App Store Statistics 2026: Apps, Downloads, Revenue and App Review Numbers

Apple publishes few numbers about the App Store, and the ones it does publish sit in four places: the yearly App Store Transparency Report, Newsroom releases, the Apple Ads site and the developer pages. This page collects them, then adds named estimates from Sensor Tower, Appfigures, Business of Apps, 42matters, AppTweak, RevenueCat and AppsFlyer for the questions Apple does not answer.

The newest Transparency Report is the 2025 edition, and it was still the latest one on Apple's site on October 17, 2026. Its figures match the ones Apple's May 2026 fraud prevention release gives for calendar year 2025, such as 9.1 million submissions reviewed and 193,000 developer accounts terminated. That is why most App Store statistics for 2026 are 2025 figures: Apple updates the report once a year.

Three rules apply to every number below. Each one names its publisher, the period it covers and a link, in the same sentence or table row. Anything we calculated is labeled derived, with the arithmetic shown. Two sources are never blended into one figure, and where they disagree, both appear side by side in the methodology section at the end.

Apple reports most activity as a weekly average, so any per day or per year download figure is a calculation and is marked as one. Google publishes less than Apple does, so every Google Play number here is marked as Android and comes from Google's own pages or a named tracker.

Apple does not publish a new apps per day figure. 42matters estimates an average of 3,835 new apps a day on the App Store and counted 144,614 in September 2026, on a page updated October 13, 2026. For Google Play (Android) it shows 2,457 a day and 82,770 for the month. AppBrain counts Google Play differently and reports 47.3 thousand launches and 19.6 thousand removals in September 2026.

Releases are rising fast. TechCrunch, reporting Appfigures data on April 18, 2026, says worldwide app releases in the first quarter of 2026 were up 60% year over year across both stores and up 80% on the App Store alone. The article offers AI coding tools as a possible cause and does not measure it.

More apps arriving means more apps turned away. Apple's fraud prevention release says App Review rejected over 1.2 million new apps and nearly 800,000 app updates in 2025, and removed nearly 59,000 apps that changed their behavior after approval.

On price, 42matters classes 2,575,859 App Store apps (94.96%) as free to download and 136,750 (5.04%) as paid, and says paid apps typically cost under $1. Business of Apps puts free apps at 95.8%, on a page updated February 18, 2026. Apple's own line is a different measure: its developer overview page says 85% of apps are free and their developers pay nothing to Apple, which describes commission, and it gives no date.

Apple reports 60,597,750 registered Apple developers in the 2025 Transparency Report, up from 51,766,243 in 2024. That is a derived rise of 17.1% (60,597,750 ÷ 51,766,243). A registered developer is an account, and Apple's account overview says anyone can register for free with an Apple Account, so this number is far larger than the count of people who ship apps.

Publishing on the App Store requires the Apple Developer Program, which costs $99 a year as of October 2026. Apple does not publish how many members the program has. The closest public proxy is the number of publishers with a live app: 42matters counts 1,160,003 publishers on the App Store and 800,360 on Google Play (Android), both on pages updated October 13, 2026.

Apple's May 2026 release adds three figures for 2025: App Review helped welcome over 306,000 new developers, Apple rejected more than 138,000 developer enrollments, and it terminated 193,000 developer accounts over fraud concerns. The Transparency Report gives the exact termination count as 193,035, of which 192,702 were for fraud under section 3.2(f) of the developer agreement. Of 10,127 termination appeals, 499 accounts were restored.

The redownload line is the least quoted number in the report and one of the most useful. In 2025 the App Store averaged 2.21 redownloads for every download (derived: 2,053,461,208 ÷ 929,754,061), and the ratio has stayed above 2 in every edition: 2.06 in 2022, 2.10 in 2023 and 2.26 in 2024, each derived the same way from that year's report.

The report does not define a redownload. In App Store Connect, Apple's metrics definitions describe the Redownloads metric as counted when a customer clicks the redownload button, and say it does not include automatic updates or device restores. If the report uses the same definition, most installs on the App Store in a given week are people returning to an app they already had.

Reach is wider than most small teams assume. Apple's developer overview page says over 50% of downloads come from outside a developer's home region, without a date. The practical steps for turning that into installs are in our guide on how to get app downloads.

For someone else's app, you cannot. An App Store product page shows the number of ratings and a chart position, never a download count: Instagram's App Store page showed 30M ratings and its chart rank when we opened it on October 17, 2026, and no installs. Google Play shows a rounded floor instead. Instagram's Google Play page showed 5B+ downloads on the same day, which tells you the bracket and not the number.

For your own app, the numbers sit in App Store Connect Analytics. Apple's metrics definitions separate First Time Downloads, counted on devices with iOS, macOS, tvOS or visionOS, from Redownloads, counted when a customer taps the redownload button and excluding automatic updates and device restores. Total Downloads is the sum of the two. Conversion rate is total downloads and preorders divided by unique device impressions, and our App Store conversion rate benchmarks show where most apps land by category.

Apple's App Analytics page adds comparisons you will not find anywhere public: private peer group benchmarks, now including download to paid conversion and proceeds per download, and cohorts by download date or download source. Those benchmarks are the fairest answer to the common question of how many downloads is good for an app like yours.

For a competitor, the only figures are estimates from market intelligence companies, such as the Sensor Tower and Appfigures numbers quoted on this page. Treat a per app estimate the way this page treats their market totals: modeled, labeled with its source, and never mixed with Apple's own counts. To learn which of your own posts or pages brought downloads, tag each link with the App Store campaign link generator.

Apple counted 46,630,867,840 automatic app updates a week in 2025 against 701,572,983 manual ones, per the 2025 Transparency Report. Derived: manual updates were 1.5% of all updates (701,572,983 ÷ 47,332,440,823). A footnote in the report says apps downloaded from the App Store are updated automatically by default on iPhone and iPad.

The manual share has been small in every edition. Derived the same way from each year's report, it was 1.2% in 2022, 1.1% in 2023, 1.0% in 2024 and 1.5% in 2025. Automatic updates themselves fell from 66,022,387,774 a week in 2024 to 46,630,867,840 in 2025, a derived drop of 29.4%, while manual updates rose 10.0%. Apple does not explain either movement.

Top apps ship constantly. 42matters tracks the 1,000 App Store apps with the most ratings and found that 475 of them (48%) are updated at least once a week, 779 (78%) at least once a month and 973 (97%) at least once a year, on a page last updated October 11, 2026. It lists Monday as the most common release day and Sunday as the least common.

A new version does not reach everyone at once. With Apple's phased release, an update goes to 1%, 2%, 5%, 10%, 20%, 50% and then 100% of users with automatic updates over 7 days. Put the two facts together and the conclusion is plain: about 98.5% of updates install without anyone opening the update screen (derived: 100% minus 1.5%), so release notes are read by a small audience. Write them well with the app release notes generator and the app release notes examples, then announce the update somewhere people will see it.

Apple's Small Business Program sets a reduced commission of 15% on paid apps and in app purchases for developers who earned up to 1 million USD in proceeds in the prior calendar year, and for developers new to the App Store. Pass the threshold during a year and the standard rate applies to later sales. Fall back under it and you can qualify again the year after.

Subscriptions follow their own schedule. Apple's subscriptions page says you receive 70% of the subscription price during a subscriber's first year and 85% after the subscriber has accumulated one year of paid service. Derived, that is a commission of 30% in year one and 15% afterward. Members of the Small Business Program receive 85% from the first billing cycle.

The biggest shift of 2025 was where the money went. Sensor Tower's State of Mobile press release, dated January 21, 2026, says in app purchase revenue from apps other than games passed games for the first time, rising 21% year over year. Its report puts games revenue at close to $82 billion, up 1.3%, and United States consumer spending at nearly $60 billion.

Google Play (Android) charges a one time registration fee of US$25. Its service fee page, read October 13, 2026, says 97% of developers pay no service fee and that 99% of those who do qualify for 15% or less. The same page describes a new fee schedule for users in the United States, the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom from June 30, 2026, and for Australia and Japan from September 30, 2026, while in other markets developers enrolled in the 15% tier still pay 15% on the first $1 million of yearly revenue and 30% above it.

The rejection rate has fallen each year while volume has grown. Derived from each year's report, Apple rejected 27.5% of submissions in 2022 (1,679,694 ÷ 6,101,913), 25.6% in 2023, 24.9% in 2024 and 23.0% in 2025. Over the same period submissions reviewed rose 49.1% (9,100,620 ÷ 6,101,913).

On speed, Apple's App Review page says it typically reviews at least 50% of submissions in less than 24 hours and 90% in less than 48 hours, as of October 2026. Its store page says nearly 500 experts review over 130K apps every week, without a date. The 2025 report implies a higher pace: about 175,000 submissions a week (derived: 9,100,620 ÷ 52). Live averages by month and weekday are in our guide to how long App Store review takes.

Apple removed 166,899 apps in 2025, about double the 82,509 removed in 2024. Two reasons account for nearly all of them: 90,608 removals for fraud under section 3.2(f) of the developer agreement and 72,271 under Design guideline 4.0, which a footnote attributes to the ongoing cleanup of outdated apps. Utilities (31,594) and Games (30,429) lost the most apps, followed by Lifestyle (13,166) and Productivity (13,116).

Government takedown demands removed 2,045 apps, led by Russia with 1,213, Vietnam with 335 and mainland China with 196. Developers appealed 26,305 removals and 423 apps were restored, a derived 1.6% (423 ÷ 26,305). The report notes that most appealed removals involve illegality or fraud.

Search is the main road into the App Store. Apple Ads states that 70% of App Store visitors use search to discover apps and that almost 65% of downloads happen directly after a search, both footnoted as App Store, worldwide, 2022. These are the only search share figures Apple publishes, and they are four years old.

The Transparency Report adds current volume: 463,575,966 customer accounts searched the App Store in an average week of 2025, up from 440,896,463 in 2024. For comparison, the report counts 892,670,823 weekly visitors, though accounts and visitors are different units and Apple does not relate them.

Visibility in search is spread more widely than the charts suggest. In an average week of 2025, 164,436 apps appeared in the top 10 results of at least 1,000 searches, and 1,365,649 apps did so at some point in the year. Derived against the 2,172,472 apps on the store, that is 7.6% of apps in a typical week and 62.9% across the year.

Paid search converts at a high rate because the intent is explicit. Apple Ads reports an average conversion rate of over 60% for ads at the top of search results (tap through install rate, November 2024 to October 2025). AppTweak's ASO and Apple Ads benchmarks report, published July 13, 2026, puts the median cost per install in United States search results between $1.33 for Shopping and $26.70 for Sports in 2025, with Games at $4.63, across about 2,800 advertisers.

Organic ranking depends on a short list of fields. Apple's search page names text relevance (title, subtitle, keywords and primary category) and user behavior such as downloads, ratings and reviews. The keyword field holds 100 characters, which you can check with the App Store character counter. The full method is in our guide to App Store optimization.

Apple processed over 1.3 billion ratings and reviews in 2025 and blocked close to 195 million as fraudulent, per its May 2026 release. Derived from those two rounded figures, about 15% of submitted ratings and reviews never appeared (195 ÷ 1,300). Google's Play safety report, dated February 19, 2026, says it blocked 160 million spam ratings and reviews on Google Play (Android) in 2025.

Most apps have no rating at all. 42matters finds that 1,013,783 App Store apps (37.35%) have been rated and 1,700,169 (62.65%) have not, on a page updated October 13, 2026. On Google Play (Android) its figure is 45.84% rated.

Among rated apps, high averages are common and often rest on very few ratings. The chart behind 42matters' rating distribution shows 403,361 apps at exactly 5.0 stars with an average of 3 ratings each, and 207,593 apps between 4.5 and 5.0 with an average of 13,731 ratings each. Derived from that chart, 74.3% of rated apps sit at 4.0 or higher (753,370 ÷ 1,013,783). A 5.0 from three people and a 4.7 from thirteen thousand are different assets.

Ratings track with visibility. AppTweak's 2026 benchmarks report says around 95% of apps featured on the United States App Store in 2025 were rated 4.0 or higher and 65% were at 4.6 or higher. Among the top 1,000 apps, those rated 4 stars ranked in the top 10 for 4.4 keywords on average, against 1.3 for 1 star apps. AppTweak notes the link is a correlation.

The rules limit how hard you can push. Apple's ratings and reviews page allows the system rating prompt up to three times in a 365 day period, lets you use your rating in marketing only when it reflects the current rating, and allows customer reviews in marketing only with the reviewer's permission. Our guide on how to get App Store reviews covers timing and replies.

Apple publishes no retention averages, so these come from measurement companies. Day 1, day 7 and day 30 rates for 25 categories are in our app retention benchmarks. Business of Apps, on a page updated July 14, 2026 and citing AppsFlyer, puts the average iOS app retention rate at 25.4% on day 1 and 5.3% by day 30. For Android it gives 20.2% and 3.8%. The free part of the page does not state the data period.

Uninstalls tell the same story from the other side. AppsFlyer's app uninstall report, 2025 edition, found that 46.1% of Android app installs were uninstalled within 30 days in 2024, against 46.9% in 2023, measured as an average per app. The report covers Android only, because uninstall tracking on iOS has been limited since iOS 15.

Time in apps keeps climbing. Sensor Tower's State of Mobile 2026 estimates that people spent 5.3 trillion hours in iOS and Google Play apps in 2025, up 3.8% year over year, or roughly 3.6 hours a day per mobile user. Time in generative AI apps reached 48 billion hours, about 3.6 times the 2024 total, and the company's press release puts social media at nearly 2.5 trillion hours.

Paid retention is lower than most forecasts assume. RevenueCat's 2026 summary reports that 28% of yearly subscribers on freemium apps and 27% on hard paywall apps are still active after one year. If your plan assumes half of yearly subscribers renew, it is roughly twice as optimistic as the median.

Apple publishes ranks, never download counts. Its top apps of 2025 chart for the United States lists the most downloaded free apps on iPhone in this order: ChatGPT, Threads, Google, TikTok, WhatsApp Messenger, Instagram, YouTube, Google Maps, Gmail and Google Gemini. The top paid apps were HotSchedules, Shadowrocket, Procreate Pocket, AnkiMobile Flashcards and Paprika Recipe Manager 3.

For games, Apple's top games of 2025 chart for the United States starts with Block Blast, Fortnite, Roblox, Township and Pokémon TCG Pocket among free games. Editors picked separately: the 2025 App Store Awards, announced December 4, 2025, recognized 17 apps and games, with Tiimo as App of the Year and Pokémon TCG Pocket as Game of the Year on iPhone.

AI assistants moved from novelty to the top of the charts. Sensor Tower's press release says ChatGPT was the third highest grossing app of 2025 behind TikTok and Google One, and its report counts 3.8 billion downloads of generative AI apps in the year, double the year before. Apple's ecosystem release says more than 40 of the top 100 apps featured AI capabilities for consumers in 2025.

By number of listings, the chart on 42matters ranks Utilities, Business and Education as the three largest of 26 App Store categories, ahead of Games, Lifestyle, Health & Fitness and Productivity. Each of the top three holds roughly a tenth of all listings. One example, derived from the chart's own counts: Utilities has 260,855 free and 20,379 paid apps, or 281,234 of 2,713,952 (10.4%).

Two numbers on this page describe the same gap. About 1.5% of updates are installed by hand, so release notes reach few people, and a 5 star review sits on a product page that only store visitors open. The work that earns those moments is done, and almost nobody outside the store hears about it.

We make Spreadcast for that gap. Paste your App Store link at the start page and Spreadcast checks your public listing every day. When a new version, a 5 star review or a rating milestone appears, Spreadcast designs a post from your icon and screenshots, writes a caption for each network and publishes it to Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads, Pinterest, Bluesky, Mastodon, Telegram and Discord, plus YouTube for video posts. Posts that quote a reviewer wait for your approval, because Apple requires the reviewer's permission.

The free plan drafts every post for you to download, with a small Spreadcast mark. Pro is $29 a month flat, with design, captions and publishing to all 8 networks included, as shown on the pricing page. It is built for apps on the App Store and makes still image posts, so keep a video editor for clips.