![2.49 Million Apps Are on the Apple App Store [2026 Data]](/_astro/how-many-apps-are-on-the-app-store.D7kl-LK__11vIYB.webp)
The Apple App Store carried 2,488,542 apps as of July 25, 2026, according to 42matters’ live app-tracking dashboard, which breaks that total into 2,250,711 non-gaming apps and 237,831 games. The number moves daily. What makes 2026 different is not the total, it is the pace: developers submitted nearly 560,000 new apps in just the first six months of the year, per Sensor Tower data reported by The New York Times, putting the store on track for its biggest single year of new-app additions ever recorded.
If you are trying to answer “how many apps are on the App Store” for a citation, a comparison, or a business case, the honest answer has two parts: a live snapshot count that changes every day, and a submission rate that has swung sharply over the past decade. Both are covered below with named sources and the dates each figure was captured.
How many apps are on the App Store right now?
As of July 25, 2026, the Apple App Store held 2,488,542 apps, according to 42matters, a mobile app data platform that maintains a continuously updated crawl of the store. Of that total, 2,250,711 apps (90.44%) are non-gaming and 237,831 (9.56%) are games. 42matters also reports 1,060,820 active publishers behind that catalog, meaning the average publisher has roughly 2.3 live listings.
Because this is a live, continuously updated dashboard rather than a fixed annual report, treat the exact figure as directional for any date other than July 25, 2026. Other trackers publish different counts depending on their crawl date and methodology: Statista and Business of Apps have both cited figures in the 2.2 million to 2.5 million range for late 2025 and 2026, close to the range covered in our broader App Store downloads and revenue statistics roundup.
Figure 1: Share of the 2.49 million App Store catalog that is games versus everything else. Source: 42matters live tracker, July 25, 2026.
The catalog size alone does not say much about opportunity. What matters more for a developer weighing whether to publish is how fast that catalog is currently growing, and that number moved sharply in 2026.
How many new apps were added to the App Store in 2026?
The App Store added nearly 560,000 new apps between January and June 2026, according to Sensor Tower data cited by The New York Times on July 20, 2026, a total that already approaches all of 2025’s roughly 600,000 new-app count. At that pace, the store is on track to exceed 1 million new apps for the full year, which would surpass the previous single-year record of 890,000 apps set back in 2016.
The surge follows a period of decline. New-app submissions fell for most of the years between 2016 and 2024, bottoming out at roughly 420,000 in 2022, before submissions rose to about 460,000 in 2024 and then jumped 30% to around 600,000 in 2025. The 2026 acceleration continues that rebound rather than starting a new trend from flat ground, and it is worth naming why: reporting on the surge ties it directly to “vibe coding,” where a developer describes an app in plain language and a tool generates the working build, which has pulled in far more first-time publishers than the store’s previous submission peaks ever did.
Figure 2: New-app submissions by year, with 2026 shown as the H1 pace doubled. Source: Sensor Tower data via The New York Times, July 20, 2026.
Why is the App Store growing faster in 2026 than downloads are?
Downloads have not kept pace with new submissions. Global App Store downloads grew only about 3% in 2025 and roughly 2% through the first half of 2026, according to the same Sensor Tower reporting, while new-app submissions climbed 30% in 2025 alone and are on pace to nearly double again in 2026. More apps are chasing a download pool that is barely expanding, which is the core discoverability problem behind this year’s surge.
Figure 3: New-app submission growth has far outpaced download growth since 2024. Source: Sensor Tower data via The New York Times, July 20, 2026.
A crowded, fast-growing catalog raises the odds that a new app’s biggest risk is not rejection, it is being lost among hundreds of thousands of other 2026 launches. That makes the legal and licensing basics, the parts a review process actually checks, worth getting right on the first submission rather than fixing after a rejection costs you launch-week momentum. If your app’s licensing terms have not kept pace with what the app actually does, you can generate a EULA that matches your current feature set before you submit.
What share of App Store apps are free, and how many publishers are there?
94.95% of the 2.49 million apps on the App Store are free to download, and 5.05% are paid, according to 42matters’ July 2026 snapshot. Free-to-download does not mean free of revenue: the wider App Store ecosystem generated $1.4 trillion in developer billings and sales in 2025 per Apple’s own June 2026 report, most of it running through in-app purchases, subscriptions, and commerce that happens to route through a free-to-install app rather than an upfront paid download.
| Metric | Value | Source, date |
|---|---|---|
| Total apps | 2,488,542 | 42matters, July 25, 2026 |
| Non-gaming apps | 2,250,711 (90.44%) | 42matters, July 25, 2026 |
| Games | 237,831 (9.56%) | 42matters, July 25, 2026 |
| Free apps | 94.95% | 42matters, July 25, 2026 |
| Active publishers | 1,060,820 | 42matters, July 25, 2026 |
| New apps added, H1 2026 | ~560,000 | Sensor Tower via NYT, July 20, 2026 |
The pricing split has stayed remarkably stable for years even as the total catalog size and submission pace have swung. What has changed is the volume of publishers competing for attention within that free-app majority.
How does the App Store’s size compare to Google Play?
The Apple App Store’s 2.49 million apps sit in a similar range to Google Play, though counts diverge more on Android because trackers disagree on methodology even more than they do for iOS. Business of Apps put Google Play’s 2025 full-year count at 1.58 million apps, while AppBrain’s live July 2026 tracker showed 1.9 million, as covered in our Google Play app-count breakdown. Both stores publish daily, with Apple’s 42matters tracker logging an average of 4,009 new App Store listings per day.
| Store | App count | Source, date |
|---|---|---|
| Apple App Store | 2,488,542 | 42matters, July 25, 2026 |
| Google Play (full-year) | 1.58 million | Business of Apps, 2025 |
| Google Play (live tracker) | 1.9 million | AppBrain, July 2026 |
Neither figure is more “correct,” they are simply counting different things on different days. If you are citing an app-count figure for either store, always attach the tracker name and the date, since a number pulled six months apart from the same source can move by hundreds of thousands.
Figure 4: How to source an app-count figure correctly, given how much trackers disagree. Based on the discrepancies documented above.
How has the App Store’s app count changed since 2008?
The App Store opened on July 10, 2008 with 500 apps available at launch, a quarter of them free. It grew to 3,000 apps by that September and 15,000 by January 2009. The store crossed its first seven-figure milestone in fall 2013, at 1 million apps, the same year App Store users spent over $10 billion and downloaded nearly 3 billion apps in December alone. From 1 million in 2013 to roughly 2.49 million in July 2026, the catalog has grown about 2.5-fold in twelve years, even though the pace of new submissions along the way was anything but steady.
Figure 5: Key app-count and submission milestones since the App Store’s 2008 launch. Sources: Apple, Statista, Sensor Tower via The New York Times.
The long-run trend line looks like steady growth from a distance. Up close, submissions rose through the store’s early years, cooled for most of 2016 to 2024, and then reversed sharply in 2025 and 2026, largely on the back of AI-assisted app building tools that did not exist during the store’s first surge.
The Bottom Line
The number that answers “how many apps are on the App Store” depends on which question you are actually asking. If you want the current catalog size, it was 2,488,542 as of July 25, 2026, per 42matters, and that number will have moved by the time you read this. If you want the more useful number for understanding 2026’s app economy, it is the 560,000 new apps added in just the first half of the year, a pace that would break 2016’s decade-old submission record and comes largely from AI-assisted “vibe coding” tools lowering the barrier to publishing. Neither number tells you whether a given app will be found. With hundreds of thousands of new submissions arriving each quarter and download growth stuck in the low single digits, the apps that stand out are the ones that get the basics, including accurate, current licensing terms, right before they compete for attention rather than after.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many apps are on the Apple App Store right now? 42matters’ live tracker counted 2,488,542 apps on the Apple App Store as of July 25, 2026, made up of 2,250,711 non-gaming apps and 237,831 games. Because the catalog changes daily, treat any single count as a snapshot rather than a fixed figure.
How many new apps were added to the App Store in 2026? Nearly 560,000 new apps were added in the first half of 2026 alone, according to Sensor Tower data cited by The New York Times on July 20, 2026, putting the App Store on pace to exceed 1 million new apps for the full year and beat the previous single-year record of 890,000 set in 2016.
What share of App Store apps are free? 94.95% of the 2.49 million apps on the Apple App Store are free to download, per 42matters, leaving just 5.05% as paid downloads. Free-to-download does not mean free of monetization, since most of that share still carries in-app purchases or subscriptions.
How has the App Store’s app count changed since it launched? The App Store opened on July 10, 2008 with 500 apps, passed 1 million apps in fall 2013, and has grown roughly 2.5-fold since, reaching 2.49 million by July 2026, though annual new-app submissions actually declined for most of the years between 2016 and 2024 before surging again in 2025 and 2026.
Sources and References
- 42matters. (2026, July). “iOS Apple App Store Statistics and Trends.” Live tracker, snapshot dated July 25, 2026.
- The New York Times. (2026, July 20). Reporting on App Store submission growth, citing Sensor Tower data.
- Sensor Tower. (2026). “State of Mobile 2026.” Global download growth data.
- Apple Newsroom. (2026, June 4). “App Store ecosystem reaches $1.4 trillion as developers thrive globally.”
- Statista. (2025). “Number of apps from the Apple App Store.” Historical quarterly count since 2008.
- Business of Apps. (2025). “App Store Data.” Cross-store app count comparison.
- AppBrain. (2026, July). “Number of Android apps on Google Play.” Live tracking data, used for the Google Play comparison above.
Note: All figures verified as of July 2026. The App Store’s live catalog count and 2026 submission pace change daily and monthly respectively, so headline figures here are refreshed at least twice a year.
