Is There a Reason To Ship a Paid App in 2026?

Short answer. No.

I recently said that on LinkedIn and got a ton of comments. Those who tried agreed while others said those who make a paid app at this point have a reason (or, they were just trying to ride the coattails of a viral post).

No isn't a good enough answer though, so let's take a closer look at paid apps on the App Store and Google Play and the no will become clearer.

According to Appfigures Explorer, there are currently 138,937 paid apps and games in the App Store and on Google Play. The average price of those is $5.75 and you could buy all of them for roughly $799K.

They split pretty evenly with the App Store having 53% of the total and Google Play the rest, and the average price is a bit higher on the App Store ($6.36) and a bit lower on Google Play ($4.95) but overall similar enough which means most developers figured out what users are willing to pay and it's not too dependent on platform.

Games make up about 19% and the rest are apps.

Is that more or less than you expected?

Let me put it in context first. Paid apps make up just 3.6% of the total numbers of apps and games on the App Store and Google Play, and you can buy them all with just three days of net revenue from a phone storage cleaning app.

So, why shouldn't you make a paid app or game?

1. It makes your marketing worth less because you need to constantly get new users to maintain revenue.
2. It's harder to get users to try your app because there are always free alternatives.
3. You get less discovery because fewer downloads = fewer ratings = can't rank for ASO.
4. Unlikely to generate enough return on ad spend to use ads.
5. You have no incentive to continue because users only pay once.

But wait, some purists believe it simplifies the experience for the user and for them. They aren't wrong, but that's a lazy strategy that all five reasons I gave before show isn't worth it.

Heading into 2026, with constantly growing revenue potential and also tougher competition, don't make it any harder for users to get your app.