The Highest Earning Apps in September

Ariel Ariel
Oct. 6

This is a single insight from This Week in Apps - September in Review. Check out the full article for more insights.


I crunched the numbers and ranked the highest-earning apps in the world in September. At a glance, things look identical to August but if you look a bit closer you'll see the difference.

TikTok was the highest-earning app in the world in September, adding $164M of net revenue to its bottom line from the App Store and Google Play.

YouTube was a distant second, ending September with $99M of net revenue, according to our estimates.

Tinder, Disney+, and Max round out the top 5 highest earners and if you're thinking this list matches August's you are correct.

But what's different between the months is the scale.

TikTok's revenue was down 10% when compared to August's. YouTube's was 9% lower. Third place Tinder dropped 11%, and the trend continued - Disney+ dropped 7% while Max dropped 12%.

Back to school really sealed up some pockets. But then again, August was an unusually high month across the board so this isn't a surprise.

As we get closer to the holiday season I expect revenue to come back,

Our App Intelligence shows that together, the top 10 highest-earning apps in the world in September hauled in $625M of net revenue from the App Store and Google Play. And keep in mind that's net which means what the publishers of those apps get to keep after Apple and Google take their share.

As you'd expect, this total is a bit lower than August's which fits the overall trend we saw with downloads.

App Intelligence for Everyone!

The insights in this report come right out of our App Intelligence platform, which offers access to download and revenue estimates, installed SDKs, and more! Learn more about the tools or schedule a demo with our team to get started.

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All figures included in this report are estimated. Unless specified otherwise, estimated revenue is always net, meaning it's the amount the developer earned after Apple and Google took their fee.


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