Shopify App Store Analysis 2021

This article was inspired by the Shopify App Store Analysis 2017 on IndieHackers and Asoft.co. All data was taken from Storeleads. The research is based on data scraped until October 1st, 2021.

First, general numbers to give you a high-level picture. We analyzed 7378 apps: 6755 active and 623 inactive apps. 

• Paid (including free plan available, free trial and free to install): 5012
• Free: 2305
• One-time charge: 61

The number of reviews is 579,920.

The total monthly revenue is $45,441M; average = $20,037, median = $725.

Shopify App Price

All apps (including free and paid apps)

Average = $32.21, median = $6.00 

Price from: average = $16.12, median = $5.00 

Price to: average = $48.30, median = $7.00

Only paid apps (excluding free apps)

Average = $46.84, median = $14.47

Price from: average = $23.44, median = $9.94

Price to: average = $70.25, median = $15.99

New apps

The number of new apps appearing weekly ranges from 40 to 90. The competition is tough. A new app is defined as one that’s been launched in the last 3 months.

New apps are 742, have a total monthly revenue of $29,471 with an average of $39,72 and a median of $0.

Shopify App Rating

All apps (free and paid) have 579.920 reviews; average = 2.96, median = 4.2.

Only free apps: average = 2.38, median = 2.7. The number of reviews: 105.180

Only paid apps: average = 3.23, median = 4.5. The number of reviews: 474.740

Categories

The Shopify App QA team sorts your app into categories and subcategories after your app has gone live. We analyzed only the categories all apps were added to before June 2021.

Before Shopify updated its app categories in June, all apps were assigned at least to one category. The situation was the following:

• 100% of apps were assigned to one category
• 32,4% of apps were assigned to two categories
• 6,1% of apps were assigned to three categories

Total apps

Average price

Median price

Average revenue

Median revenue

Average rating

Median rating

Estimated monthly revenue

The most interesting part. 

Estimated monthly revenue per Shopify app developer is the sum of all developer’s Shopify apps revenue. However, we count only recurring charges, eliminating one-time charges. 

We use our own formula to calculate Shopify App revenue:

(price from + price to) /2 * count of app installations * free to paid rate * (1 – Shopify commission). Free to paid rate for apps with the free plan is 50%, for others – 20%.

According to our analysis, out of 2265 developers:

• Over $1 million earn 4 (0.18%);
• $500k – $1 million earn 16 (0.71%);
• $100k – $500k earn 79 (3.49%);
• $50k – $100k earn 56 (2.47%);
• $10k – $50k earn 244 (10.77%);
• $1k – $10k earn 631 (27.86%);
• Less than $1k earn 1235 developers (54.53%).

To wrap up

If you would like to get more information about Shopify App Store, please let us know in the comments below. We don’t reveal any private data. The aim of this analysis is to help all Shopify app developers make more data-driven decisions.