Report looks into the sustainability of the subscription app market – Charm

RevenueCat’s State of Subscription Apps 2026 report shows a widening gap between top-performing apps and the rest of the market. Here are the details.

‘An increasingly vanishing middle’

According to RevenueCat and in line with other recent reports, 2025 set a record for new app releases thanks to factors such as vibe coding and other AI-assisted development tools, which lowered the barrier to entry for app development.

Yet, there is an increasingly widening difference between market leaders and mid-tier apps when it comes to subscription revenue growth.

As the report notes, the top 25% of apps grew their monthly recurring revenue by 80% year over year, with the top 10% growing by 306%. That stands in stark contrast to the bottom quartile, which saw a 33% drop, while the rest of the apps posted a modest 5% gain.

RevenueCat also says that while 19% of all new apps crossed the $1,000/month recurring revenue threshold in 2024, that figure slipped to 17% in 2025. As for new apps that crossed the $10,000/month recurring revenue mark, that share fell from 5.3% in 2024 to 4.6% in 2025.

According to the report, the Photo & Video category saw the highest share of new apps crossing the $1k/month recurring revenue mark (21.4%), while Gaming apps led in the $10k/month tier (8.9%). On the other end of the spectrum, the toughest categories to break into were Education, Productivity, Travel, Shopping, and Business.

When it comes to price tiers, the report shows that higher-priced apps generate significantly more lifetime value per user, with a median of $62.19 per user per year, versus $10.69 for low-priced apps. Interestingly, the report also shows that lower-priced apps held on to users for longer, with a 36% median retention rate, compared with 23% for high-priced apps.

Finally, RevenueCat’s report shows that paywalls still convert almost 6 times as much as freemium apps, despite retention rates being practically the same (27% versus 28%, respectively).

To check out RevenueCat’s full report, which also includes regional breakdowns, follow this link. RevenueCat says this is just part 1 of 2 of its full report, so we’ll follow up with a new post once the second part becomes available.