Subscription app study Sobering revenue stats of 70K mobile apps show why devs beg for subscriptions Most apps fail to reach $1,000/month revenue within two years. Scharon Harding Mar 17, 2025 2:00 pm | 9 Credit: Getty Credit: Getty Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreIf you're frustrated by some of your favorite apps pestering you to sign up for a subscription, some new data may help you empathize with their developers more. According to revenue data from "over 75,000" mobile apps, the vast majority have a hard time making $1,000 per month.The data is detailed in RevenueCat's 2025 State of Subscription Apps report. RevenueCat makes a mobile app subscription tool kit and gathered the report's data from apps using its platform. The report covers "more than $10 billion in revenue across more than a billion transactions," and RevenueCat's customer base ranges from indie-sized teams to large publishers. Buffer, ChatGPT, FC Barcelona, Goodnotes, and Reuters are among the San Francisco-based firm's customer base.Additionally, the report examines apps that rely primarily on in-app subscriptions, as well as those that only generate some revenue from subscriptions. All apps examined, though, actively generate subscription revenue and "meet a minimum threshold of installs or revenue (to ensure statistically meaningful findings," according to the report.RevenueCat's report doesn't cover every single mobile app available, but it paints a picture of the challenges related to monetizing mobile apps across different types of categories, as well as how uneven the distribution of app revenue is.A strenuous road to $1,000RevenueCat's report concluded that most apps fail to make $1,000 in monthly revenue within their first two years. It says:Across all categories, nearly 20 percent reach $1,000 in revenue, while 5 percent reach the $10,000 mark. Revenue drop-off is steep, with many categories losing ~50 percent of apps at each milestone, emphasizing the challenge of sustained growth beyond early revenue benchmarks.Some app categories with the smallest percentage of newly launched apps hitting the $1,000 mark are shopping, travel, and utilities. Photo, video, and gaming apps are the most likely to hit $1,000/month within two years.The good news is that apps that do eventually make it to $1,000 in monthly revenue tend to do so rather quickly. The median number of days it takes for an app to reach $1,000/month in revenue is 60 days, RevenueCat found. But as the chart below shows, that stat varies based on the type of app. Education apps, for example, have a median of 79 days. Meanwhile, lofty monthly revenue goals of $10,000/month are especially hard to reach for shopping and travel apps.RevenueCat also found that in most app categories, the revenue gap between the top 5 percent of apps by revenue and the other 95 percent is widening. In 2024, RevenueCat concluded that the top 5 percent of apps in most categories made 200 times more revenue than the rest. In this year's, that stat jumped to 500 times.After a year, the top 5 percent of apps in most categories, including gaming, photo and video, health and fitness, and social and lifestyle, make more than $5,000/month. The 25th percentile makes $5 to $20 per month, depending on the category, save for photo and video apps, whereas the bottom quartile makes $32 per month.And in another illustration of how lopsided app monetization can be, the report found that 76.1 percent of devs in North America make over 80 percent of their revenue from iOS apps.Developers try to make ends meetA lack of monetization opportunities in mobile software has led some developers to cajole users to subscribe for premium featuresor sometimes to continue using the app at all. This can be irritating to users who may have no interest in additional features or dont see the value in paying for something theyve previously used for free.According to RevenueCat, the window of time when people are likely to try out a mobile app subscription is small. The report says that 82 percent of trial starts occur the same day a user installs an app, which is even higher than last year.The graphs below show how common it is for trial users to cancel their subscription within a monthor even a weekof signing up.Price increases are not a reported reason for cancelations, suggesting that pricing changes either rarely occur or do not significantly impact subscriber retention, the report says.As you might expect, app developers also face monstrous obstacles around subscription renewals. RevenueCat reported that withmonthly plans, barely 10 percent of payers reach the second year," and with weekly plans, "less than 5 percent make it to month 6.As a result, developers are expected to continue pushing for more ways to make ends meet. Over the next year, the monetization hurdles facing mobile apps likely mean "more paywalls, upsells, and maybe even some price hikes" across all app categories, Rik Haandrikman, VP of growth at RevenueCat, told Ars Technica via email.He expects AI-powered apps to "see many add-on usage-based pricing (credits or pay-per-feature models) instead of relying solely on subscriptions.""In general, app users might expect to see more 'ways to buy' apps as [devs] experiment with multiple subscription types [plus] one-time purchases for certain content or features," Haandrikman said.Scharon HardingSenior Technology ReporterScharon HardingSenior Technology Reporter Scharon is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica writing news, reviews, and analysis on consumer gadgets and services. She's been reporting on technology for over 10 years, with bylines at Toms Hardware, Channelnomics, and CRN UK. 9 Comments