RankDude
Updated 11/02/2026 · next update 12/01/2026

Is the AI detector market growing or shrinking?

Miles FosterOwner and tester, RankDude

The answer▼ Shrinkingbut visits without Grammarly are up 29% on a year ago

Visits, year on year, without Grammarly
+29%
Visits, last six months
-27%
Name searches vs October 2025
-27%

Every month I add up the Google visits to the 27 AI detector sites I track (DataForSEO estimates) and how often people in the US search for them by name (Google Ads). In October 2026 they got about 48 million visits. Much of the year’s change is one site, Grammarly; without it, visits are up 29% on a year ago.

The total hides very different stories: one site grew 2029% in a year while another lost 77% of its visits. See who grew and who shrank, the visits month by month and the name searches, plus what I expect for November 2026.

AI detector market demand: key numbers, October 2026

Four numbers for October 2026. Visits mean visits from Google search to the 27 tracked sites. Tap one for the detail below.

  • The AI detector market is shrinking as of October 2026, but visits without Grammarly are up 29% on a year ago.
  • The 27 AI detector sites RankDude tracks got 47,984,174 visits from Google search in October 2026, 6% fewer visits than in October 2025, or 29% more without Grammarly.
  • People in the US searched Google for these sites by name 4,476,200 times in September 2026, 27% fewer searches than in October 2025.
  • The five most-visited AI detector sites get 87.9% of all visits.
  • Fastest-growing AI detector site over the year: MyDetector, +2029% (10.8K to 231K visits a month).
  • Steepest fall over the year: Smodin, -77% (820K to 191K visits a month).
  • Forecast for November 2026: about 49M visits, likely between 44M and 54M.

Source: DataForSEO visit estimates and Google Ads search data, published 2 November 2026 by RankDude.

1.Are more people visiting AI detector sites than a year ago?

Down 6% on a year ago; down 14% on September 2026

Only because of Grammarly. The 27 tracked AI detector sites got 47,984,174 visits from Google search in October 2026. That is 6% fewer visits than in October 2025, or 29% more without Grammarly, and 14% fewer visits than in September 2026.

The highest month of the last two years was February 2026, with 67,215,209 visits; October 2026 is 29% below it. In the US, visits were 12,048,933, up 47% on a year ago.

WorldVisits a month to AI detector sites, worldwide, two years

025M50M75M100MNov 24Jan 25Mar 25May 25Jul 25Sep 25Nov 25Jan 26Mar 26May 26Jul 26Oct 2648M
Low 27MHigh 67MAverage 51M
Hover, tap, or use the arrow keys to inspect a month

Source: DataForSEO, Google search visits, all tracked sites.

Worldwide, this month

48M

-5.6% on a year ago

United States, this month

12M

+47.4% on a year ago

Two-year high

67M

February 2026

US share of visits

25.1%

of worldwide visits

Miles explains

Visits are lower than a year ago and lower than in September 2026, so the fall is still going. Name searches (-27%) and Google Trends interest in the term (-17%) fell too, so people are less interested, not just finding these sites less often.

2.Are people searching for AI detector sites by name?

Down 27% on October 2025; 4.5M name searches a month in the US

Fewer than before. People in the US searched Google for the names of the counted AI detector sites 4,476,200 times in September 2026, 27% fewer searches than in October 2025. Someone who searches a site’s name already knows it, so this is the clearest sign of people coming back on purpose. The term “ai detector” itself gets about 5,000,000 US searches a month (Google Ads, 12-month average).

USName searches a month for AI detector sites, US

02.5M5.0M7.5M10MOct 25Dec 25Feb 26Apr 26Jun 26Sep 264.5M
Low 1.8MHigh 6.1MAverage 4.0M
Hover, tap, or use the arrow keys to inspect a month

Source: Google Ads via DataForSEO, to September 2026.

USMost searched AI detector sites by name, searches a month

  1. Grammarly2.7M a month
  2. GPTZero550K a month
  3. Turnitin450K a month
  4. ZeroGPT450K a month
  5. Pangram165K a month
  6. Originality.ai33.1K a month

Miles explains

Name searches are down, so fewer people are coming back on purpose. Better Google rankings will not fix that.

3.Which AI detector sites grew, and which shrank?

The five most-visited sites hold 87.9% of all visits; the ten most-visited hold 95%

The five most-visited AI detector sites get 87.9% of all visits, so one of them winning or losing a big Google ranking moves the whole total. Fastest grower over the year: MyDetector, from 10,834 to 230,684 visits (+2029%). Steepest fall: Smodin, from 819,550 to 191,309 visits (-77%).

Growing fastest, year on year

  1. MyDetector231K visits+2029%
  2. Pangram387K visits+1209%
  3. Solvely109K visits+750%
  4. AI Detector265K visits+527%
  5. GPTZero6.9M visits+96%

Falling fastest, year on year

  1. Smodin191K visits-77%
  2. Undetectable AI492K visits-63%
  3. BrandWell17.5K visits-57%
  4. Surfer101K visits-57%
  5. Turnitin1.3M visits-44%

Source: DataForSEO. Sites with 5,000+ visits a year ago.