September’s overseas AI rankings are out: 23 products brought in $85.66 million in combined monthly subscription revenue. But there is a clear mismatch between traffic and paying behavior.
Kimi’s overseas visits surged 52.2%, yet its subscription intake — the volume of users entering the payment flow — moved only 0.6%. Kling’s MAU grew 10.4%, while subscription intake actually fell 16.4%. Models are attracting new users faster than those users are forming paying habits.
3D modeling turned out to be the only category that fully worked. Meshy’s visits rose 9.4% but its subscription intake jumped 51.1% — the company just announced annualized revenue above $100 million. Tripo’s visits rose 21.9% and its subscription intake rose 37.2%. Half the gaming industry piled RMB 3 billion into Tripo, because its generated models can be dropped straight into game-engine production pipelines.
The cast is also changing among big players and startups. Tencent shut down entry points like QClaw and is concentrating resources on WorkBuddy instead. Manus’ visits fell 21.9%, yet it still held the No.1 spot in subscription revenue, thanks to the paying users who stayed.
Traffic will ebb, but the people who pay every month don’t lie.