Last year three in five people accessing the site did so on a smartphone, while early usage data for government’s new app shows that ‘return users are increasing with time’

The proportion of users that visit GOV.UK using a mobile device now exceeds 60%, while the first government-wide app has passed 300,000 downloads.

A recent blogpost from the Government Digital Service reveals that, during 2025, 61% of the one billion-plus visits to the government website came via a mobile browser, while 38% were from desktop systems. The total number of respective visits stood at 622 million and 388 million.

Some 12 million visitors – equating to 1% of all traffic – accessed the site using a tablet, while “a very small number of users access the website with smart TVs and game consoles”.

The proportion of traffic derived from mobiles has increased close to fivefold since GOV.UK was created in 2012, when just 13% of visits came from smartphones.

Most users are directed to GOV.UK from another site or search provider – but the dawn of new technology has brought new and additional sources for this indirect traffic.

“External search engines, such as Google and Bing, remain the biggest source of traffic to the GOV.UK website, with around two-thirds of visits originating in this way,” the blog says. “The GOV.UK website has, however, seen a noticeable increase in traffic from AI websites such as Claude.ai, ChatGPT.com, Perplexity.ai and Gemini.google.com. ChatGPT.com is the most common referrer of these sites.”

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The one billion visits to the site across the year resulted in 2.3 billion recorded page views, and GDS notes that the true numbers are “likely to be higher”, as only those users that have consented to Google Analytics cookies are logged.

In July 2025 the digital unit also launched the GOV.UK App. By the end of the year, the program had been downloaded 316,000 times.

The GDS blog indicates that customisation of the app is particularly popular, with 85% of users having taken advantage of this feature. Benefits, taxes, and transport are the topics generating most engagement.

“Return users are increasing with time, showing that the app is already a valuable route for accessing government services and information more quickly,” the blog says. “They accounted for 46% of all app users by the end of December, with more of them taking advantage of navigation shortcuts, like Pages You’ve Viewed and Previous Searches (36%). Growth also continues among new users, some of which was driven by the introduction of activity promoting the app on the GOV.UK website in October, including a prominent link on the website’s homepage.”