More apps than ever were submitted to app stores over the last year, thanks to vibecoding and the removal of other barriers to app creation. This has left consumers inundated with options and created a winner-takes-all environment, where creativity and app experiences alone aren’t enough to succeed.
Now, app performance is equally dictated by business mechanics, such as revenue models, pricing and subscription durations. It’s against this backdrop that apps that operate in an increasingly vanishing middle will need to shift their strategies to keep up or die by default.
RevenueCat set out to determine what sets the highest performing apps apart from everyone else, examining considerations from revenue strategies and popular app categories to the pricing architectures that drive retention and performance. The State of Subscription Apps looks at data from over 115,000 apps across all app categories, covering more than $16 billion in revenue.
Moderate growth used to be considered safe. Now it puts apps in a danger zone.
Key insights
- The top 25% of apps grew their Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) by 80% year-over-year, while the bottom 25% saw it drop 33%.
- Apps that live in the middle ground between top and bottom performers are growing around 5% year over year.
- The top 10% of apps grew 306% YOY last year, showing a large jump between even top performers and leaders.
New apps are entering an increasingly cutthroat market.
Key insights
- Last year 19% of all new apps reached $1k in monthly recurring revenue (MRR) in their first two years. This year, that number has dropped to 17%.
- And, even fewer made it to the $10k MRR mark, with the percentage of apps declining from 5.3% to 4.6%.
- The exception to this decline is the Gaming app category. While almost every other sector saw milestone hit rates drop, new gaming apps increased their success rate, with 9% hitting the $10k MRR mark, making it the highest-performing category at the $10k level.
Higher-priced apps achieve nearly 6x the realized lifetime value that lower-priced apps do after one year.
Key insights
- High priced apps have a median realized lifetime value of $62.19 per user after one year, which is nearly 6x low priced apps’ at $10.69 per user.
- The “middle” isn’t close to the top. Mid-priced apps land at $26.07 after a year — less than half of high-priced ($62.19).
Low priced apps retain users for longer than high priced apps.
Key insights
- While high priced apps see a 23% median retention rate, lower priced apps are holding on to users for longer with a 36% median retention rate.
- Low-priced wins on every plan length. Monthly retention medians are 10.8% (low) vs 6.1% (high), and even weekly is 1.3% vs 1.0% — the same direction across the board.
Apps whose features are exclusive to paid users convert 5x better than those with free options.
Key insights
- Apps with hard paywalls convert 11% of users compared to freemium apps which only convert 2%. And those converted users stay with retention at the one year mark for hard paywalls (27%) nearly identical to freemium’s (28%).
- Hard paywalled apps also make more per install seeing up to around $2.32 after two weeks versus freemium’s 27 cents.
North American apps realize ~40% more annual value per payer ($32) than the global median ($23)
Key insights
- Apps earning $44+ per payer are in the top quartile globally
- North America’s median ($32) is 2.3× higher than IN/SEA ($14) and Western Europe is the next-highest median ($25)
A year in, most apps are still small — only the breakouts clear $429/month.
Key insights
- Cross-category the average monthly revenue after a year for apps is around $72, but the top 10% pull in $2,500+, a 36× gap.
- Apps won’t be considered in the top quartile unless they’re making above $429, and even then they’re behind the top 10% that is making over $2,574.
- The middle 50% of apps span $16–$429 monthly revenue overall, a 27× spread, unusually wide for a revenue metric.