How Much Money Is in Apps? What We Tell Founders About the App Market

Why has mobile overtaken desktop, and why does it matter for your idea? 

Mobile devices now account for roughly 59 to 60% of all website traffic globally, according to StatCounter's 2025 data, and the average mobile user spends around 3.6 hours a day inside apps rather than browsing the mobile web. That's a huge, sustained shift in behaviour, not a short-term spike, and it's been building steadily for well over a decade. 

For founders, the practical takeaway is that if your target users are spending that much of their day on a phone, a genuinely useful app has a far better chance of becoming part of their routine than a website ever will. That's a big part of why we still see strong demand for app builds even in categories that could, in theory, be served by a mobile-friendly website instead. 

When a founder asks us how big the app market is, we try to steer the conversation away from the headline number quite quickly. A trillion-pound market tells you almost nothing about whether your specific app, in your specific niche, is going to make money. It's a useful reason to take the opportunity seriously, not a reason to expect a slice of it by default.

Do all apps make money the same way? 

No, and this is one of the most common misunderstandings we see. Not every app is designed to make money directly. Some exist to support a wider business, such as a retailer's own app or an internal tool for staff, where the value is in service or efficiency rather than direct revenue. Others, particularly entertainment and games apps, are built specifically around in-app purchases, subscriptions and advertising, and this is where the largest sums of money in the app economy tend to sit. 

Games alone generated tens of billions of dollars in App Store revenue in 2025, and in-app purchase spending across both major platforms has continued to grow faster than the number of downloads, which tells you something important: users are increasingly paying more inside fewer apps, rather than spreading small amounts across lots of different ones. 

In-app purchase (IAP): a payment made inside an app for extra content, features or virtual goods, separate from any upfront cost to download the app.

How much can a successful app actually earn? 

This is genuinely difficult to put an average on, because the spread between the top and the rest of the market is enormous. A widely cited 2019 study of the top 200 grossing apps on the App Store found they averaged around $82,500 a month each, while apps ranked in the 200 to 800 range averaged closer to $3,500 a month. Even allowing for how much the market has grown since, that gap between the top tier and everyone else has, if anything, become more pronounced, not less, as in-app purchase revenue continues to concentrate around a smaller number of high-performing apps. 

We're always upfront with founders on this point: assume you're building towards the realistic end of that range, not the exceptional end. If your app performs better than that, brilliant. If you plan your budget and expectations around the top 200 outcome, you're planning around the exception rather than the norm.

What determines whether an app makes money, in our experience? 

Having built and supported apps across sports, logistics, care, construction, hobbyist and consumer sectors, the pattern we see repeatedly isn't about category, it's about a few specific things done well: 

• A clear, specific problem the app solves for a defined group of users, rather than a broad idea aimed at everyone 

• A business model that's decided early, whether that's in-app purchases, subscriptions, advertising, or the app supporting revenue elsewhere in the business 

• A genuinely usable, well-designed experience, tested with real users before the full build, not assumed from a brief 

• Ongoing investment in maintenance and updates after launch, rather than treating launch as the finish line 

How much does it cost to build an app? 

This is the question that almost always follows "how much can it make", and it's a fair one to ask together. Cost depends heavily on scope: how many features the app needs, whether it's built for one platform or both iOS and Android, how complex the backend and integrations are, and how much design and testing work goes in before launch. A simple, single-purpose app will cost a fraction of a complex platform with logins, payments, real-time data and admin tools behind it. 

We always recommend starting with a wireframe and an interactive prototype before committing to a full build. It gives you and your development team a shared, tested view of the app before serious budget is spent, and it means the cost and timeline you're quoted for the full build is based on something concrete rather than a written brief alone. 

What we recommend before you commit to building an app 

If a founder came to us today with an app idea and asked where to start, our advice would be: get specific about the problem you're solving and for whom, decide your business model before you design a single screen, and get a prototype built so you and any investors can see and test the idea before the main development begins. That sequence doesn't guarantee commercial success, nothing does in this market, but it puts the odds meaningfully in your favour compared with building first and figuring out the business model afterwards. 

The app market has proved itself lucrative for founders who get those fundamentals right. It's also proved itself an expensive lesson for the ones who don't. 

FAQs

Is the app market still growing? 

Yes. Consumer spending across the App Store and Google Play grew by more than 10% in 2025 compared with the year before, according to Sensor Tower, and mobile's share of overall internet traffic has continued to climb rather than plateau. 

What type of app makes the most money? 

Games and entertainment apps built around in-app purchases and subscriptions tend to generate the largest sums, but plenty of non-entertainment apps make solid, sustainable revenue through subscriptions, transaction fees, or by supporting a wider business rather than monetising the app directly. 

Do I need to decide how my app will make money before I build it? 

We'd strongly recommend it. Deciding your business model early shapes decisions about design, features and even which platform to build for first, and retrofitting a monetisation strategy onto a finished app is far harder and more expensive than planning for it from the start. 

Should I build for iOS, Android, or both? 

It depends where your users are. If budget is tight, we usually recommend picking the platform your target audience actually uses first, rather than building for both from day one. 

How do I find out roughly what my app idea would cost? 

The most reliable way is a proper scoping conversation, ideally backed by a wireframe or prototype, since cost depends heavily on features, platforms and complexity rather than a single average figure. 

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