How much does an app make? Estimating App Store revenue from ratings

Why Apple doesn't show revenue

Only the developer sees an app's revenue and downloads, in their own App Store Connect. From the outside, the App Store page shows the price, the star rating and the number of ratings. The rating count grows every day, and that is what a revenue estimate can stand on.

Any revenue figure for someone else's app that you see in articles or tools is somebody's estimate. What matters is how it was made and how far off it can be. Below is our method in full, except the formula itself.

The idea. Count new ratings per month

Some of the people who use an app and pay for it leave a rating. So the faster the rating count grows, the more paying users the app has right now. The total count doesn't work for this, because it piles up over years and describes the past.

Since September 9, 2026 we have recorded the rating count of about 4,000 apps from the top App Store charts every day. The growth over the last 30 days becomes a monthly revenue figure. Nobody can collect this history after the fact, because Apple only shows today's number.

Here is what that looks like for two apps that make almost the same.

App	Released	Ratings on Oct 13, 2026	Monthly revenue, our estimate
Tape Measure™ (camera tape measure)	Sep 19, 2017	89,141	$135K–541K
HiCar (car widgets)	May 19, 2026	1,316	$138K–554K

Appto data as of October 13, 2026, rating growth from September 13 to October 13, 2026. Rating counts from the US App Store. Revenue is our estimate, not Apple data.

The tape measure has 68 times more ratings, but it has been collecting them for nine years. HiCar came out in May 2026 and adds ratings just as fast, so right now the two make about the same.

How many ratings mean $100K a month

By our formula, about 220 new ratings worldwide a month correspond to roughly $100K of App Store revenue before Apple's commission (Appto, September 23, 2026). That is where our money bar sits. We count a niche as one with money if at least one app in it makes $100K a month or more at the low end of its range.

Below 30 new ratings a month the formula only gives the order of magnitude. When the counter has nearly stopped, we don't give a figure at all. That was the case on October 13, 2026 for BrainWave, which has 11,214 ratings but added almost none in a month.

How accurate the estimate is

In half of the cases the estimate is within 2x of the real figure, in four out of five within 3x, and for large apps it tends to run low. Ads, web sales and Google Play are not included.

That's why we never quote a single number, only a range. It usually runs from half the estimate to double it, and wider when there are few new ratings. We fitted the formula on September 9, 2026 using 38 apps from 10 niches and checked it again on September 23.

For a build-or-skip decision this is accurate enough. A niche where the leader makes $20K a month and one where it makes $500K are dozens of times apart, and the range doesn't hide that.

What the estimate can't see

• Ads, web sales and Google Play. We only see the App Store. An ad-funded app collects ratings too, but advertisers pay for it, so we check separately whether the app sells anything on the App Store.
• Big brands. A retailer's or a bank's app collects thousands of ratings while its money goes around the App Store. We don't count such apps as proof of money in a niche.
• Countries outside the sample. If an app earns mostly in a country we don't track, the estimate runs low.
• Spikes. When an app asks everyone for a rating at once, the counter jumps. We cut those jumps out, otherwise revenue would come out too high.
• Games. We haven't checked the formula against games.

Why not downloads or the total rating count

Downloads show how many people came. Whether they pay depends on how the app charges. And Apple doesn't show other apps' downloads either.

The total rating count misleads even more often. The Decibel X sound meter has 162,594 ratings, yet on October 3, 2026 it was neither in the US top 100 grossing Utilities nor in the top 25 paid. Nothing proved that any sound meter makes $100K a month, so the niche was dropped. BetterSleep has 390,805 ratings, and from its monthly growth we put it at $29K–114K a month (our estimate, not Apple data, October 13, 2026).

How to see the money in your own niche

Counting ratings by hand every day is slow, and past months can't be collected anymore. Appto checks a niche on live App Store data in 1–2 minutes. Niche searches and topic checks come with a subscription from Solo. There's no free trial, but before you pay you can look around Appto in the demo that's built into the app and runs on sample apps (Appto, October 15, 2026). Revenue figures are open on Studio and Pro (appto.store, October 13, 2026). More on the features page.

Fifty niches with the money, the leaders and a version 1 plan already worked out are in the book 50 iPhone app niches, and five of them are free. How to get from a niche to the App Store is covered in How to build an iOS app with AI, from niche to App Store.