Field notes · June 10, 2026
The state of the Shopify app economy
22,546 apps are live on the Shopify App Store, and almost none of them get anywhere. We took a snapshot of every live app, then read the data on growth, reviews, revenue, pricing and who builds them. It tells one story: building the app was never the hard part.
The snapshot
- 22,546
- live apps in the snapshot
- 131
- countries building them
- 51%
- with zero reviews
- 47%
- completely free, no paid plan
Every figure below comes from the public App Store listing of all 22,546 live apps, June 2026. Revenue is estimated from published pricing and usage signals, not billing data, and is labelled as such throughout.
The headline numbers
22,546
apps live on the store
Up roughly 10x since 2020.
51%
have zero reviews
Four in five have fewer than 10.
72%
of revenue earned by the top 1%
225 apps. Estimated.
4.5%
charge money up front
Only 1 in 20. Nearly half are free.
01 · Growth
Up 10x since 2020
Cumulative live apps by launch year. The Shopify App Store has roughly 10x'd since 2020 and added more than 6,000 apps in the last 12 months alone, about 1 in 4 of everything live today.
02 · Traction
Most apps never earn a review
Half the Shopify App Store has never earned a single review. Four in five apps have fewer than 10. A review is the clearest public proxy for a real, retained merchant, and most apps never get one.
Apps by review count
81%
have fewer than 10 reviews
5 reviews
the median, across apps that have at least one
★ 4.43 stars
average rating, across the 11,040 apps that have one
03 · Revenue · estimated
The money pools at the very top
Estimated monthly revenue is brutally top-heavy. The top 1% of apps (225 of them) take an estimated 72% of it, and just 10 of those apps take nearly 30% of all app revenue on their own. Only about 36% of apps look like they earn anything at all. And it clusters by geography: the US and Canada alone take an estimated 57% of the Shopify App Store revenue.
One name towers over the whole ecosystem: an app which draws an estimated 78% of its roughly $1B in annual revenue from Shopify merchants. Yes, we're looking at you, Klaviyo.
Revenue distribution
Estimated revenue by country
04 · Pricing
Almost nobody charges up front
Nearly half the store charges nothing up front, and fewer than 1 in 20 apps ask for money before the first install. Almost 45% offer a permanent free tier. Freemium is not a strategy here, it is the table stakes.
Entry pricing across all 22,546 live apps
Four mutually exclusive tiers, by what the app asks for up front.
44.8%
offer a permanent free tier, not just a trial
21%
are completely free, with no paid plan at all
$9.99
the most common entry price, and the median - 1,447 apps lead with exactly this
05 · Who builds them
Signal versus noise
Two dominate: the US (24%) and India (15%) build two in five of the store between them. But volume is not traction. Rank countries only by the apps that cleared 10+ reviews and the leaderboard redraws - Vietnam, a mid-size builder, lands more apps with real traction than its size suggests.
All apps, by review tier
Top 10 builders by app count. Click a tier to toggle it - hide the 0 and 1–9 tiers and the board re-ranks by traction: Vietnam, Israel and Singapore climb in.
6.7%
carry the Built for Shopify badge (1,502 apps), years after Shopify began pushing the standard
39%
of the entire store is built in just the US and India
46%
of Vietnam's apps clear 10+ reviews - the best signal rate of any major builder, about double the US or India
06 · Sectors
Crowded isn't winnable
The store's busiest lanes are its worst bets. Builders pour into shipping and chat, commodity utilities, and almost none get traction: nearly 9 in 10 third-party logistics apps have fewer than 10 reviews. The apps that break through cluster where the work compounds - localization, pricing and dev-level customization, the tools that become load-bearing once a merchant installs them.
All sectors, by review tier
Every sector's apps, split by review tier and sorted largest to smallest.
Sectors group self-applied feature tags, deduped per app. An app can sit in several, so sectors overlap and aren't mutually exclusive - read them as broad lanes, not precise market sizes.
89%
of third-party logistics apps have fewer than 10 reviews - the deadest crowded niche on the store
58%
of localization apps clear 10+ reviews - the best odds of any major sector
3,841
apps crowd into shipping and fulfillment, the most-built sector - yet only 28% get traction
07 · The quiz lane
Our own category, up close
Our own category proves the same point. Shopify's "quiz" search returns 149 apps, but trust pools at the top here exactly like it does across the store. The three apps that got here first and never left, RevenueHunt, Octane AI and Quiz Kit, hold 45% of every review in the category; RevenueHunt alone holds about a quarter, and the bottom half have none at all.
We didn't code our way to the top. Reviews are the symptom of the operational grind behind them: six years of answering support, getting on calls with merchants who would never pay, and earning trust one store at a time. Octane AI and Quiz Kit put in the same hard work for years, and we respect them for it. Honorable mention to Lantern and Quizell, both just over 120 reviews.
RevenueHunt
417 reviews
★ 4.9 stars
Octane AI
193 reviews
★ 4.8 stars
Quiz Kit
171 reviews
★ 4.8 stars
Reviews on the Shopify App Store, June 2026. Octane AI and Quiz Kit are the real competitors RevenueHunt has in this category; respect to both.
The takeaway
Building the app was never the hard part.
AI didn't change that. It just made it impossible to hide. When code becomes a commodity, the flood of new apps is not the competition. The competition is the handful who showed up early and never stopped grinding: answering support, earning reviews one merchant at a time, building trust.
Distribution and trust is the only AI-proof move left.
Building a Shopify app that's actually working? I want to meet the founders putting in the work. Let's talk.
Found this interesting? We ran the same teardown on our own category in the state of product recommendation quizzes.
Methodology
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Source: a snapshot of the public Shopify App Store, 22,546 live app listings, taken in June 2026. Every field comes from the public listing, not from Shopify's internal data or any merchant's account.
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Revenue is estimated, not measured. It is modelled from each app's published pricing tiers together with review and install signals. Treat the revenue figures as a directional model of how concentrated earnings are, not as billing data. They are labelled "estimated" wherever they appear.
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Growth uses each listing's published launch date. The source clustered roughly 2,800 launch dates in May 2026, so the curve is read as cumulative live apps by year (the endpoint is the true current total), and the "6,000+ in the last 12 months" figure strips that single-month artifact.
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Reviews are a proxy for traction, not a perfect one: a great app can be new, and review counts lag real usage. We use them because they are the clearest public, comparable signal of a real merchant base across 22,546 apps.
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Categories on the App Store are feature tags an app can self-apply, and many apps carry several or none. For the sector view we group related tags into broad lanes and dedupe apps within each; an app can belong to more than one, so sectors overlap and are not mutually exclusive, and we read them as directional. Everywhere else we lean on the unambiguous cuts (reviews, pricing, launch date, developer country).
Frequently asked questions
How many apps are on the Shopify App Store?
22,546 live apps in this June 2026 snapshot. The store has grown roughly 10x since 2020 and added more than 6,000 apps in the last 12 months alone, about 1 in 4 of everything live today. AI-assisted development turned what used to be a six-month build into a weekend.
Why do most Shopify apps fail?
Building is no longer the constraint, so the store floods with apps that never find a merchant base. 51% have zero reviews and 81% have fewer than 10. The scarce thing is distribution and trust: answering support, earning reviews one merchant at a time, showing up for years. That is the part AI cannot do for you.
How much do Shopify apps earn?
Earnings are extremely concentrated. By our estimate, the top 1% of apps (225 of them) take about 72% of all app revenue, and the top 10 alone take nearly 30%. Only around 36% of apps look like they earn anything. Revenue here is estimated from public pricing and usage signals, not billing data.
Are most Shopify apps free?
Effectively, yes. 46.9% are free and another 48.6% lead with a free trial; only 4.5% charge money up front. Almost 45% offer a permanent free tier. On the Shopify App Store a free entry point is not a growth tactic, it is the baseline expectation.
Where can I see the underlying data?
The figures come from a snapshot we keep of every live Shopify app: launch dates, reviews, pricing, the Built for Shopify badge, and developer country. If you build on Shopify and want the full report, get in touch.