As of July 25, 2026, 1.82 million developer accounts are actively publishing apps across the Apple App Store and Google Play combined, 1,060,820 on Apple’s store and 763,175 on Google’s, according to app-intelligence firm 42matters. That is the closest thing to a live, verifiable “app developer count” that exists, because neither Apple nor Google publishes an official number of its own.
Ask the same question a different way and you get a very different answer. Apple has told its own developers it has 34 million registered developers company-wide, a figure from 2022 that still gets repeated as current. Evans Data Corporation, which has tracked the worldwide developer population since 2006, counted 27 million professional developers in 2024. None of these three numbers are wrong. They measure different things: who actively publishes today, who has ever registered with Apple, and who writes professional software at all.
How many developers are actively publishing apps right now?
The most current, dated count comes from third-party crawlers that track live storefronts directly. 42matters, an app-intelligence firm that updates its trackers daily, counted 1,060,820 active publisher accounts on the Apple App Store and 763,175 active publisher accounts on Google Play, both measured on July 25, 2026. Add the two together and you get 1,823,995 developer accounts actively publishing apps, roughly 1.82 million.
Figure 1: Active app-publisher accounts by store, both measured the same day. Source: 42matters live trackers, July 25, 2026.
That combined figure overcounts the true number of unique people, since a developer who ships apps on both Android and iOS gets counted twice, once per store. Neither Apple nor Google discloses how much overlap exists, so 1.82 million is best read as an upper bound on active app-publishing accounts, not a headcount of individual developers.
Is there an official worldwide app developer count?
No single organization publishes one. Apple discloses a lifetime registered-developer figure that covers every platform it supports, not just active app publishers. Google Play discloses no developer count at all, and never has, not even a lifetime figure. Both companies have an obvious reason to keep the number vague: a headline count invites direct comparison with a competitor’s headline count, and neither store wants to publish a live figure a journalist could later catch shrinking, the way Google Play’s own app catalog shrank after its 2024 quality policies took effect.
That leaves the job of counting to third parties that crawl each store’s public listings and estimate a developer count indirectly, by tallying how many distinct publisher accounts currently have at least one live app attached. Different crawlers draw that line differently depending on how aggressively they exclude delisted or abandoned accounts, which is exactly why two trackers can publish two different app-count totals for the same store on the same day and both be defensible.
Figure 2: Why “how many app developers are there” has three different correct answers. Source: Apple WWDC 2022, 42matters live trackers.
If you publish an app under any of these accounts, whichever store it lives on, it still needs licensing terms that match what the app actually does. You can generate a EULA in a few minutes rather than reusing a template written for a different app.
How many registered developers does Apple say it has?
Apple’s largest disclosed figure is 34 million registered developers, a number Tim Cook announced during Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference keynote on June 6, 2022. This counts every developer registered with the Apple Developer Program across every Apple platform, not only those with a live app on the App Store, and it has not been publicly updated since. Aggregator sites still cite “over 34 million” as Apple’s developer count as of 2026, which suggests Apple has not issued a fresher headline number rather than that growth has stopped.
Warning
Treat the 34 million figure as a 2022 snapshot, not a current 2026 count. It also measures something broader than “app developers”: Apple’s developer program covers macOS, watchOS, and web technologies alongside iOS and iPadOS, so a share of that 34 million never ships a mobile app at all. It is the number Apple itself uses, but it is not directly comparable to the 1.82 million live App Store and Google Play publishers above.
How many software developers are there worldwide?
Zooming out past app stores entirely, Evans Data Corporation counted 27 million professional developers worldwide in 2024, the 35th edition of a Global Developer Population study the firm has published biannually since 2006. The study combines secondary research with survey data from Evans Data’s Global Development Survey panel and covers every category of software developer, from backend engineers to mobile specialists, not app publishers alone.
Figure 3: Four dated disclosures, four different definitions of “developer.” Sources: Evans Data Corporation, Apple WWDC, 42matters.
Evans Data Corporation’s own 2024 release also names Asia-Pacific as the region with “the largest developer concentration globally,” ahead of North America and Europe, though the release does not break that regional lead down by app-specific developers specifically. Secondary trackers citing Evans Data Corporation’s broader methodology put the current worldwide developer population closer to 28.7 million and project growth toward 45 million by 2030. We could not verify those two figures against Evans Data’s own primary release, so treat them as directional rather than settled.
How do the two biggest app stores compare, developer for developer?
Beyond the headline publisher counts, the two stores differ in both catalog size and how much each developer publishes on average. Apple’s store carries slightly more apps overall, and each Apple developer ships fewer of them than a typical Google Play developer does.
| Metric | Apple App Store | Google Play |
|---|---|---|
| Active publisher accounts (Jul 25, 2026) | 1,060,820 | 763,175 |
| Total apps live (Jul 25, 2026) | 2,488,542 | 2,466,919 |
| New apps published per day | 4,009 | 2,648 |
| Average apps per active publisher | 2.35 | 3.23 |
Sources: 42matters live trackers, both measured July 25, 2026.
A Google Play developer publishing more apps per account, on average, is consistent with the platform’s lower barrier to entry and its history of high daily submission volume. Most of what all 1.82 million of these developers actually ship is free. On the Apple App Store, 94.95% of the 2,488,542 live apps cost nothing to download, leaving just 5.05% as paid, per 42matters’ July 25, 2026 snapshot.
Figure 4: Share of Apple App Store apps that cost nothing to download. Source: 42matters, July 25, 2026.
That split matters for developers directly: a free-to-download app still needs a EULA covering in-app purchases, subscriptions, or data collection, even though no purchase happens at install. For the fuller picture of Google Play’s catalog size and how it has moved since its 2021 peak, see our Google Play app count breakdown.
Which sources actually agree, and which just get repeated?
The honest reading of “how many app developers are there” depends entirely on which lens you pick. Plotted against each other, the two live stores also land in different quadrants on reach versus output: Apple has more active developers but each one ships fewer apps, while Google Play has fewer developers who each ship more.
Figure 5: Apple leads on developer reach, Google Play leads on apps shipped per developer. Source: 42matters, July 25, 2026.
The table below lines up the three named sources side by side rather than blending them into one misleading average.
| Source | What it measures | Count | Measured |
|---|---|---|---|
| 42matters (combined stores) | Active app-publisher accounts, Apple + Google Play | ~1.82 million | Jul 25, 2026 |
| Apple (Tim Cook, WWDC) | Registered developers, all Apple platforms | 34 million | Jun 6, 2022 |
| Evans Data Corporation | Professional software developers worldwide | 27 million | 2024 |
Every number in that table is real and sourced, and every number would be misleading if presented alone as “the” app developer count. That is the actual state of this data category in 2026: three defensible answers, none of them the single figure a quick search implies exists.
For the download and revenue side of the same app economy these developers are building for, our app store 2026 breakdown covers the 149 billion downloads and $167 billion in consumer spending Apple’s App Store and Google Play generated together in 2025.
The Bottom Line
There is no single official count of app developers worldwide, and any post that gives you one round number without naming its source is rounding off a real disagreement between sources. The most current, narrowly defined figure is 1.82 million active app-publisher accounts across the Apple App Store and Google Play, measured July 25, 2026. The most widely repeated figure is Apple’s own 34 million registered developers, which is four years old and measures a broader population. The most conservative estimate of the entire professional developer workforce, app-focused or not, is Evans Data Corporation’s 27 million from 2024. If you are one of the 1.82 million actively publishing today, the number that matters most is not any of these three, it is whether your app’s licensing terms still match what the app actually does.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many app developers are there in 2026? 1.82 million developer accounts are actively publishing apps right now, 1,060,820 on the Apple App Store and 763,175 on Google Play, according to 42matters’ live trackers as of July 25, 2026. The true unique total is somewhat lower since many developers publish on both stores.
How many developers has Apple said it has? Apple says it has 34 million registered developers company-wide, a figure Tim Cook announced at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference on June 6, 2022. That remains the most recent developer count Apple has publicly disclosed.
How many software developers are there worldwide? Evans Data Corporation counted 27 million professional developers worldwide in 2024, in the 35th edition of its biannual Global Developer Population study. That figure covers every kind of software developer, not just those building mobile or web apps.
How many apps does the average app developer publish? Google Play developers publish about 3.23 apps per active account on average (2,466,919 apps across 763,175 publishers). Apple App Store developers publish fewer per account, about 2.35 apps on average (2,488,542 apps across 1,060,820 publishers), both per 42matters, July 2026.
Sources and References
- 42matters. “iOS Apple App Store Statistics and Trends.” Live tracker, data captured July 25, 2026.
- 42matters. “Google Play Statistics and Trends.” Live tracker, data captured July 25, 2026.
- AppleInsider. (2022). “Apple now has over 34 million registered developers.” Reporting Tim Cook’s WWDC keynote, June 6, 2022.
- Evans Data Corporation. (2024). “Worldwide Developer Population Grows to 27 Million.” Press release, published July 29, 2024.
- Evans Data Corporation. “Worldwide Developer Population and Demographic Study.” Methodology and report scope reference.
Note: All figures verified as of July 2026. Store-level publisher counts are live, third-party-tracked figures that change daily rather than official published statistics, so the headline numbers in this article are refreshed at least twice a year.
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