How Much Money Do Subscription Apps Make? The Median Is $72 a Month
How much money do subscription apps make? The median subscription app generates about $72 in monthly revenue one year after launch; the top quartile clears $429 and the top 10% clears $2,574, a 36x spread (RevenueCat State of Subscription Apps 2026, 115,000 apps, $16B tracked). The market is a power law and the tails are separating: median MRR growth was +5.3% year over year while the top decile grew 306%+ and the bottom quartile shrank 33%. Milestone odds for new apps in their first two years: 17.3% reach $1K MRR, 4.6% reach $10K, and 1.7% reach $25K. Supply is exploding (about 2,000 new subscription apps per month in early 2022 to 14,700+ in January 2026, per Appfigures) but revenue stays anchored in incumbents: apps launched before 2020 still earn 69% of all subscription revenue, and apps launched since 2025 earn 3%. The strategic read: benchmark against the upper quartile, not the median, and pull the levers that move an app up the distribution (a hard paywall, a higher price, an annual push, retention, and owned distribution).
The short answer: the median is $72 a month
How much money do subscription apps make? The median app makes about $72 in monthly revenue one year after launch. The top quartile makes over $429, and the top 10% makes over $2,574 a month, a 36x gap between the middle and the top (RevenueCat State of Subscription Apps 2026, 115,000 apps).
Category moves the median but not the shape: Photo & Video leads at $124, Travel trails at $35, and Gaming's top 10% reaches $4,554. Every category is a power law with a thin tail earning most of the money.
The divide is accelerating, not closing
Median MRR growth last year was +5.3%. The top decile grew 306% or more. The top 25% grew 80%+, and the bottom 25% shrank 33% (one guest read puts the bottom decile's contraction past 60%). Growing 80% year over year sounds exceptional; in this market it just beats 75% of apps.
Geography shifts the odds too. Developers in LATAM posted the highest median growth (+17.2%), MEA the only negative median (-9.7%), and North American developers lead per-payer value: $32 of year-one LTV per payer against a $23 global median.
The milestone odds: 1 in 20 reaches $10K MRR
Of apps launched in the last two years, 17.3% reached $1K MRR. Only 4.6% reached $10K, and 1.7% reached $25K. That's a 75% drop-off between the first milestone and the second: most apps that start making money never make meaningful money.
Speed varies by category. Median days to first $1K MRR: Gaming 32, Social & Lifestyle 45, all categories 58, Business 113. Slow doesn't mean broken (Business apps monetize deep once they land: $35.48 year-one LTV per payer), but it changes how long you need to survive.
The vibecoding era: 7x the launches, 3% of the revenue
New subscription-app launches grew from about 2,000 a month in January 2022 to 14,700+ in January 2026, roughly 7x in four years, with the steepest acceleration in early 2025 as AI-assisted dev tools defaulted to shipping on the App Store (Appfigures). iOS now takes 77% of new launches.
The revenue didn't follow the supply. Apps launched before 2020 still generate 69% of all subscription revenue; apps launched since 2025 generate 3%. Shipping an app got easy. Getting paid for one didn't, which makes distribution and conversion mechanics the binding constraint, not code.
What separates the top tail
The same dataset shows which levers correlate with the top of the distribution. A hard paywall converts about 5x freemium (10.7% vs 2.1% D35) and returns 8-9x the revenue per install. Higher prices win on both axes: high-priced apps convert 2.8% vs 1.4% for cheap ones and earn about 6x per payer at year one. Yearly-dominant apps monetize installs about 2x better than monthly-dominant ones at D14.
Two more: longer trials convert about 70% better than the 4-day trials nearly half the market now ships, and the top revenue tier sells on the web (41% of top-tier apps run web revenue against 1.3% of hobby apps). None of these are secrets. They're just unevenly applied, which is what a widening power law looks like.
Benchmark the upper quartile, not the median
The median tells you whether a model is viable. The upper quartile tells you whether it scales. If you benchmark your funnel against the median you're calibrating to apps that make $72 a month, so compare each funnel step against the top 25% of your category instead and treat the gap as your roadmap.
That's the honest read of this report: outcomes are a power law, the market won't average you up, and the mechanics that move you up the tail are documented. One growth move a day, with the source attached, is what the tasu newsletter is for. Join at tasu.ai.
FAQ
How much money does the average subscription app make?
The median subscription app makes about $72 in monthly revenue one year after launch (RevenueCat State of Subscription Apps 2026, 115,000 apps). The top quartile makes over $429 a month and the top 10% over $2,574. Photo & Video has the highest category median ($124/month); Travel the lowest ($35).
What percentage of apps reach $10K MRR?
4.6% of new apps reach $10K MRR within two years of launch. 17.3% reach $1K, and only 1.7% reach $25K (RevenueCat 2026). Gaming has the best $10K odds at 8.9%. The 75% drop-off between $1K and $10K is where most subscription apps stall.
Is the subscription app market saturated in 2026?
Supply is up about 7x in four years (2,000 to 14,700+ new subscription apps per month, per Appfigures), but the revenue hasn't moved to the new entrants: apps launched before 2020 still earn 69% of subscription revenue, and 2025+ launches earn 3%. The market rewards distribution and conversion mechanics, not novelty of launch.
How long does it take an app to reach $1K MRR?
The median across categories is 58 days from launch, for the apps that get there at all (17.3% within two years). Gaming is fastest at 32 days, Business slowest at 113. Reaching $10K takes a median 109 days across categories (Gaming: 53).
Sources
- RevenueCat, State of Subscription Apps 2026 (115,000 apps, $16B revenue, 1B+ transactions): growth distribution, milestone rates, revenue-by-launch-cohort
- Appfigures (via SOSA 2026): new-launch counts (~2,000/mo to 14,700+/mo) and the 69%/3% revenue-by-cohort split
- tasu brain: foundations/power-law-outcomes, benchmarks/revenue-economics (the full distribution tables)
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