This month I crunched the numbers and ranked the highest earning apps in the US, where most of the money is on the App Store. The good news is that there's more money in aggregate. The bad news is that the list is almost identical to July...
Tinder wasn't the highest-earning app in August. HBO Max was, bringing in $51 million of net revenue in August from the App Store and Google Play, according to our estimates. That was the only significant change from July.
YouTube, Tinder, TikTok, and Bumble complete the top 5, all earning more in August than they did in July, though nothing too too high.
I'm surprised to see LinkedIn continuing to hold on. LinkedIn came in #10 in August, and in July, and in June, and in May, and I don't think I need to keep going.
Disney+, HBO Max's main competitor, made the list but not the top 5. Disney+ has fallen behind in its race with HBO Max. Or maybe it's HBO Max that broke ahead? At the end of August, HBO Max was earning roughly twice as much as Disney+.
Our estimates show that together, the top 10 highest earning apps in the US ended August with $323M of net revenue, a tad higher than July. Not high enough to party, but enough to know August was a good month for the top earners.
May’s top app charts were mostly stuck, but ChatGPT kept growing in downloads while TikTok kept leading revenue and Google One climbed into the top five.
Apple's WWDC 2026 app song named a tiny slice of the App Store, but the apps behind the lyrics are far bigger, older, and more successful than average.