built through partners: see Apple Brings 18 AI Features to China With Alibaba’s Qwen. The office-agent race appeared in Tencent’s WorkBuddy Tops China’s Office Agents at 85M Visits, and the compute behind these apps in China AI Compute Demand Up 417%; Nvidia Rival’s Sales Up 19x.

The wider question of whether distribution or model quality decides China’s AI market is set out in Distribution vs. Frontier: The Central Tension in Chinese AI.

The Structural Read

As we read the reports, Doubao’s lead is a habit lead as much as a reach lead: it added monthly users in each quarter QuestMobile reported, while Qwen’s base, which the first-quarter report ties to the Spring Festival red-packet period, slipped from June to September.

As we read it, QuestMobile’s own framing moves the contest from users to delivery: the third-quarter report says Alibaba, Tencent and ByteDance each run the chat-to-fulfilment-to-payment loop inside their own ecosystems first, which ties each assistant to its parent’s apps.

As we read the office figures, each assistant rides its parent’s workplace suite: WorkBuddy on WeChat and WeCom, Qwen Office on DingTalk and Doubao’s work tools in Feishu, according to QuestMobile.

Three Implications

FOR ALIBABA QuestMobile counts 158 million monthly Qwen users in September but 29 million daily users on 30 September; its first-quarter report says Qwen added 126 million users in that quarter.

FOR BYTEDANCE QuestMobile says Doubao launched a paid version on 24 June; its monthly users went from 382 million in June to 419 million in September, with 181 million daily users on 30 September.

FOR DEEPSEEK DeepSeek, third with 122.65 million monthly users, was down 15.2% year on year in the September ranking, Kuai Keji reported.

The Business Engineer Lens

This story maps onto the Business Engineer framework The AI Embedding Business Model.

The framework describes the shift this way: “In traditional SaaS, value comes from what the software does. In the embedding era, value comes from what the software connects to.”

As we read it, the QuestMobile data fit that lens: China’s office assistants are counted by the suites they plug into (WeChat, DingTalk, Feishu), and the report ties fulfilment to each parent’s own ecosystem. The framework does not discuss Doubao, Qwen or China.

What Is Not Established

QuestMobile’s figures are third-party estimates from its TRUTH database, not company disclosures. We read the free report summaries on questmobile.com.cn; the full reports and the ranking chart itself are not in the text we read, so the exact September figures (419.08 million, 158.17 million, 122.65 million and the growth rates) are as reported by Kuai Keji. The daily figures are for a single day, 30 September, and are rounded to 181 million and 29 million.

The text we read gives no quarter-on-quarter rate for Qwen and no revenue for any app. We did not contact ByteDance, Alibaba or DeepSeek.

The Bottom Line

In QuestMobile’s September data, Doubao has 2.6 times Qwen’s monthly users and 6.2 times its daily users, by our arithmetic, and its lead over Qwen widened from 179 million in March to 261 million. Qwen’s monthly base, built quickly in the first quarter, slipped from June to September, while Doubao kept adding users after launching a paid version.