Are new Shopify apps still making money?

Are people still spending money on Shopify apps?

Yes. Shopify merchants are still spending a lot of money on apps, and the app ecosystem is growing rather than shrinking.

Shopify says developers received more than $1.3 billion from its ecosystem last year. Active app installs also rose almost 20% over the same period. Those are unusually strong numbers for a marketplace that is sometimes described as already saturated.

The platform underneath those apps is growing quickly too. Shopify's latest quarterly results showed $115.6 billion in GMV, up from $87.8 billion a year earlier, while revenue grew 34%. More sales running through Shopify means more merchants dealing with inventory, merchandising, subscriptions, returns, customer service, B2B orders, retail operations and dozens of other problems that apps can solve.

So weak merchant demand is not what makes Shopify app development difficult today. There are more stores, more commerce and more app installations. The harder part is getting a meaningful share of that spending.

Shopify ecosystem metric	Latest useful figure	What it tells us
Developer payouts	More than $1.3B	Merchants still spend heavily on ecosystem software
Active app installs	Nearly +20%	App usage is still growing
Quarterly GMV	$115.6B	Huge and expanding merchant economy
GMV growth	+32% YoY	The underlying platform is still growing quickly

So why does building a Shopify app feel harder now?

Building a Shopify app feels harder because developers are entering the market much faster than merchants can possibly try every new product.

AppstorePulse's latest full monthly snapshot counted 27,700 live public Shopify apps. During that month alone, another 1,854 launched. The previous three months had produced 2,318, 2,001 and 2,713 launches respectively.

That works out to 8,886 launches in four months.

Those apps are not spread evenly across obscure niches either. Analytics already has more than 1,300 listings. SEO is close to 1,000. Chat, shipping and discounts each have hundreds more.

AI-assisted development is clearly part of the reason. AppAnalizer found that 63% of active apps in its database had launched since the start of 2024, with 6,659 currently active apps coming from the first half of 2026 alone. Shopify itself is also making development faster through its AI Toolkit, Dev MCP and static apps that no longer require developers to maintain their own server.

A competent developer can ship much faster these days.

Unfortunately, thousands of competitors can too.

Are most new Shopify apps actually making money?

Probably not. The public evidence suggests that a large majority of Shopify apps never turn into meaningful businesses.

Shopify does not publish revenue by individual app, so there is no honest dataset showing the median Shopify app's MRR. Review activity is the best large-scale public proxy we have for merchant traction.

The distribution is brutal. AppAnalizer examined 22,905 active apps and found that 11,422 had zero reviews. Another 7,066 had between one and nine. Combined, about 81% of active listings had fewer than ten reviews.

Only 1,130 had reached 100 to 999 reviews. Just 165 had passed 1,000.

A second dataset points in the same direction. AppstorePulse found that only 2,721 apps received a new indexed review during its latest monthly reporting period. That was roughly 10% of all live apps.

Reviews are imperfect. Plenty of paying merchants never leave one, and a no-review month does not automatically mean zero revenue. But when half the marketplace has never earned a single review and only one app in ten receives one during a whole month, it is hard to believe that the typical listing has meaningful recurring revenue.

Most developers are succeeding at publishing an app.

Far fewer are succeeding at building a business around one.

Can a new Shopify app still reach $5,000 or $10,000 MRR?

Yes. Shopify apps launched into today's crowded market can still reach five-figure MRR, although those outcomes belong to the successful tail rather than the average launch.

Public founder disclosures give us several recent examples. One two-founder Shopify app business disclosed roughly $20,000 MRR after growing about 160% over the previous twelve months. The app had earned Built for Shopify status and only five-star reviews.

Kaching Appz shows how much higher the ceiling can go. Founder Erikas Mališauskas first took a Shopify app to roughly $6,500 MRR and sold it for $250,000. He later built a portfolio of Shopify apps that has publicly reported more than $100,000 in monthly recurring revenue.

Shopify itself recently profiled Kaching and said its apps are used by more than 100,000 merchants. Those merchants had generated more than $1.7 billion in additional revenue attributed to the apps, according to the company.

Kaching is obviously not the typical beginner launching a weekend project. The team has years of marketplace experience, several products and existing distribution.

That distinction is important. Five-figure MRR is still happening. What we cannot support is the much stronger idea that reaching it has become easy.

Has the Shopify App Store become too crowded for a new app?

No, but entering a broad category with a generic product has become a bad bet.

The raw figure of 27,700 apps makes Shopify look almost impossibly crowded. Yet the review distribution tells a more useful story. About half of the active apps measured by AppAnalizer had no reviews at all, while only 5.6% had reached at least 100.

A new developer therefore does not face 27,699 equally dangerous competitors.

Most listings have very little visible traction.

The problem appears when we narrow the market. A merchant searching for an SEO app, bundle app, review app or generic analytics tool may still see dozens of credible products with strong ratings, years of history and hundreds or thousands of reviews.

That is where entering Shopify becomes painful. Developers can still find room inside large categories, but the room usually comes from choosing a narrower customer or problem.

“Analytics for Shopify” is crowded.

“Profitability analytics for multi-location apparel merchants struggling with returns and inventory allocation” is a much smaller fight.

That kind of narrowing matters much more today than finding a supposedly empty category.

Do Shopify merchants still pay monthly subscriptions for apps?

Yes. Paid Shopify apps remain completely normal, although merchants have a huge supply of free alternatives to compare first.

AppAnalizer analyzed 18,483 apps with published pricing. About 43% used freemium pricing, 42% were paid-only and roughly 15% were entirely free.

Among apps offering monthly paid plans, the median starting price was $9.99. One quarter started at $5 or less, while only the top tenth began at $49 or more.

Pricing varies enormously depending on what the app does. A simple badge or visual widget has weak pricing power. Software tied to revenue, staff costs, fraud, inventory, B2B operations or conversion can charge much more because the merchant can compare the subscription with a measurable financial outcome.

This is also why “people don't pay for apps anymore” is the wrong diagnosis.

Merchants are paying.

They are simply surrounded by alternatives and have become much better at asking whether another $10, $50 or $200 monthly subscription is actually earning its place.

Has freemium made it impossible to launch a paid Shopify app?

No. Freemium has made the first sale harder, but it has also become one of the main ways new Shopify apps earn trust.

AppstorePulse currently finds that roughly two-thirds of live apps offer some form of free plan. A new paid-only product may therefore appear next to several competitors a merchant can install without entering a card.

That changes the purchase decision.

A free tier lets developers collect installations, observe real merchant behavior, fix onboarding and start building reviews before asking for money. The trade-off is obvious: usage can grow much faster than revenue.

Barn2's Bundles & Bulk Discounts app is a good illustration. The company entered an already crowded Shopify category and initially leaned heavily on free access while building usage, reviews and product quality. The app has since earned Built for Shopify status and moved into paid plans.

For a new founder, this creates an important trap. Hundreds of installs can look like success while producing almost no business.

Free users validate usage.

Paying users validate the company.

Can a new Shopify app still get customers from the App Store?

Yes, but simply getting listed is nowhere near enough anymore.

Shopify still has a powerful built-in distribution advantage that independent SaaS founders would love to have: merchants actively visit its App Store looking for software.

Discovery is changing, though. Shopify now gives Built for Shopify apps more visibility on the App Store homepage and in recommendation areas. Sidekick can also find, compare and install apps for merchants, and Shopify says Built for Shopify apps receive higher priority in those recommendations.

That is a meaningful shift.

A merchant used to search a keyword, scan ratings and click listings. Increasingly, Shopify itself can sit between the merchant and the catalogue and decide which apps deserve to appear.

Sidekick is becoming more important elsewhere too. Shopify says weekly active shops using Sidekick grew fourfold year over year in its first quarter. Developers can now expose app data and actions directly inside Sidekick conversations through app extensions.

The Shopify App Store still gives newcomers distribution. But today's organic distribution depends more heavily on product quality, merchant outcomes, reviews, integrations and Shopify's own recommendation systems.

“Publish and wait” is becoming an especially weak go-to-market strategy.

Does Built for Shopify really make that much difference?

Built for Shopify is becoming one of the strongest trust signals a new app can realistically earn.

Only 1,693 of the 27,700 apps in AppstorePulse's latest full catalogue had the badge, or about 6.1%. That scarcity makes it useful.

The difference in merchant traction is also striking. AppAnalizer found that Built for Shopify apps had a median of 64 reviews. The median non-Built-for-Shopify app had zero. Badge holders averaged 4.85 stars compared with 4.37 for the rest of the marketplace.

Strong apps are obviously more likely to qualify for Built for Shopify in the first place, so the badge itself cannot explain the entire gap.

For a new developer, that barely changes the practical takeaway. Shopify is giving the badge more prominence, Sidekick favors these apps in recommendations, and merchants increasingly recognize it.

A newcomer cannot instantly reproduce an incumbent's 3,000 reviews.

It can build toward Shopify's performance, design and integration standards from the first version.

Shopify App Store group	Current observation
Built for Shopify apps	1,693
Share of live apps	6.1%
Median reviews for BFS apps in AppAnalizer study	64
Median reviews for non-BFS apps	0

Are generic AI Shopify apps already becoming commodity products?

Yes. Simply adding AI to a Shopify app has already stopped being interesting.

AppstorePulse found that 21.6% of the latest month's new launches mentioned AI in their listing, compared with 20.7% of all live apps. Earlier in the summer, new apps were much more likely than incumbents to promote AI. That gap has almost completely disappeared.

Even established products are adding AI language to their positioning. PageFly, already one of Shopify's better-known page builders, recently changed its listing name to emphasize AI.

At the same time, Shopify is putting AI directly into the platform. Sidekick can create reports, build workflow automations, edit themes and generate custom internal apps from plain-language instructions.

Spring's developer release pushed the trend further. Shopify's AI Toolkit now connects tools such as Cursor, Claude Code, Codex and VS Code directly with Shopify documentation, store data and developer tooling. Static apps can even be deployed without running a server.

So an idea such as “AI-generated product descriptions for Shopify” now has two problems. Hundreds of developers can build it quickly, and Shopify itself can cover more of the underlying task over time.

AI still creates plenty of opportunities around Shopify.

“Uses AI” is just no longer much of an advantage.

Could Shopify itself wipe out a successful app category?

Absolutely. Simple apps built around features Shopify obviously should offer itself face much more platform risk today.

Sidekick already creates custom admin apps, reports and automations. Shopify has been expanding native discounting, bundles, subscriptions, messaging, customer segmentation, analytics, merchandising and Flow automation. Every one of those improvements moves the line between “requires an app” and “comes with Shopify.”

That makes tiny utility products especially vulnerable.

A developer building a missing checkbox can make money for a while, but there is always a chance that Shopify adds the checkbox.

Deeper products are harder to absorb. Discount Kit, one of Shopify's recent Build Award winners, handles complex discount logic through Shopify Functions. Easyteam integrates employee scheduling, payroll, commissions and time tracking directly into Shopify POS. Smile has turned loyalty into a broader platform with its own API.

Those companies are using Shopify infrastructure while owning a specialized business problem.

That is a safer place to be.

What kinds of Shopify apps look more promising right now?

Apps solving messy operational problems look more attractive today than another generic storefront widget or AI generator.

AppAnalizer's six-month category data showed particularly strong review growth in workflow automation, order limits and fraud. Those categories deal with work merchants eventually have to solve as their stores become more complicated.

Localization is another surprisingly large gap. AppstorePulse found that 74.9% of Shopify apps are still available only in English. Shopify serves merchants across roughly 175 countries.

That does not mean someone should make another generic translation app. There are already strong competitors there. But country-specific tax workflows, local logistics, regional marketplaces, B2B conventions, invoicing requirements and local support can create much narrower opportunities.

Retail also deserves attention because POS workflows are difficult to fake. Shopify's recent Build Awards highlighted Easyteam specifically for putting workforce management directly inside Shopify POS rather than making employees jump between disconnected tools.

The pattern is fairly consistent. Attractive categories tend to involve real operational complexity, repeated merchant pain and enough economic value that a business will happily pay to make the problem disappear.

Type of Shopify app	Current attractiveness	Why
Generic AI content tool	Weak	Easy to build and increasingly native
Generic analytics dashboard	Weak	More than 1,300 apps already compete here
Workflow automation	Better	Recent review growth and sticky operational use
Fraud / order controls	Better	Direct financial pain for merchants
Deep POS software	Better	Harder integration and high switching friction
Local merchant workflows	Interesting	Most apps remain English-only

Does a Shopify app need a completely new idea to succeed?

No. Plenty of successful Shopify apps enter categories that already have competitors.

Kaching did not invent product bundles. Discount Kit did not invent discounting. Easyteam did not invent employee scheduling.

What those products have is a reason for merchants to choose them anyway.

Sometimes the wedge is product quality. Sometimes it is easier setup, better pricing, faster support or a deeper integration. It can also be a specific merchant type that larger competitors serve badly.

Established categories can actually be attractive because merchants have already proved they will pay.

The dangerous situation is much simpler: ten established apps already solve the same problem, your product targets the same merchant, the feature set looks almost identical, and customer acquisition depends on somehow ranking above them.

At that point, better code alone probably will not save the business.

Is getting the first 100 Shopify merchants harder than building the app now?

For many developers, yes. Distribution has become the real bottleneck in Shopify apps.

Consider the two sides of the market.

Shopify and AI coding tools are making software production dramatically faster. Thousands of apps are launching every month. Yet, as seen above, AppAnalizer still found almost half of active apps sitting on zero reviews.

That gap says a lot.

Developers have become extremely good at reaching the App Store submission screen. They have not become equally good at convincing real merchants to install, configure and keep their products.

The first 100 merchants require a different set of skills: finding a painful problem, talking to stores, understanding search behavior, writing a listing that converts, making setup painless, helping customers when something breaks and getting enough value into the product that merchants do not uninstall after the trial.

AI can shorten the coding part dramatically.

It does much less for trust.

Can a solo founder still make serious money from a Shopify app?

Yes. Shopify is still unusually friendly to lean software businesses, although the solo founder now needs to be much better at distribution.

Shopify's economics help. Qualifying developers keep 100% of the first $1 million in app revenue under Shopify's current revenue-share program, apart from processing fees and taxes. That gives a small app business plenty of room before platform economics become a major burden.

The bigger proof comes from actual operators.

Kaching Appz has publicly reported more than $100,000 MRR from its Shopify app portfolio with extremely high margins. The business began with a founder trying to escape client work and eventually grew into a much larger operation.

Shopify's latest Build Awards also highlighted surprisingly lean teams. Discount Kit's founders deliberately kept a small core team while building software trusted for complex promotional campaigns. Easyteam began with a solo founder and grew around a very specific POS problem.

AI should make this model even more viable operationally. One person can write more code, produce documentation faster, investigate support issues and automate internal work at a level that previously needed several employees.

But that advantage is available to every other developer too.

Solo building is getting easier.

Solo winning isn't.

Are Shopify app businesses still attractive compared with ordinary SaaS?

Yes, especially for founders who value built-in distribution and clear customer intent, but Shopify apps come with much more platform dependence than ordinary SaaS.

A normal SaaS founder has to find both the customer and the context in which the customer starts looking for software. Shopify gives app developers a marketplace full of merchants already searching for solutions.

Billing is easier too. Shopify handles app charges inside the merchant relationship, while APIs and extensions provide access to commerce infrastructure that would take years to recreate independently.

The trade-off is control.

Shopify controls app approval, APIs, recommendation surfaces, Built for Shopify rules and the native feature set. An app can benefit enormously when Shopify opens a new capability and suffer badly when Shopify decides to build one itself.

That makes Shopify particularly attractive for a developer with strong commerce knowledge who can keep moving with the platform.

Someone looking for a completely independent software business may find that dependence uncomfortable.

What has changed most about launching a Shopify app today?

The cost of building a Shopify app has fallen while the cost of getting noticed has gone up.

That one change explains much of what we see across the marketplace.

AI coding tools, Shopify's developer infrastructure and better APIs mean small teams can build increasingly polished products very quickly. This is one reason the store can absorb thousands of new listings in a few months.

Merchant attention has not expanded at the same speed.

The result is visible in the review distribution, the growing importance of Built for Shopify and Shopify's decision to put Sidekick between merchants and the App Store catalogue.

A decade ago, being able to build a good Shopify app was itself a meaningful advantage.

Today, that is closer to the entry requirement.

Choosing the problem, reaching merchants and becoming the product they keep paying for now decide much more of the outcome.

So, are new Shopify apps still making money?

Yes. New Shopify apps are still making real money today, including five-figure monthly revenue and occasionally much more, but most new launches appear to make very little.

The case for Shopify remains strong. Developer payouts are above $1.3 billion. App installations have been growing. Shopify's latest quarter showed GMV above $115 billion with growth above 30%. We also have recent examples of small app companies reaching meaningful recurring revenue.

The uncomfortable evidence sits on the other side. Tens of thousands of apps are competing for merchant attention, thousands more can appear within a few months, and the majority of listings have barely accumulated any visible traction.

As pointed out above, about 81% of the apps in AppAnalizer's large marketplace study had fewer than ten reviews. The real divide is increasingly obvious: publishing software has become cheap; earning merchant trust has not.

A new Shopify app therefore still makes sense when it starts from a specific merchant problem, has a clear reason to beat existing products, can charge in proportion to the value it creates and is deep enough that Shopify cannot casually reproduce the whole product.

Another generic SEO tool, AI description generator or analytics dashboard is a much tougher proposition.

The Shopify app opportunity is still alive.

The easy version of it mostly isn't.