Answer · data from 744,874 iOS apps
How many apps are released on iOS every day?
At least ≈410 per day — and nobody outside Apple knows the true number. Apple does not publish daily release counts, so the only honest measurement is indirect: count the release dates of apps that still exist today. Our July 7, 2026 dataset of 744,874 iOS apps contains 149,507 apps released in 2025 — an average of ≈410 per day that were released that year and survived to mid-2026. That is a floor on the true 2025 release rate, not the rate itself: apps that launched and later left the store are invisible to this method.
Release dates are exact store metadata, not estimates — but the per-day rates derived from them are floors and approximations, and are labeled as such throughout. Data snapshot: July 7, 2026; dataset updated daily. Check what any individual app earns — free — with the app revenue checker.
Read this before the numbers
Two biases every daily-release figure carries
Any count built from a today-snapshot — ours or anyone's — undercounts, and in two predictable directions:
- Survivorship. Apps released and later removed from the store never appear in a today-snapshot. Older years are increasingly undercounted: a 2015 release had eleven years to die; a 2025 release had months. Every per-day figure below is therefore a floor on that year's true release rate, not the rate itself.
- Discovery lag. Very recent releases take time to enter any tracker's dataset — including ours. The last few weeks are severely undercounted, which is why we do not quote a “last 30 days” figure as a rate: it would understate reality and pretend to a precision nobody has.
Most articles skip this and quote a stale, unsourced daily number as if it were measured. There is no measured number: Apple does not publish one, and no outside party can produce one.
The measurement
Surviving releases by year, in a mid-2026 snapshot
Each row counts apps released in that year that are still live in our 744,874-app dataset on July 7, 2026 — survivors, not total releases. The per-day column divides by 365 and is a floor on that year's true release rate.
| Release year | Apps still live today | Implied per-day floor |
|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 20,974 | ≈57/day |
| 2016 | 28,615 | ≈78/day |
| 2017 | 31,022 | ≈85/day |
| 2018 | 32,429 | ≈89/day |
| 2019 | 38,866 | ≈106/day |
| 2020 | 49,949 | ≈137/day |
| 2021 | 55,548 | ≈152/day |
| 2022 | 65,426 | ≈179/day |
| 2023 | 87,703 | ≈240/day |
| 2024 | 103,663 | ≈284/day |
| 2025 | 149,507 | ≈410/day |
| 2026 (first ~6.2 months) | 25,198 so far | ≈135/day — undercounted (discovery lag) |
Source: GetAppNiche analysis of 744,874 iOS App Store apps, July 7, 2026 snapshot. The 2026 row is not evidence that releases collapsed: only 25,198 apps with 2026 release dates appear so far (~135/day) — a mix of genuine discovery lag for recent releases and our dataset's intake cadence. Expect that number to fill in retroactively as recent releases surface.
Apps released each year that are still live in our July 7, 2026 dataset — survivors in a mid-2026 snapshot — a floor, not true releases. The 2026 bar is set apart because it covers only ~6.2 months and is further suppressed by discovery lag, so it is not comparable to the full years.
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Full access database — free for 3 days →The trend
Even the undercounted curve is accelerating
Survivorship bias works against recent years looking big — a 2025 release has had far less time to die than a 2015 one, but the older cohorts have also lost far more members. Even so, the direction is unambiguous: surviving 2025 releases outnumber surviving 2015 releases roughly 7-to-1 (149,507 vs 20,974). The surviving-release curve roughly doubled between 2020 and 2024 (49,949 → 103,663) and then jumped about 44% in 2025. Whatever the true submission totals are, the acceleration is real — which is why competition for attention keeps rising and why picking a niche matters more each year. What the boom buys those releases is a separate question: see how many new apps actually get users — 65.2% of the 2025 cohort still has zero ratings. For where the crowding is thinnest, see the guide to the best low-competition app niches in 2026.
Scope
What these figures do and don't describe
Our dataset tracks 744,874 iOS apps — a research subset of the full App Store, whose total size is larger. Every figure on this page describes this tracked set, not the entire store, and none of it is an official Apple statistic: Apple does not publish daily release counts, per-app removals, or submission volumes. The release dates themselves are exact store metadata; everything derived from them (per-day rates, growth ratios) inherits the survivorship and discovery-lag biases described above. Volume also says nothing about viability — of these same 744,874 apps, 92.6% register no estimated revenue at all; see how many apps make money.
FAQ
Daily app releases — quick answers
How many apps are released on iOS every day?
At least ≈410 per day, by the only measurement available outside Apple. Apple does not publish daily release counts, so the honest method is to count release dates of apps that still exist today: our July 7, 2026 dataset of 744,874 iOS apps contains 149,507 apps released in 2025 — an average of ≈410 per day that were released that year and survived to mid-2026. Because apps removed from the store vanish from any today-snapshot, this is a floor on the true 2025 release rate, not the rate itself.
How many apps were released in 2025?
At least 149,507 on iOS. That is the number of apps with a 2025 release date still live in our 744,874-app dataset as of July 7, 2026 — about ≈410 per day. The true 2025 total is higher: any 2025 release that was already removed from the App Store by mid-2026 is invisible to this count, so 149,507 is a survivorship floor, not the full figure. Nobody outside Apple knows the full figure.
Is the App Store still growing?
By release activity, yes — and accelerating. Counting only apps still live in our July 7, 2026 dataset, surviving releases roughly doubled from 2020 (49,949) to 2024 (103,663), then jumped about 44% in 2025 (149,507). Surviving 2025 releases outnumber surviving 2015 releases roughly 7-to-1 — and since survivorship bias suppresses recent years least, the real acceleration in submissions is at least this strong.
Why do different sources give different daily release numbers?
Because nobody outside Apple measures the same thing. Apple publishes no daily release counts, so every figure you see is derived: each tracker sees a different subset of the store, counts at a different moment (survivorship removes more apps from older cohorts), and lags new releases by a different amount (discovery lag). Many widely quoted numbers are also stale, unsourced, or extrapolated. Any source quoting a precise daily figure without stating its dataset and its biases is presenting a guess as a measurement.
Do most new apps survive?
We cannot measure removals directly — an app that leaves the store simply disappears from a today-snapshot. But the shape of the data suggests heavy attrition: only 20,974 apps released in 2015 are still live in our July 7, 2026 dataset versus 149,507 from 2025, and some large share of that gap is apps that were released and later died rather than never released. What we can quantify is the economics behind the attrition: 92.6% of the 744,874 iOS apps we analyzed register no estimated revenue at all.