Subscription apps launched since 2025 share 3% of revenue, RevenueCat's 2026 report finds

The post's model gives every app four steps: someone builds it, people find it, a stranger trusts it with their data and their card, and money moves ^[15]. AI coding tools shortened the first step. Jacob Eiting, RevenueCat's CEO, wrote in the report's founder's letter: "AI removed a decade old supply constraint on apps... this is just a shock." ^[6]

Launches went from about 2,000 a month in January 2022 ^[2] to more than 14,700 in January 2026 ^[1], a factor of about 7.4 ^[1]. The post dates the upturn to early 2025 and ties it to AI coding tools getting good ^[5]. The evidence for that link is the timing of a bend in a chart.

Demand moved the other way. Appfigures counted 106.9 billion downloads in 2025, down 2.7% from 2024 and the fifth annual decline in a row ^[7]. The 2020 peak was 135 billion ^[8]. Installs are now about 21% below it ^[2]. Consumer spending still rose 21.6% to $155.8 billion, according to TechCrunch figures the post cites ^[9]. The post takes this to mean the money is going to apps people already have ^[17].

The 69% share for pre-2020 apps comes from RevenueCat's chart as posted by a developer on X ^[4]. The split needs an age correction before it proves new apps cannot find customers. Every app in the 3% group launched in 2025 or later ^[3]. Every app in the 69% group had been live at least six years by 2026 ^[6]. A subscription app's monthly revenue is its new payers plus every payer still renewing from earlier months. A young cohort's small share is therefore partly a measure of its age. For the split to show a harder market, the 2025 cohort would have to trail the 2019 cohort at the same age. The post does not publish that comparison.

I think the fixed-age numbers make the stronger case that distribution is the limit. One year after launch, the median app makes about $72 a month, the top quarter $429 and the top 10% $2,574 ^[10]. The top decile earns about 36 times the median ^[3]. Within two years, 17.3% of apps reach $1,000 a month and 4.6% reach $10,000 ^[11]. In 2014, VisionMobile surveyed more than 10,000 developers, set an "app poverty line" at $500 per app per month, and found half of iOS developers below it ^[16]. The samples and methods differ, but today's one-year median is about a seventh of that line ^[4].

AI apps earn 41% more per paying user and lose them 30% faster, according to the post ^[12]. Take "30% faster" to mean a monthly churn rate 1.3 times the baseline, and hold that rate constant. Expected subscriber lifetime then falls to 1/1.3 of normal. Lifetime revenue per payer comes out about 8% ahead (1.41 / 1.3 = 1.085) ^[5].

The report covers 115,000 apps, $16 billion in revenue and over a billion transactions ^[14]. The build step has its own revenue line. Cursor passed $2 billion in annualized revenue and Lovable $500 million, according to the post ^[13]. Cursor's figure alone equals a year of revenue from about 2.3 million median one-year-old apps ^[7].