App market size by category in 2025: Benchmarks & insights

Entertainment is the largest global app category in 2025, generating $17.9B revenue and 9.81B downloads worldwide. Productivity, Photos & Videos, Social, and Finance follow as the next-largest categories by global demand.

In 2025, global app markets continued to expand across nearly every category, driven by increased smartphone adoption, stronger monetization models, and the rise of AI-powered app experiences. Understanding app market size by category helps teams validate product opportunities, benchmark performance, and prioritize markets that show the strongest demand and revenue potential.

Below, you’ll find a complete category-by-category breakdown using AppTweak’s Market Intelligence data, including revenue, downloads, YoY growth, and App Store vs Google Play performance.

Key takeaways

• Entertainment is the largest category by far, generating nearly $18B in revenue and close to 10B downloads, making it the top-performing vertical across both stores
  
• Finance, Social, Photos & Videos, and Productivity form the next tier of high-volume categories, each surpassing 5B global downloads in the past 12 months
  
• Productivity is the fastest-growing category, with +89% revenue growth, showing rapidly increasing willingness to pay for utility and productivity tools
  
• Google Play drives the majority of global downloads, while the App Store captures most of the revenue, especially in high-value categories like Entertainment and Strategy/Role Playing games
  
• Game categories are diverging, with Strategy and Puzzle increasing revenue despite declining installs, while Action and Role Playing face sharper declines in both downloads and revenue

Methodology

All data in this report is sourced from AppTweak’s Market Intelligence, which estimates app downloads and revenue across the App Store (iPhone) and Google Play.

Our methodology combines:

• Machine learning models trained on large-scale, privacy-compliant datasets
  
• Historical category-level performance, including ranking velocity, seasonality, and publisher share
  
• Store signals, such as category charts, ratings volume, top chart dynamics, and competitive clustering
  
• Country-level weighting, reflecting regional device penetration, platform share, and market maturity
  

Estimates represent the past 12 months (Nov 1, 2024 → Oct 31, 2025), aggregated at the category level. All figures include worldwide data unless specified otherwise.

AppTweak’s estimation models are continuously calibrated to real app performance patterns, ensuring high accuracy across both emerging and mature markets.

What is the app market size by app category in 2025?

Top app categories by downloads in 2025

Global most downloaded app categories (2025):

1. Entertainment – 9.81B
2. Finance – 6.80B
3. Social – 5.95B
4. Photos & Videos – 5.85B
5. Productivity – 5.72B

Top app categories by app revenue in 2025

Global highest revenue app categories (2025):

1. Entertainment – $17.9B
2. Strategy Games – $9.7B
3. Role Playing – $9.0B
4. Puzzle Games – $7.6B
5. Social – $7.5B

[infogram]

Compared to 2024

In 2025, most categories saw steady or accelerated growth compared to the same period in 2024. Gaming categories (especially Role Playing and Puzzle) continued dominating revenue. Entertainment, Social, and Finance grew consistently thanks to deeper subscription adoption and improved user acquisition efficiency.

Explore live category benchmarks with AppTweak’s Market Intelligence.

App market size by app category on the App Store (2025)

The App Store consistently captures higher revenue share than Google Play across nearly every category, reinforcing iOS as the platform where users are most likely to spend.

Source: AppTweak Market Intelligence.Worldwide · iPhone · 1 Nov 2024 to 31 Oct 2025.

Insights:

• Entertainment is becoming iOS’s new revenue engine

With over $13B in revenue, Entertainment outperforms every other category, illustrating the growing dominance of subscription-driven streaming, creator platforms, and premium media experiences on iOS.

• Gaming revenue concentrates in a few high-value genres

Action, Puzzle, Strategy, and Role Playing games each generate $4–5B annually despite significantly lower download volumes compared to mainstream categories. This shows that depth, immersion, and long-term gameplay loops continue to fuel spending behavior in iOS gaming.

• Photos & Videos stands out as a top-grossing non-gaming category

Approaching $8B, this category highlights the strength of visual creation, editing, and camera-enhancing tools on iOS — a space where users continue to invest heavily in creative capabilities.

• Productivity apps maintain a strong position in both reach and monetization

Nearly 2B downloads combined with multi-billion revenue indicate that iOS users actively seek tools that support work, organization, and daily efficiency — making Productivity one of the most balanced categories in terms of market demand.

App market size by app category on Google Play (2025)

Source: AppTweak Market Intelligence.
Worldwide · Google Play · 1 Nov 2024 to 31 Oct 2025.

Insights: 

• Google Play is the global download powerhouse

With categories like Entertainment, Finance, Social, and Photos & Videos each passing 4–8B downloads, Google Play remains the platform where apps achieve the largest global reach, especially in emerging markets.

• Revenue lags far behind the App Store across nearly all categories

Despite massive adoption, monetization on Google Play remains comparatively modest, highlighting pricing sensitivity, regional purchasing power differences, and Android’s higher reliance on ad-based business models.

• Gaming remains the primary driver of paid revenue on Google Play

Strategy, Role Playing, Puzzle, and Action games together represent the bulk of platform revenue, showing that complex and competitive genres convert best even within price-sensitive markets.

• Entertainment is the only non-gaming category with strong revenue traction

At $4.8B, Entertainment stands out as the one category where Google Play sees meaningful paid monetization, likely driven by video streaming subscriptions and premium media consumption.

• High-download categories struggle to monetize in-store

Categories like Finance and Social attract billions of downloads but contribute very little revenue. This reflects external monetization models, regional constraints, and the dominance of free-to-use app expectations on Android.

What is the app market growth by app category in 2025?

To better understand which categories are accelerating or slowing down, we analyzed year-over-year changes in both revenue and downloads across the App Store and Google Play.

The table below highlights how each category has grown over the past 12 months, helping you quickly identify fast-expanding markets, declining genres, and categories where monetization is strengthening even if install volume is not.

Top grossing app categories in 2025

Source: AppTweak Market Intelligence.
Worldwide · Both stores · 1 Nov 2024 to 31 Oct 2025.

This app revenue growth view reinforces three key shifts:

• Productivity is the breakout category
  Huge revenue growth with strong download expansion shows that productivity apps are both winning more users and successfully monetizing them
  
• Photos & Videos and Finance are extracting more value from fewer or flat installs
  Revenue growth outpaces or even contradicts download trends, hinting at better pricing, higher subscription penetration, or more effective paywalls
  
• Some game genres are consolidating around high-value players
  Several game subgenres are losing download volume but maintaining or growing revenue, a classic sign of markets shifting from broad casual audiences to smaller but more lucrative user bases

Fastest-growing app categories in 2025

Source: AppTweak Market Intelligence.
Worldwide · Both stores · 1 Nov 2024 to 31 Oct 2025.

Fastest-growing app categories insights:

• Travel apps are experiencing a breakout surge

With nearly +89% growth, Travel is the fastest-growing category across both stores. This reflects:

1. a global rebound in travel activity
2. increased adoption of mobile-first booking and trip planning tools
3. stronger seasonality-driven spikes compared to other verticals

• Tools and Productivity apps are in a major growth phase

Tools (+86%) and Productivity (+80%) show exceptional momentum.

This signals:

1. rising demand for utility apps that solve practical, everyday problems
2. users looking for organization, scheduling, and “life admin” solutions
3. increased cross-platform usage driven by remote work normalization

Conclusion

App category market size insights help developers and marketers stay competitive in an evolving ecosystem. By leveraging AppTweak’s Market Intelligence data, you can identify growth opportunities, optimize ASO and paid strategies, and build data-backed roadmaps that account for both volume and value across stores and regions.

Ready to explore category-level data for your app?
Start analyzing market size, revenue, downloads, and competitive trends with AppTweak Market Intelligence.

❓Frequently asked questions (FAQ)

What is app market size?

App market size refers to the total estimated revenue and downloads generated by apps within a given category, market, or platform over a specific time period.

How does AppTweak estimate app revenue and downloads?

AppTweak uses deep learning models trained on a large pool of aggregated, privacy-compliant app data, combined with signals like category rankings, seasonality, and historical trends to generate highly accurate download and revenue estimates across countries and categories. You can learn more in our article on app download estimates.

Which categories make the most money?

Within the categories highlighted here, Entertainment leads by revenue, followed by high-monetizing game genres such as Strategy, Role Playing, and Puzzle, as well as strong non-game verticals like Photos & Videos, Social, and Productivity.

What are the most popular app categories?

Entertainment remains the largest category by downloads, followed by Finance, Social, Photos & Videos, and Productivity. Game genres like Action and Puzzle also generate several billions of installs per year.

Does market size differ between iOS and Google Play?

Yes. Google Play typically drives a much higher share of downloads, especially in Finance, Social, and utility-like categories, while the App Store tends to generate more revenue per user in high-value verticals such as Entertainment, Productivity, and mid-core game genres.

What influences app market size?

App market size is shaped by user demand, monetization models, platform differences (iOS vs Google Play), and regional mobile behavior. Categories grow or shrink based on how users engage, how much they’re willing to spend, and how competitive or saturated each vertical is.

How can marketers leverage app market size data?

Marketers use app market size data to prioritize categories and countries, set realistic traffic and ranking targets, and align ASO, UA, and budget decisions with the categories showing the strongest opportunity for reach or revenue. For a deeper breakdown of how to apply these insights, explore our app market research guide.

How often should marketers review category market size?

Most teams review category trends quarterly, but fast-moving verticals (e.g., games, finance, or productivity tools tied to new hardware or OS features) benefit from monthly market size checks.

Can market size insights improve ASO?

Absolutely. Category-level downloads and revenue help you:

• Prioritize the right categories and countries in your ASO roadmap
• Set realistic traffic and ranking targets
• Align creatives and messaging with high-value user segments