11 Best Shopify App Store Statistics [2024]

The first thing to consider is how many people are using the Shopify app store. According to statistics, only about 87% of merchants are using the store. That might seem like a high uptake, but that doesn’t mean that more than one in ten store owners aren’t using the app store.

So why might this be? Well, one might be because there are some stores that aren’t up and running. Some accounts might not be active and this could contribute. Another reason is that there are themes like Shoptimized and Booster. These have lots of features that are normally found in apps, but buying these themes means the app store is unnecessary.

In addition, there are also some ways to get apps off the Shopify App Store. For example, Vitals can be purchased off the app store and direct from the developers. Therefore, there are opportunities to build a website without relying on Shopify stores (whether themes or apps).

The number of apps on the store is hard to work out. There are lots of apps published every month on the app store, and there are also some that are discontinued. Some report that there are 6,000 apps on the store, whereas other monitors think that it is closer to 8,000.

The big problem is that with this, there are times when an app might be taken off the store and is no longer supported. When this happens, there can be functions removed from a website. Luckily, there would be more than enough apps to fill in the gaps.

Updating your apps on a regular basis is really important. Most apps are updated because there are security issues with the app. This isn’t a major problem unless you don’t update. The updates should solve these.

Shopify apps are not generally free for all users, though there are some free apps. The average price for an app on the store is $19.14 per month. However, this is the mean average. The median price for an app is only $4. Therefore, there are more apps that are less than $19.14 than there are more than this price, and there must be some very high-priced apps that are pushing up the average cost of a monthly subscription for an app.

It is important to note that most apps have private developers. Therefore, the subscriptions directly pay for them. The top 25% earning app developers earn about $167,000 a year from selling Shopify apps.

In contrast, Shopify has made about $100 million from selling apps on its store.

The average store owner spends about $120 a month on apps. This is a lot of money, because this is on top of the cost for the theme (if that one is on subscription) or general packages. Therefore, the average Shopify store owner needs to make sales that are in excess of more than $200 just to cover the costs of the store.

However, there are also the costs of the products/services that merchants must consider when running your website.

Numerous apps allow merchants to benefit from a free trial that can range from just a couple of days to a month. There are also options like price matching and more.

Apps in different categories can also be different. The Median price for an inventory management app is $17.98, but the average mean price is more than $100 per month. The least expensive category is reporting apps, the average cost for these apps is $5.

Research from Loox has found that many of the third-party integrations that you will have from the Shopify app store will slow down your website. Their research has found that as much as 0.75 seconds can be added to your loading time when you have an app that connects to social media or email marketing apps.

While this might not seem a lot, this is equivalent to a website losing about 5% of their revenue. When the average website uses about 6 apps on average, that means that some websites could be losing up to 30% of their revenue because their website is slowed down too much.

Some people might question how this is possible when so many apps don’t utilize social media or external services. But many apps do store data on their own servers and display them on a request when the Shopify website is interacted with. For example, popups, images, videos, etc. Therefore, there is a potential for a lot of websites to be slowed down.

To get around this, merchants need to select the apps carefully.

Reviews are an essential part of marketing, without a good review developers can struggle to get new subscribers. It is important to note that subscriptions are an important revenue stream for developers but also the Shopify team. The Shopify team get 20% of the subscription, so they get $1 for every $5 subscription.

Therefore, for the average developer salary of $93,000 a year, developers need to get 2,000 subscriptions priced at $5 a month.

But there are probably lots of developers who can’t achieve that with just a single app. Only about 1-3% of Shopify merchants are leaving reviews. Therefore, when a review has one review, it has only 33 to 100 app sales.

For a developer to be making the subscriptions they need to earn a good living, they need to have between 20 and 60 reviews on their app. That isn’t impossible, but it does take time.

The Shopify app store helps people across the world earn a good living. While some of these are merchants, like those who are selling products/services, there are also developers. The bottom 6% of developers only earn $43,000 to $56,000.

The average developer earns approximately $93,000 a year. The top-performing Shopify app developers earn between $173,000 and $186,000.

There are numerous different ways that developers can earn more money on the app shop. The first is to publish more apps on the store. The more apps that are published, the more revenue will be generated naturally. At the same time, it becomes a good way to gain more sales on other apps through advertising them in-app.

Another option is to get people to subscribe to platforms like Patreon, where supporters can help fund activities. To help make it look appealing, developers can provide excellent Patreon bonuses like free access to premium tools, content, advice, and support.

About 0.18% of all app developers earn more than $1 million per year.

The marketing category on the Shopify app store has the best revenue. The average app in that category is $19,900 per year. However, for a developer to earn just the average salary, they would need at least five apps within that category to make it.

Store design apps have the second-highest average revenue, with them getting about $13,500 per year.

The category with the worst revenue is reporting. Reporting app developers tend not to make much money. However, that could mean that some developers could use reporting apps as a loss-leader, getting people to download the app, use it for free and then promote premium apps that if the reporting app does well will entice merchants to buy those.

On an average week, there are between 40 and 90 new apps added to the store. For these apps, the store revenues can be low. For 700 apps that have been launched within a three-month period, the total revenue is about $29,471 on average. The average app will therefore generate about $39.72 in the first three months and a median income of just $0.

The average mean app has a review rating of 2.96 with a median app rating of 4.2. Therefore, there are a few one or two-star reviews that bring down the average review score to the mean. And you would think that free apps would have better ratings, but this is not true.

The average free app has a rating of 2.38 with a median of 2.7. Therefore, free apps have a much more damaged reputation on Shopify app store than those which are not free.

And while on the subject, there are 579,000 reviews on Shopify app store. So the average app should have about 96 reviews, though there are lots of apps that have more than this.

Free apps tend to get fewer reviews too, with just 105,000 of the reviews for free apps. Premium apps are therefore twice as likely to get a review (accounting for the number of premium apps there are).

Apps in the merchandising category tend to have a higher average rating, with an average rating of 3.38. Those in the reporting category tend to have an average rating of 0.

Developers do tend to stick to specific categories. This might be because they are developing apps which are in the most demand. Before Jun 2021, the most popular app category was in conversion and customer support. However, after June 2021, there were more apps in sourcing and selling products with store design also popular.

There is a simple explanation for this. Shopify changed how app categories worked in June 2021 when apps could be assigned to more than one category. Therefore, some apps have been added to other categories where some of their features might, into which they weren’t before.

Research has shown that 32.4% of apps were assigned to two or more categories and 6.1% of apps are assigned to three categories. Therefore, 67.6% of apps are signed to just a single category.