The Highest-Earning Apps Saw Revenue Rise 17% in May

I crunched the numbers and ranked the highest-earning mobile apps in the world in May and found exactly one winner in an otherwise uneventful list.

Oh, month-over-month revenue also grew a whopping 17%! More on that later.

TikTok continued to be the highest-earning mobile app in the world in May. Not just retaining its position but also growing the gap with net revenue rising to $380M in May, according to our App Intelligence.

That's more than $51M of new revenue in May.

YouTube, which is usually the second in command on our list wasn't the second highest-earner in May. That title goes to ChatGPT for the second month in a row.

The AI king leaped into second place in April and maintained its position with $180M of estimated net revenue, what OpenAI gets to keep after giving Apple and Google their share.

Zooming in a bit, we see that ChatGPT's rank rose within our store lists across the App Store and Google Play where it's now ranked 2nd and 6th, respectively.

It's worth noting that this haul marks a 22% increase from April, which is a big deal considering the competitive landscape continues to grow rapidly.

Side note: I looked at the day-of-week revenue for ChatGPT over time and can clearly see it's moving from mid-week (business users) to end of week (broader consumer market). You'll be able to see that in Appfigures soon.

YouTube came in 3rd with $142M of net revenue, roughly 8% higher than April, according to our estimates.

Tinder and Disney+ round out the top 5 earners, and if you're keeping track, the list is identical to April's but with noticeably higher revenue.

Appfigures Intelligence shows that together, the top 10 highest earners brought in $1.4B in May marking a 17% month-over-month increase and reinforcing the trend: downloads are down while revenue is up.