App Store Revenue Calculator
Estimate what a subscription app earns per month from downloads, conversion, churn and price. Then see where that number would land among indie apps whose revenue is verified at the payment provider, not self-reported.
Costs, fees and tax30% fee · $0/install
- Lifetime value
- $53
- Avg lifetime
- 5.3 mo
- Break-even installs
- 105/mo
$1,368/mo earns more than 81% of them. Top quartile. Plausible, but most verified apps never get here.
How much do apps actually make?
Most indie apps make a few hundred dollars a month. That is the honest baseline, measured on verified revenue rather than download estimates.
- $143median monthly revenue of a paying indie app
- Across 305 mobile apps whose revenue is read from the payment provider, the middle app makes $143 a month. A quarter make $27 or less. Top-grossing charts and revenue lookups only show the ChatGPTs and Tinders, which is why most projections start out too high.
- 1 in 5clears $1,000 a month
- 68 of the 305 (22%) reach $1k MRR. The 75th percentile is $709, so an app at $1k is already ahead of three quarters of the field.
- 4.9%reach $10,000 a month
- 15 apps sit above $10k MRR and 3 above $50k. The 90th percentile is $3,847. Use the top of the range as a ceiling, not a plan.
- $5.96median revenue per paying subscriber, per month
- Measured on the 214 apps with five or more active subscriptions. It is lower than most list prices because yearly plans, trials converting at discounts and regional pricing all pull the effective price down.
Source: BigIdeasDB Revenue Intelligence, 305 mobile apps with revenue above $0, verified through the app's payment or subscription provider, July 2026 sync.
How app revenue is calculated
Subscription app revenue equals paying subscribers times the effective monthly price. Paying subscribers come from four numbers, and churn matters most: halving churn doubles the paying base at the same download volume.
- 01
New subscribers
Monthly downloads × download-to-trial rate × trial-to-paid rate.
- 02
Paying base
New subscribers ÷ monthly churn. This is the steady state, where new subscribers replace the ones who cancel.
- 03
Revenue
Paying base × effective monthly price. Yearly plans count as price ÷ 12.
- 04
Profit
Revenue minus the 15 or 30% store fee, cost per install, server and AI costs, then tax.
Lifetime value is the effective monthly price ÷ monthly churn. At $9.99 and 19% churn a subscriber stays about 5.3 months and is worth roughly $52 before fees.
Subscription benchmarks by category
The medians the calculator fills in, compiled from published benchmarks across 100,000+ subscription apps. Travel converts trials best at 43.5%. Gaming churns fastest at 25% a month.
| Category | Download → trial | Trial → paid | Monthly churn | Monthly price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Business | 9.1% | 29.4% | 20% | $8.99 |
| Education | 6.5% | 36.1% | 22% | $9.99 |
| Gaming | 4.4% | 25% | 25% | $4.99 |
| Health & Fitness | 6.9% | 37.7% | 19% | $9.99 |
| Media & Entertainment | 4% | 32.2% | 23% | $5.99 |
| Photo & Video | 5.2% | 22.2% | 21% | $6.99 |
| Productivity | 5.7% | 33.1% | 18% | $7.99 |
| Shopping | 2.1% | 27.2% | 22% | $5.84 |
| Social & Lifestyle | 4.8% | 33.3% | 24% | $9.99 |
| Travel | 4.1% | 43.5% | 19% | $4.99 |
| Utilities | 6.5% | 31.1% | 18% | $5 |
What is an app worth?
Buyers price revenue, not users. Among 159 verified apps listed for sale, the median asking price is $6,500, or 2.9 times annualised monthly revenue. Those are asking prices, not closed deals.
- Users who pay (2%)
- 2,000
- × $5.96 per subscriber
- $11,920 MRR
- × 12 months
- $143,040 a year
- × 2.9 median asking multiple
- ≈ $415,000
The 2% paying share is an assumption for the example. At 0.5% the same app asks about $104,000.
One in seven angry reviews is about money
Of 90,000+ one- and two-star App Store and Google Play reviews in our database, 14.4% mention the price, the subscription, the paywall, a trial or a refund. Churn starts on the paywall screen.
13,000+ of 90,000+ reviews rated 1-2 stars, 7,700+ apps
See the apps behind the numbers
The reality check comes from Revenue Intelligence in BigIdeasDB. Open the Mobile Apps category to see every tracked app's verified MRR, growth, margin and asking price, filter to the ones for sale, and export the list.
This screen counts all 417 tracked apps, including those at $0, so its median sits below the paying-only $143 above.
Frequently asked
Last updated October 26, 2026.
- BigIdeasDB's App Store Revenue Calculator is the best free option because it is the only one that checks your projection against real results: 305 indie apps whose monthly revenue is verified through their payment provider. It also fills in category medians for trial rate, conversion, churn and price, and needs no signup.
- The median paying indie app makes $143 a month. Across 305 mobile apps with verified revenue, a quarter make $27 or less, 22% clear $1,000 a month and 4.9% reach $10,000. Revenue lookups that show top-grossing apps make the typical result look far higher than it is.
- At typical Health & Fitness rates, 1,000 monthly downloads produce about 26 new paying subscribers a month (6.9% start a trial, 37.7% of trials pay). At $9.99 and 19% monthly churn that settles near 137 paying subscribers and roughly $1,370 in gross monthly revenue, before the 15-30% store fee.
- It depends on revenue, not users. Verified apps listed for sale ask a median 2.9 times annualised monthly revenue. If 2% of 100,000 users pay the median $5.96 a month, that is $11,920 MRR and an asking price near $415,000. At 0.5% paying it is closer to $104,000.
- Multiply monthly downloads by the download-to-trial rate and the trial-to-paid rate to get new paying subscribers. Divide by monthly churn for the steady-state paying base, then multiply by the effective monthly price. Subtract the store fee, install costs, server and AI costs and tax for net profit.
- At $9.99 a month you need about 1,001 paying subscribers. With 19% monthly churn that means adding roughly 190 new subscribers every month, which at a 6.9% trial rate and 37.7% trial-to-paid rate takes about 7,300 downloads a month. Only 4.9% of verified indie apps reach $10,000 a month.
- Yes. The standard store fee is 30%. It drops to 15% for developers in Apple's Small Business Program or Google's equivalent, and for subscriptions after their first year. The calculator defaults to 30% and lets you switch to 15% under costs, fees and tax.
- It is a projection, not a forecast. The funnel defaults are category medians, and your app will differ. That is why the reality check matters: if your inputs put you above 95% of verified indie apps, the inputs are the first thing to question.
Build the app people already pay for
Verified revenue, 1M+ customer complaints and 7,700+ analysed apps, so you pick a category with demand before you write a line of code.