September AI Tool Growth Ranking: Who's Exploding
Two of SenseTime's Raccoon models surged 173 times and 242 times in four months, Tencent's WorkBuddy doubled over the same period, and MiniMax's voice business surged from nearly zero to a scale of millions. This article looks at which products are truly driving user growth in September based on three thresholds: 10,000, 300,000, and no limit.
What's most noteworthy in September is not which tool took the top spot in growth, but that domestic AI tools collectively saw a surge in the AI assistant segment.
Two of SenseTime's raccoon-themed mini-programs soared 173 times and 242 times in four months, Tencent's WorkBuddy more than doubled over the same period, and MiniMax's voice service and NetEase's Bage surged from nearly zero to a user base of millions. None of these products' growth curves hit their peak upon launch; instead, they all show a steadily upward-sloping line.
The following three rankings are arranged from the lowest to the highest based on the base figures of August. The lower the base figure, the more it can reflect which tools are gaining attention; the higher the base figure, the more it can reflect which tools are truly growing steadily.
15 tools with the largest growth rate in September with monthly visits above 10,000 in August
| # | Tool | Category | August | September | Net Increase | Month-on-Month |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | MiniMax Voice | Voice Generation and Conversion | 20,000 | 1.55 million | +1,532,837 | +7623.0% |
| 2 | NetEase Bageshuo | Speech Generation & Conversion | 11k | 75k | +64,808 | +611.1% |
| 3 | Lovart | Art & Creative Design | 62,000 | 275,000 | +212,960 | +342.0% |
| 4 | WPS AI | Office & Productivity | 24,000 | 102,000 | +78,423 | +333.7% |
| 5 | Gradescope | Learning & Education | 3.13 million | 12.16 million | +9,028,351 | +288.5% |
| 6 | AKOOL | Video and Animation | 1.65 million | 4.61 million | +2,960,645 | +179.4% |
| 7 | Muse | AI Assistant & Chat | 1.35 million | 3.67 million | +2,317,190 | +171.7% |
| 8 | Cailiaoxing | Text Generation and Editing | 24,000 | 63,000 | +39,047 | +160.4% |
| 9 | Office Raccoon | Office & Productivity | 6.18 million | 15.64 million | +9,459,373 | +153.1% |
| 10 | Raccoon Code | Programming & Development | 7.48 million | 17.2 million | +9,721,169 | +129.9% |
| 11 | Meitu Design Studio | Art & Creative Design | 38,000 | 83,000 | +45,308 | +120.3% |
| 12 | Teable | Research and Data Analysis | 16,000 | 34,000 | +18,677 | +119.9% |
| 13 | PaperYY | AI Detection & Anti-Detection | 48,000 | 105,000 | +56,887 | +119.1% |
| 14 | Miora | Art and Creative Design | 283,000 | 596,000 | +313,814 | +111.0% |
| 15 | Nafy AI | Music and Audio | 217,000 | 444,000 | +226,962 | +104.4% |
Topping the list, MiniMax Voice surged from 20,000 to 1.55 million, with a net increase of just 1.53 million, making it the one with the smallest base among this group.
Voice input is the most prominent clue in this ranking.
Among the 34 voice tools, 15 are on the rise and 19 are on the decline, but the growth rates are extremely uneven—MiniMax Voice surged from 20,000 to 1.55 million, NetEase Bage Voice rose from 11,000 to 75,000, and all the remaining 13 growing tools saw a growth rate of less than 20%.
In other words, only two tools on this track truly saw a surge in usage. Their common feature is that neither does general-purpose speech synthesis—MiniMax Voice focuses on voice cloning and music generation, while Bageshuo from NetEase specializes in desktop-side voice input.
Office Raccoon saw a +153.1% increase, and Code Raccoon saw a +129.9% increase. The absolute volume of these two tools is much larger than that of the top-ranked one, and Chapter 03 will elaborate on their growth curves.
15 tools with the largest growth rate in September with monthly visits of over 300,000 in August
| # | Tool | Category | August | September | Net Increase | Month-on-Month |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Gradescope | Learning & Education | 3.13 million | 12.16 million | +9,028,351 | +288.5% |
| 2 | AKOOL | Video and Animation | 1.65 million | 4.61 million | +2,960,645 | +179.4% |
| 3 | Muse | AI Assistant and Chatbot | 1.35 million | 3.67 million | +2,317,190 | +171.7% |
| 4 | Office Raccoon | Office & Productivity | 6.18 million | 15.64 million | +9,459,373 | +153.1% |
| 5 | Code Raccoon | Programming & Development | 7.48 million | 17.2 million | +9,721,169 | +129.9% |
| 6 | MiMo Code | Programming & Development | 731,000 | 1,370,000 | +639,730 | +87.5% |
| 7 | Elser AI | Video and Animation | 301,000 | 549,000 | +247,622 | +82.2% |
| 8 | Knowt | Learning & Education | 2.26 million | 3.97 million | +1,705,098 | +75.3% |
| 9 | MusicGPT | Music & Audio | 653,000 | 1,140,000 | +483,073 | +74.0% |
| 10 | Gizmo | Learning & Education | 4.53 million | 7.85 million | +3,319,489 | +73.3% |
| 11 | Quizlet | Learning & Education | 42.13 million | 71.95 million | +29,822,269 | +70.8% |
| 12 | Turnitin | AI Detection & Anti-Detection | 9.16 million | 14.83 million | +5,672,004 | +61.9% |
| 13 | Trancy | Translation and Language | 640,000 | 1,040,000 | +395,285 | +61.7% |
| 14 | GPTZero | AI Detection & Anti-Detection | 11.03 million | 17.55 million | +6,515,289 | +59.1% |
| 15 | MagicSchool | Learning & Education | 1.74 million | 2.75 million | +1,007,836 | +57.8% |
This tier is for mature products, with Gradescope ranking first with a month-on-month increase of +288.5%.
GPTZero rose by +59.1%, ZeroGPT by +33.9%, and Turnitin by +61.9%, with all three AI detection tools making the list at the same time.
But the internal growth of the detection track is not synchronized. The ones that saw growth were the plagiarism checkers, while WriteHuman dropped by 0.2%, BypassGPT by 3.0%, and Zhuque Detection by 31.1%—these are tools designed to help students bypass detection.
The demand for growth lies in "being detectable" rather than "undetectable".
In the programming category, OpenAI Codex rose by 23.2%, while Cursor fell by 4.6%. Codex's traffic increased from 15.89 million to 19.57 million, and Cursor's dropped from 22.53 million to 21.5 million, moving in completely opposite directions.
Top 15 Tools with the Largest Net Traffic Growth in September
| # | Tool | Category | August | September | Net Increase | Month-on-Month Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Quizlet | Learning & Education | 42.13 million | 71.95 million | +29,822,269 | +70.8% |
| 2 | Google Gemini | AI Assistant and Chatbot | 2.617 billion | 2.641 billion | +24,037,396 | +0.9% |
| 3 | Grammarly | Text Generation and Editing | 49.28 million | 59.78 million | +10,499,113 | +21.3% |
| 4 | Code Raccoon | Programming & Development | 7.48 million | 17.2 million | +9,721,169 | +129.9% |
| 5 | Office Raccoon | Office & Productivity | 6.18 million | 15.64 million | +9,459,373 | +153.1% |
| 6 | Gradescope | Learning & Education | 3.13 million | 12.16 million | +9,028,351 | +288.5% |
| 7 | Higgsfield | Videos and Animations | 32.14 million | 40.56 million | +8,422,904 | +26.2% |
| 8 | ZeroGPT | AI Detection & Anti-Detection | 20.51 million | 27.45 million | +6,947,940 | +33.9% |
| 9 | GPTZero | AI Detection & Anti-Detection | 11.03 million | 17.55 million | +6,515,289 | +59.1% |
| 10 | Turnitin | AI Detection & Anti-Detection | 9.16 million | 14.83 million | +5,672,004 | +61.9% |
| 11 | Grok Bot | AI Assistant and Chatbot | 29.5 million | 34.27 million | +4,776,157 | +16.2% |
| 12 | Duck.ai | AI Assistant & Conversation | 19.48 million | 23.87 million | +4,385,940 | +22.5% |
| 13 | QuillBot | Text Generation & Editing | 31.96 million | 35.81 million | +3,848,267 | +12.0% |
| 14 | WorkBuddy | Office & Productivity | 14.09 million | 17.82 million | +3,729,357 | +26.5% |
| 15 | OpenAI Codex | Programming and Development | 15.89 million | 19.57 million | +3,680,873 | +23.2% |
Quizlet, which ranked first, saw a net increase of +29,822,269, ranking first in terms of volume on the list, but its month-on-month growth in September was only +70.8%, representing steady growth rather than an explosive surge.
What's truly astonishing is the Raccoon series.
CodeRaccoon and OfficeRaccoon ranked 4th and 5th respectively on the net increase list, with a combined net increase of +9,721,169 and +9,459,373 respectively, but what's more noteworthy are their growth curves—
| Tool | May | August | September |
|---|---|---|---|
| Code Raccoon | 100,000 | 7.48 million | 17.2 million |
| Office Raccoon | 65,000 | 6.18 million | 15.64 million |
June was a crucial turning point: both products jumped from six-digit figures to the 3 million level in the same month and have not dropped since. SenseNova split its coding and office tools into two separate product lines and promoted them simultaneously; each more than doubled its user volume from August to September. This synchronization is hard to explain as a coincidence.
WorkBuddy is the third one on the same growth curve, developed by Tencent. Its traffic rose from 14.09 million in August to 17.82 million in September.
The three major tech giants doing the same thing at the same time indicates that the AI assistant track has already achieved its scale this year.
Muse is an exception.
It doesn't belong to any category. Meta's product has been fluctuating between 860,000 and 2.28 million over the past 12 months. It was 1.35 million in August and suddenly jumped to 3.67 million in September, hitting the highest point in the year.
From the curve, it is not a newly launched product, but a product in stable operation that suddenly saw a surge in traffic—it has launched a small business version, supporting conversations on mobile phones, Mac, and WhatsApp, with more entry points available. There has been no similar surge in traffic volume in the past 12 months, so this September's surge is more likely driven by channels or recommended placements rather than product updates themselves.
Google Gemini recorded a net increase of +24,037,396, ranking second. However, its volume reached 2.641 billion, with a month-on-month growth of only +0.9%. This is a natural market-wide movement and not an explosive surge.
For the complete list and screenshots of each tool, see the official site: https://panovast.com/en
To repeat one last time, all figures are estimates from third-party platforms. Focus on the trends and structures, and do not use them for precise judgments. If you notice any obviously incorrect figures, please feel free to provide feedback within the site. We conduct a full review of the domain metrics every month.
