A Big Month for Streaming? These are the Highest Earning Apps in the World in January
This is a single insight from This Week in Apps - Apple's Latest Sherlock. Check out the full article for more insights.
January was one of the most hectic months in the App Store I remember. TikTok was actually banned, xAI released Grok, and then DeepSeek took over by storm. But the real winners, when it comes to money, were none of those...
I ranked every app in the App Store and Google Play and here are the highest earners:
Even though it was banned in the US, TikTok managed to retain its top spot as the highest-earning app in the world. However, TikTok's net revenue took a MAJOR tumble, dropping $474M (22%) to end January at $262M, according to our App Intelligence. Remember, that's net revenue which means what Bytedance gets to keep after Apple and Google take their share.
Question: Which countries bring the most revenue for TikTok? Answer below.
And while TikTok's revenue dropped, almost every single app on our top 10 list saw an increase in January!
YouTube retained its second spot in January with $153M of net revenue, growing 13% month-over-month. Disney+ came in third, just like January, but it too grew 9% to $142M in net revenue, according to our estimates.
If you're thinking "how is Disney+ growing if it's no longer offering subscriptions in the App Store???", the likely answer is annual subscription of existing members renewing. So this isn't an increase in MRR but rather in total revenue.
Tinder and Max saw revenue rise with the latter joining the nine-digit revenue club with $100M of net revenue, up from $81M in December, according to our estimates.
The only app that didn't grow its revenue in January is Tencent Video. Its revenue dropped a whopping 21%, losing it its 6th spot and dropping it to the last spot on our list.
Together, the highest earners brought in $1.1B of net revenue - what the publishers get to keep after fees - from the App Store and Google Play in January, according to Appfigures estimates. That's as much as December's total and the second consecutive month of revenue having a capital B next to it.
Answer: China, Japan, and the UK.
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All figures included in this report are estimated. Unless specified otherwise, estimated revenue is always net, meaning it's the amount the developer earned after Apple and Google took their fee.
