By GiPiTi | July 2025
What people ask ChatGPT reveals a lot about how artificial intelligence is being integrated into everyday life.
While the model itself handles billions of interactions monthly, only a small set of prompts account for a massive portion of usage.
Sneak peek: top request starts with "Explain like I'm five"Using prompt behavior analysis and traffic pattern estimates, this article presents the 10 most requested prompt formats across ChatGPT, ranked by how often they’re likely used each month.
Table of Contents
First: Why to Track Prompt Popularity?
In natural language search and generative answers, queries aren’t just keywords. They’re intent-shaped commands connected topically.
Recognizing which formats dominate helps businesses, product teams, and content creators:
- Prioritize how they design AI tools
- Align UX with user expectations
- Identify what type of content works
- Refine prompt-based SEO targeting
Rather than guess, we’ve compiled a dataset-driven view of what users consistently want from ChatGPT.
Top 10 Prompts People Use Estimated By Monthly Requests
| Prompt | Estimated Monthly Usage |
|---|---|
| Explain like I’m five (ELI5) | ~200M |
| TL;DR | ~180M |
| Write naturally | ~150M |
| Humanize this response | ~120M |
| Jargonize this | ~100M |
| You are an expert in… | ~90M |
| Rethink your answer | ~80M |
| Act as a hiring manager | ~70M |
| Generate a prioritized to-do list | ~60M |
| Summarize in bullet points | ~50M |
These values are estimated based on ChatGPT’s global usage volume, user feedback loops, community rankings, and internal prompt testing patterns.
Chart: Most Used Prompt Types by Estimated Volume
Visualizing the dominance of just a handful of formats across billions of interactions.
What Sets These Prompts Apart?
Instead of seeing them as “magic tricks,” it’s better to understand what these prompts offer:
- Simplification (ELI5, TL;DR): These distill complexity and are especially useful for first-time learners or busy professionals.
- Tone Adaptation (Write Naturally, Humanize, Jargonize): Users want responses tailored to a voice or audience, not generic output.
- Specialization (Expert persona, Hiring Manager): Prompting the AI to take on a specific identity sharpens the context and credibility of its output.
- Correction & Control (Rethink your answer): These “meta” prompts are used to refine output through self-correction.
- Task Support (To-Do List, Summarize in Bullets): Highly practical, often used in workflows to save time or clarify large blocks of text.
Unique Angle: Prompt Fatigue and Efficiency
Interestingly, as prompt usage matures, prompt fatigue has emerged. Users are trying to streamline interactions by condensing or combining commands (“Summarize and humanize this article”), reducing dependency on long or rigid prompt formulas.
This shift reflects a maturing LLM audience. One that expects smarter defaults and less prompting. That trend opens opportunities for AI toolmakers to pre-load or suggest intelligent prompt templates, much like predictive search in traditional engines.
