The Most Downloaded + Highest Earning Apps in November

• Zoom didn't make the top 10 most downloaded apps for the first time.
• YouTube's U.S. revenue grew 23% to $70M in November. That wasn't enough to get it to #1.
• An NFT app made it into the highest-earning list for the first time ever.

Instagram was the most downloaded app in the world in November according to our estimates. TikTok and the Meta trio were right behind it. I'm still getting used to calling Facebook Meta, but the more I do it, the less I'll forget they actually chose this name...

These are expected at this point, so nothing really interesting here. But don't write November off for big changes because there's an icon missing that has been in every single list since we started ranking apps back in 2020.

Did you notice?

I'm talking about Zoom, the app that made the last two years possible but also haunts the dreams of business people, students, and aunts all around the world. That's right. Zoom didn't make the top 10 list in November. It was actually #11 with just a few downloads less than 10th place Spotify.

Is this the end of an era? I think so. Zoom, which for a long time was the most downloaded app in the world, has been dropping fairly rapidly. It's easy to accept this as reality and say, "well, everyone has Zoom by now", but that doesn't really explain why Facebook is still up there every month.

That's not to say Zoom and Facebook are the same, but I can't think of many other apps that have the same universal familiarity.

Together, the top 10 apps recorded 331M downloads, according to our estimates. It's a small but nice increase of about 4% over October. But... the big month is December. Let's see where that takes us.

Tinder was the higest earning app in the U.S. for the third month in a row! The swiping app brought in $72 million of net revenue from the App Store and Google Play in November according to our estimates. It's about $10 million lower than last month, but enough to give it the top spot.

YouTube, the app Tinder dethroned back in September, is still in second, and is closing in on Tinder. YouTube brought in $70 million of net revenue from the U.S. in November, a whopping 23% increase from October. And in case 23% doesn't sound like much, it's a difference of $13 million. In net revenue. That's a lot! But... YouTube will need to continue doing that if it wants to stay ahead of TikTok.

HBO Max and Disney+ continued to fight for streaming domination. The two flipped in November, but the gap between them is almost nonexistent.

So, what's new? NFTs! In November, Disney partnered with NFT marketplace VeVe Collectibles to offer characters from The Simpsons and The Avengers to the public. They sold out in three days and earned VeVe the #7 spot on our list. Expect to see more of this in the future.

Together, the top 10 apps earned $374M of net revenue (that's after the stores take their fee) from the App Store and Google Play in the U.S., according to our estimates. A little lower than October, but pretty much the same overall. Just like the apps that earned it.