Indie App Marketing Starts With a Budget of Zero and a Few Spare Hours
Most advice on marketing for indie developers assumes money or a team. The numbers say you probably have neither. In RevenueCat's State of Subscription Apps 2026, which covers more than 115,000 apps, the median subscription app earns about $72 a month one year after launch. Only 17.3% of newly launched apps reach $1,000 in monthly revenue within two years.
The same report shows how much company you have. About 2,000 new subscription apps launched each month in January 2022. By January 2026 the figure was more than 14,700 a month. More apps are competing for the same attention every month, and a new one has to earn its place with very little money behind it.
So the real budget for indie hacker marketing is your own time, and every hour spent making a post is an hour not spent on the app. A plan that needs two free evenings a week will be dropped the first time a bug report lands. The plan that survives is the one that asks almost nothing from you after setup.
What Indie Developers Earn and Spend, Where a Source States It
An indie developer is a person or a very small team that designs, builds, ships and supports an app with no publisher and no outside funding behind it. That also makes the developer the marketing department. Forum threads are full of guesses about how much indie developers make, so this table holds only figures a named source publishes. The revenue rows come from RevenueCat's State of Subscription Apps 2026.
| What | Published figure | What it means for your marketing |
|---|---|---|
| Median monthly revenue one year after launch | About $72 | Half of subscription apps earn less than this a year in. A marketing plan that costs $100 a month is out of reach for most of them. |
| Top quarter and top 10% | Above $429 a month and above $2,574 a month | The gap between the middle and the top is wide, so compare your plan with apps at your own stage. |
| New apps that reach $1,000 a month within two years | 17.3%, and the ones that get there take a median of 58 days | Apps that make it tend to show it early. Watch your first two months closely. |
| New apps that reach $10,000 a month within two years | 4.6% | A full time income from one app is the exception. Keep fixed costs near zero until you are there. |
| Median growth in monthly recurring revenue, year over year | 5.3%. The top 10% grew more than 306% and the bottom quarter shrank by more than 33% | The typical app barely grows from one year to the next. Steady shipping and steady posting are the parts a solo developer controls. |
| Apple Developer Program | $99 a year | That is about 1.4 months of revenue for the median app ($99 divided by $72). |
| Apple's commission | 15% on paid apps and in app purchases under the App Store Small Business Program, open to new developers and to those who earned up to 1 million USD in proceeds in the prior year | Enroll as soon as you sell anything. The program is not automatic. |
| Google Play developer account | US$25, paid once | Cheap to add later. Spreadcast works from the App Store listing today. |
| A paid install on iOS | $3.60 on average in AppsFlyer's glossary, against $0.38 of revenue per install at day 60 for the median freemium app in RevenueCat's report | At those averages an install bought with ads costs more than it returns in two months. Spend time first, and let free tools do the repeatable work. |
RevenueCat's report covers more than 115,000 subscription apps on its service, from indie teams to large publishers, and does not split out solo developers. The AppsFlyer page carries no date. We found no published survey of what solo developers spend on marketing, so this table has no such row. Checked on October 11, 2026.
Do Indie Developers Make Money? Indie Developer Salary Compared With App Income
An indie developer has no salary. The income is whatever the apps earn after Apple's commission and running costs, which is why searches for an indie developer salary find so few straight answers. Here are the published reference points side by side.
| Reference point | Published figure | Source and date |
|---|---|---|
| Median pay of an employed software developer | $135,980 a year | US Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 2025 |
| Median pay of developers, quality assurance analysts and testers | $134,040 a year, or $64.44 an hour | Same BLS page, May 2025 |
| A median subscription app, one year after launch | Roughly $864 a year ($72 a month times 12) | RevenueCat, State of Subscription Apps 2026 |
| A top 10% subscription app, one year after launch | Above $30,888 a year ($2,574 a month times 12) | Same RevenueCat report |
| Share of new apps reaching $10,000 a month within two years | 4.6 in every 100 | Same RevenueCat report |
| Earnings growth of small developers in the US | Up 76 percent from 2021 to 2024 | Apple Newsroom, May 29, 2025, reporting a study Apple published |
The gap between the first two rows and the next two is the honest answer to whether indie developers make money: most indie apps do not replace a developer's salary, and the ones that do usually got there by shipping steadily for years. A marketing routine that costs almost nothing is what keeps an app alive long enough to find out. The app rows cover subscription apps on RevenueCat's service, and the yearly figures are the monthly ones times 12.
The Time Math of Doing Social Media by Hand
Here is one post, made by hand, for one release. The minutes are our estimates for a developer who is not a designer. Time yourself once and replace them with your own numbers.
| Step for one post | What it involves | Minutes |
|---|---|---|
| Pick the moment and the screenshot | Decide what to announce, export a clean screenshot from the simulator or the listing. | 5 |
| Lay out the image | Open a design tool, place the screenshot, set the headline, match your colors, export at the right size. | 15 |
| Write the captions | A short one for X and Bluesky, a longer one for LinkedIn, one with a call to action for Instagram. | 10 |
| Upload and schedule | Sign in to each network or a scheduler, attach the image, paste the caption, pick a time. | 10 |
| Total for one post | From blank canvas to scheduled. | 40 |
At 40 minutes a post, three posts a week is 2 hours a week. Over a year that is 104 hours, or 13 working days of 8 hours. A longer breakdown is in the real cost of designing social posts by hand.
The Assumptions Behind the Time Math, and What 104 Hours Are Worth
The 104 hours rest on three assumptions: 40 minutes a post, three posts a week and 52 weeks a year. Change any of them and the total moves. Two posts a week at 30 minutes each is 52 hours a year. Five posts a week at 40 minutes is 173 hours. Time one post from blank canvas to scheduled, then run your own numbers.
To put a price on those hours, use what a developer's hour sells for. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics reports a median wage of $64.44 an hour for software developers, quality assurance analysts and testers (May 2025). At that rate, 104 hours are worth about $6,702 a year. Your own rate may be higher or lower, and an evening is not always billable, so treat the figure as a ceiling.
Now the other side. Spreadcast Pro costs $290 a year on yearly billing. Divide $290 by $64.44 and you get 4.5 hours: if Pro saves you more than four and a half hours of post making in a year, it has paid for itself at that wage. On the Free plan the cash cost is $0 and the saving is the picking, design and caption time, which is 30 of the 40 minutes in the table above.
What Build in Public Is and Where It Works
Build in public means sharing the work while you do it: what you shipped, what broke, what the numbers look like, what you learned. People follow the story and some of them try the app. It suits a solo developer because the raw material is your normal week, and it is one form of founder led marketing. Each place has its own limits and rules, and the rules decide what you can post there.
| Where | Limit or rule | What works for an indie app |
|---|---|---|
| X | A post holds 280 characters and any link counts as 23, per X's character counting rules. | One change per post with one image. Ship logs and small wins travel well among other developers. |
| Bluesky | Post text is capped at 300 characters in Bluesky's post schema. | The same short ship log as X, trimmed to fit, with one image. |
| Threads | Text posts are limited to 500 characters, per Meta's Threads documentation. | A little more room for the reason behind a change. Good for a casual tone. |
| A post can hold up to 3,000 characters, per LinkedIn Help. | Longer lessons, revenue updates and launch stories, especially for apps used at work. | |
| Rule 2 of the Reddit Rules tells you to follow each community's rules, take part where you have a real interest and not spam. | Read each subreddit's rules before you mention your app, because every community sets its own. Answer questions more often than you post your link. | |
| Hacker News | Show HN is for things people can try, landing pages and sign up pages do not qualify, and you may not ask friends to upvote. | One Show HN when the app is ready to use. Stay in the thread and answer every question. |
| Product Hunt | The Product Hunt launch guide says you cannot ask people directly for upvotes, company accounts are prohibited, and 12:01 am Pacific Time is the best time to launch. Our guide on launching on Product Hunt covers the day itself. | One launch from your personal account, and again later only for a major new version. |
Limits and rules checked on October 11, 2026. Hacker News is strict about self promotion in general: its guidelines say "Please don't use HN primarily for promotion."
Which Part of Build in Public Spreadcast Can Do for You
Build in public has two kinds of posts. The first kind is personal: the story of a bad week, the revenue screenshot, the opinion about pricing. Only you can write those, and you should, because they are why people follow a person and not a logo.
The second kind is factual: version 2.4 is out and here is what changed, someone left a 5 star review, the app passed 1,000 ratings. These posts need no opinion. They need a clean image, a short caption and a slot on the calendar, every single time. They are also the ones that get skipped, because they feel like chores.
Spreadcast takes the factual kind. It designs each post and publishes it for you to Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads, Pinterest, Bluesky, Mastodon, Telegram and Discord, plus YouTube for video posts. Reddit, Hacker News and Product Hunt stay yours, because those places reward a person who shows up and answers questions. What each post contains is described on the mobile apps page.
Build in Public Examples by Network, With the Rule Each One Respects
The examples below are written for an invented habit tracker called Streakly, built by one developer. The names and numbers are made up. The rules are real and linked.
X and Bluesky: The Ship Log
Example: "Shipped Streakly 1.8 tonight. A streak now survives one missed day if you log it within 24 hours. Forty one of you asked for this. Screenshot below." One change, one image, no thread. The rule to know: X's automation rules say you may not post duplicative or substantially similar posts on one account or over multiple accounts you operate. If you run a personal account and an app account, write the two posts differently. Spreadcast writes a separate caption for each network for the same reason.
LinkedIn: The Lesson
Example: "I removed the paywall from onboarding for two weeks. Trial starts went up and paid conversions did not move. Here is what I think happened, and what I am testing next." LinkedIn gives you 3,000 characters, so explain the reasoning and show the numbers. A lesson gives other builders a reason to comment. A bare link to your listing gives them none.
Reddit: The Answer With No Link
Example, in reply to someone asking how to rebuild a habit after a bad month: three specific suggestions from what you learned building Streakly, and no link. Mention the app only if someone asks what you use. Reddit's spam guidance says that if your contributions consist primarily of links to a business you run, you should be thoughtful about how often you post or consider ads, and that moderators decide what counts as spam in their community.
Hacker News: The Show HN Title
Example: "Show HN: Streakly, a habit tracker that forgives one missed day (iOS)". Say what it is and what is different, with no adjectives. Show HN is only for something people can try, so post it once the app is live, then stay in the thread and answer every question, including the harsh ones.
Product Hunt: The Tagline and the Ask
Example tagline: "A habit tracker that forgives one missed day" (44 characters, and Product Hunt allows 60). Example ask to your followers: "Streakly is on Product Hunt today. I would love your honest feedback in the comments." Product Hunt's guide to sharing a launch tells makers to ask for feedback and comments because asking for upvotes is against its policies. Write the first comment yourself: the launch preparation guide reports that 70% of products that won Product of the Day, Week or Month had a first comment from the maker.
Build in Public Strategy: What to Share, How Often and Where the Community Is
A build in public strategy needs three decisions: what you share, how often, and where. Without them, build in public marketing turns into a burst of posts in the first month and silence after the first hard week.
What to share: progress a stranger can see (a screenshot, a short recording, a version number), numbers you are happy to keep public for years, and what you learned. Decide up front which numbers stay private. Revenue screenshots get attention, and in a small niche they also show competitors exactly where the money is.
How often: tie it to your work, not to the calendar. One ship log per release, one lesson a week and one numbers post a month is a pace a person with a day job can keep. Spreadcast posts the release itself on the networks you connect, so the ship log you write by hand can be the personal version of the same news.
Where: every build in public community forms around a network, so pick the one where your users or your peers already gather. X and Bluesky suit ship logs among developers, LinkedIn suits lessons for apps used at work, and Discord servers and podcasts about building in public are good places to listen before you post. Each community sets its own rules on self promotion, as the table above shows for Reddit, Hacker News and Product Hunt.
The Marketing Moments an Indie App Already Produces Every Month
You do not need a content plan to start. Open your own listing and count what happened in the last 30 days.
A New Version
Count the entries in your version history for the last three months. Each one is an announcement you already wrote release notes for. Spreadcast boils those notes down to two or three points and sets them next to one of your own screenshots. If your notes say only "bug fixes", the post has little to say, so the app release notes examples are worth five minutes.
A New 5 Star Review
Sort your reviews by most recent. Each 5 star review can become a post. A post that shows only the rating can go out by itself. A post that quotes the words waits for you, because Apple allows reviews in marketing only with the reviewer's permission.
A Rating Milestone
Look at your rating count and average. Passing 1,000 ratings or reaching a 4.8 average becomes a thank you post. For a small app the first milestones come slowly, which is exactly why they are worth marking when they do come.
A Week With Nothing New
Indie apps have quiet weeks: you are deep in a rewrite, or on holiday. In a week with no update, Spreadcast drafts a post about one feature of the app, using a screenshot from the listing, so the account does not look abandoned.
How Spreadcast Turns Those Moments Into Posts on the Free Plan and on Pro
- Step 1
Paste Your App Store Link
Go to the start page and paste the link to your app. Spreadcast reads the public listing. There is no SDK to add, no build to ship and no access to your developer account. The design comes from your icon, your screenshots and the colors read from the icon.
- Step 2
On the Free Plan, Download the Drafts
The Free plan costs $0 and covers 1 app. Spreadcast checks the listing every day, spots updates, reviews and milestones, and drafts the post as a 1080 by 1350 image. You download it and post it yourself. Each draft carries a small Spreadcast mark.
- Step 3
On Pro, Let It Publish for You
Pro is $29 a month flat for 1 app, with the design, the captions and the publishing included. The mark is gone and Spreadcast publishes the post on every network you connected, each with its own caption. Each post takes the next free slot on the calendar, and you can drag it to another day.
- Step 4
Keep Approve First on Until You Trust It
With approve first, every post waits for one tap from you. With full autopilot, posts go out in their slot without you. Start with approve first, read the first five or six posts, then decide.
What Indie App Marketing Costs: Spreadcast vs Hiring, a Scheduler and Doing It by Hand
Marketing for indie devs comes down to a handful of options for keeping your social accounts alive. Here is the cash cost and the time cost of each. Spreadcast is ours and comes first, because it is the only option where the posts get made without your evenings or someone paid by the hour. Prices were checked on October 11, 2026.
| Option | Cash cost | Your time | What you still do yourself |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spreadcast Pro | $29 a month flat, with design, captions and publishing to 8 networks included. That is $19 less than 8 channels on Buffer Essentials and about $144 less than the freelancer estimate below | One tap per post with approve first, none with full autopilot | Ask reviewers for permission before a quote goes out. Write your personal posts. |
| Spreadcast Free | $0. Spreadcast designs every post for you to download | A few minutes per post to download and upload | Post the drafts yourself. The drafts carry a small Spreadcast mark. |
| A scheduler | Buffer's pricing page lists a free plan for up to 3 channels with 10 scheduled posts per channel at a time. Essentials is $6 per channel a month billed monthly, so 8 channels cost $48 a month. | Most of the 2 hours. A scheduler removes the uploading step only. | Notice the moment, design the image, write the captions. |
| A freelancer | Upwork's rate page for social media managers gives a median of $20 an hour and a usual range of $14 to $35. Two hours a week at the median is about $173 a month. | Time to brief, review and send screenshots for every release | Tell them what shipped, check every post before it goes out. |
| Do it by hand | $0 with free tools | About 2 hours a week at three posts, by the estimate above | Everything: notice the moment, design, write, upload. |
The arithmetic: 8 channels on Buffer Essentials at $6 each come to $48 a month with every post still yours to make, and Pro is $29 a month with the posts designed and published. A year of Pro is $290 on yearly billing. Against the 104 hours a year in the time table above, that is about $2.79 for each hour of that work. If your app is not earning yet, start on Free: it adds $0 to the $99 a year you already pay for the Apple Developer Program. A full comparison with a scheduler is on the Buffer alternative page.
A Zero Budget Weekly Marketing Routine for a Solo Developer
This is a routine a person with a day job can keep. The days and minutes are our assumptions. Move them around, but keep each task small enough to finish in one sitting.
| When | Task | Minutes | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | Reply to new reviews in App Store Connect, lowest ratings first. The reviewer is notified and can update the review. | 10 | $0 |
| Tuesday | Post one ship log on X or Bluesky: what you changed this week, with a screenshot. | 10 | $0 |
| Wednesday | Answer two questions in the one community where your users already are. No link unless someone asks. | 15 | $0 |
| Thursday | Post the draft Spreadcast made this week: an update, a 5 star review, a milestone or a feature post. | 5 on Free to download and upload, 0 on Pro | $0 on Free |
| Friday | Open App Analytics and read two numbers: downloads by source and conversion rate. Write down one thing to change on the listing. | 10 | $0 |
| Release day | Write the first sentence of the What's New text as a headline, because it becomes the post. | 5 | $0 |
| Total | Five small tasks a week, plus one on release days. | 50 a week, plus 5 per release | $0 |
Compare that with the 2 hours a week in the time table above. The difference is the design and caption work, which is the part Spreadcast does.
Free Marketing Tools Apple Gives Every Indie Developer
Apple hands every developer in the program a set of marketing tools, and many solo developers never open them. Limits were checked on October 11, 2026.
| Tool | What Apple's page says | How a solo developer uses it |
|---|---|---|
| TestFlight public link | Up to 10,000 external testers, and a build can be tested for up to 90 days. | Post the link in a ship log and collect the first users before launch. |
| Promo codes | Up to 100 per version of each platform, valid for four weeks, single use. Customers who redeem one cannot rate or review the app. | Give them to newsletter writers and creators for a paid app. They are useless for collecting reviews. |
| Promotional text | Up to 170 characters, editable at any time without a new version. | Announce a sale, a milestone or what is coming next, the same day you post about it. |
| In app events | Up to 31 days long, promoted up to 14 days before the start, shown on your product page and in search. | Turn a challenge or a major update into a card people can find in search. |
| Custom product pages | Up to 70 extra versions of your product page, each with its own URL, screenshots and promotional text. | Make one page per audience, and link the Reddit crowd and the LinkedIn crowd to different screenshots. |
| Campaign links | A tagged link that ties product page views and first time downloads to a campaign. | One link per network, so you learn which place is worth your Wednesday. |
| Featuring nominations | Any developer can nominate an app, and Apple recommends a minimum lead time of 3 weeks. | Send one before every major version. It is a short form in App Store Connect. |
| Apple Ads credit | A 100 USD credit for eligible new Apple Ads accounts. | The one paid test that fits a zero budget: bid on your own app name and a few exact phrases. |
Video: How People Find Apps on the App Store
An Apple Developer session that walks through most of the free tools in the table above, from the product page to featuring.
How to Market an App With No Budget as a Solo Developer
When the budget is zero, the answer to how to market an app for free is to spend your hours where money cannot substitute for you and automate the rest. Here is a plan that costs nothing but a few hours a month.
Fix the listing first, because every other effort sends people there. Then ask happy users for a rating. Apple's review prompt can be shown up to three times in a 365 day period, so trigger it after a moment where the app clearly helped. Reply to reviews in App Store Connect, since the reviewer is notified and can update the review.
Next, choose one or two places from the table above where your users already spend time, and show up as a person. Write the personal posts by hand. Let Spreadcast's Free plan design the factual ones, and post those when you have a minute.
That covers the basics of how to market an app as a solo developer. The longer playbook, with every free channel we could find, is in how to promote an app for free, and the review tactics are in how to get App Store reviews.
Indie App Marketing Mistakes Solo Developers Make
| Mistake | Why it backfires | Do this instead |
|---|---|---|
| Building in silence and announcing on launch day | Product Hunt's sharing guide lists inviting your community only on launch day among the common mistakes. | Start the ship log the week you have a screenshot. Launch to people who already know the app. |
| Dropping your link in communities you never joined | The same guide says launch day is not the time to start posting on Reddit or Indie Hackers if you have not posted there before. Moderators remove it and readers ignore it. | Pick one community months ahead and be useful there first. |
| Asking friends for upvotes or 5 star reviews | Show HN says not to ask friends to upvote. Product Hunt treats asking for upvotes as a policy violation. Guideline 5.6.3 of the App Review Guidelines says manipulating reviews is not permitted. | Ask for feedback, and ask for ratings with Apple's own prompt inside the app. |
| Posting the same text everywhere | X's automation rules bar duplicative posts across accounts you operate, and a LinkedIn reader and a Bluesky reader expect different lengths. | One idea, a caption per network. |
| Trying to run eight networks by hand | At 40 minutes a post it eats the evenings you need for the app, and the accounts go quiet. | Show up in person in one or two places. Let Spreadcast keep the others current. |
| Writing "bug fixes" as your release notes | The release notes are the raw material for the announcement. Nothing in, nothing out. | One sentence on what changed for the user, every version. |
An Indie App Marketing Checklist You Can Finish This Week
- Step 1
Enroll in the Small Business Program
If you sell anything and have not enrolled, do it in App Store Connect. It lowers Apple's commission to 15% for developers who qualify.
- Step 2
Create One Campaign Link per Network
Put the X link in your X profile and the LinkedIn link in your LinkedIn profile, so downloads show up by source.
- Step 3
Paste Your App Store Link at the Start Page
Go to the start page. The Free plan starts drafting a post for each update, review and milestone the same day.
- Step 4
Pick One Community and Read Its Rules
Choose the subreddit or forum where your users ask questions. Read the rules on self promotion before your first comment.
- Step 5
Block 50 Minutes a Week in Your Calendar
Use the routine above: 10 or 15 minutes a day, five days. A routine that fits beside a day job is the one you will still be doing in six months.
Indie Game Developers: What Carries Over From App Marketing
Many searches for indie dev marketing come from game developers, and the two jobs overlap less than they seem to. On PC, an indie game launch is built around the Steam wishlist. Steam's wishlist documentation says everyone with the game on their wishlist gets an email or a push notification at release, and again for a discount of at least 20 percent that runs longer than 8 hours, with a cooldown of about two weeks between wishlist emails.
Apps have no wishlist. The closest tool on the App Store is a pre order, which downloads the app to everyone who ordered it on release day, as the startup launch page explains. After launch, an app's marketing runs on updates, ratings and reviews, where a game's runs on trailers, festivals and discounts.
A mobile game on the App Store sits in between. Its listing has versions, ratings and reviews like any app, so Spreadcast can post its updates and milestones. Trailers and gameplay clips stay with you, because Spreadcast makes still image posts.
What Stays With You, and When the Free Plan Is Enough
Spreadcast reads App Store listings, so it starts the day your iOS app is live. Before launch, make your posts by hand with the app launch checklist and the launch plan for startups, then paste the link on release day. Google Play is next on the list.
If you ship twice a year, the Free plan is enough. The feature posts for quiet weeks are still drafted, and you can move to Pro when the app moves faster.
Spreadcast makes still image posts. Keep your video editor for short video, and answer comments in each network's own app. If you want a report on every post, run a scheduler with analytics beside it.
Your personal posts stay yours. If your voice is the reason people follow you, keep writing those and let Spreadcast handle the release, review and milestone announcements.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I market an app as a solo developer?
Do the few things that only you can do, and automate the repeatable ones. Fix the App Store listing, ask for ratings at a good moment, reply to reviews, and show up in one or two communities as a person. Let a tool handle the release, review and milestone posts. The full list is in how to market an app.
How do I market an app with no budget?
Use channels that cost time and no money: your listing, ratings and reviews, build in public posts, and communities where your users already are. Spreadcast's Free plan designs the update, review and milestone posts for $0, and you post them yourself. More free channels are in how to promote an app for free.
What does build in public mean?
It means sharing your progress openly while you build: releases, numbers, mistakes and lessons. For an indie app it works best on X, Bluesky, Threads and LinkedIn, plus communities such as Reddit and Hacker News where the rules on self promotion are strict.
Is the Spreadcast free plan really free?
Yes. It costs $0 and covers 1 app. Spreadcast spots updates, reviews and milestones and designs every post. You download each one and post it yourself, with a small Spreadcast mark on it. Pro, at $29 a month, removes the mark and publishes for you on 8 networks. Details are on the pricing page.
Does Spreadcast post to Reddit, Hacker News or Product Hunt?
Spreadcast publishes to Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads, Pinterest, Bluesky, Mastodon, Telegram and Discord, plus YouTube for video posts. Reddit, Hacker News and Product Hunt stay with you. Communities such as Reddit expect a person who follows each community's rules, as Rule 2 of the Reddit Rules puts it, so those posts should come from you.
Do I have to add an SDK or change my app?
No. Spreadcast reads the public App Store listing. You do not add code, ship a build or give access to App Store Connect.
Does it work for iOS app marketing only, or for Google Play too?
Spreadcast works from App Store listings today, so an app on both stores can use it through its iOS listing. Google Play support is next on the list.
How much do indie developers make from apps?
It varies widely, and the middle is low. In RevenueCat's State of Subscription Apps 2026, the median subscription app earns about $72 a month one year after launch, the top quarter earns more than $429 a month, and 17.3% of new apps reach $1,000 in monthly revenue within two years. That is why a marketing routine that costs little time and money matters.
Where These Facts Come From
Every outside number, rule and price on this page links to the page it was taken from.
- State of Subscription Apps 2026RevenueCat
- Counting characters in a postX Developer Platform
- Bluesky post schema with the 300 character limitBluesky on GitHub
- Threads API overview and limitsMeta for Developers
- Character limits for posts on LinkedInLinkedIn Help
- Reddit RulesReddit
- Show HN guidelinesHacker News, Y Combinator
- Hacker News guidelinesHacker News, Y Combinator
- Product Hunt launch guideProduct Hunt
- Buffer pricingBuffer
- Social media manager hourly ratesUpwork
- Apple Developer Program membershipApple Developer
- Ratings, reviews and responsesApple Developer
- App Store Small Business ProgramApple Developer
- Google Play developer account registrationGoogle Play Console Help
- Cost per install glossary entryAppsFlyer
- Automation rulesX Help Center
- Reddit guidance on spamReddit Help
- Preparing for a Product Hunt launchProduct Hunt
- Sharing your Product Hunt launchProduct Hunt
- TestFlight overviewApple Developer, App Store Connect Help
- Request and manage promo codesApple Developer, App Store Connect Help
- Creating your product pageApple Developer
- In app events on the App StoreApple Developer
- Custom product pagesApple Developer
- Campaign links in App Store Connect AnalyticsApple Developer, App Store Connect Help
- Promote your appsApple Developer
- Nominate your app for featuringApple Developer, App Store Connect Help
- Software developers, quality assurance analysts and testersUS Bureau of Labor Statistics
- App Review GuidelinesApple Developer
- Analytics in App Store ConnectApple Developer
- App Store in the US facilitated over $400 billion in developer billings and sales in 2024Apple Newsroom
- WishlistsSteamworks Documentation
- Video: getting started with app discovery and marketingApple Developer
Researched and written by Spreadcast. Last checked on October 17, 2026.