357 young iPhone apps already earn on the US Top Grossing charts. Here's what they have in common

Every indie iOS developer eventually asks the same two questions. Can a new app still make money on the App Store? And if so, doing what? Apple publishes a partial answer every day in its Top Grossing charts, which rank apps by revenue. We took one day's charts, kept the apps that launched recently, and looked at what they have in common.

This is the data behind Fledly, our App Store research tool for indie developers. The method is explained in How to validate an iOS app idea with App Store data; the numbers below are from the US store on October 26, 2026.

#One in five earning apps is less than two years old

Apple's US Top Grossing charts held 1,964 different iPhone apps on October 26: the overall top 100 plus the top 100 of each of 20 categories. Leaving out games left 1,826 apps. Of those, 362 launched in the last 24 months. We removed five apps from big tech (Google, Meta, TikTok and X), which left 357 young earners.

That's roughly one in five. The App Store is often described as locked up by apps from the 2010s, but the charts that rank by revenue disagree, at least below the very top.

#They earn on category charts, not the overall chart

Not one of the 357 is on the overall top 100. The highest-ranked young app sits around #145 in overall terms, and the median young earner is in the thousands. Young apps get onto the Top Grossing list by ranking in their category, where the bar is much lower.

That matters for how you research. If you only watch the overall Top Grossing chart, you'll see almost nothing launched recently and conclude that the door is closed. The newcomers are one level down.

The largest group is Developer Tools (53 apps), then Shopping (45) and Food & Drink (33). Read this with care: a small category's Top Grossing chart is easier to enter, so many apps there earn far less than an app at the same position in a crowded category. A count of chart positions is not a measure of revenue.

#Most young earners are small

The median young earner has 718 ratings. A quarter have fewer than 44, and three quarters have fewer than 3,700. For comparison, the long-running leaders in most categories have hundreds of thousands.

A low rating count with real revenue has two possible explanations. Either the app has a small, loyal audience that pays well, or it buys its installs with ads and a hard paywall. We flag an app as likely paid traffic when its estimated revenue is high (above about $150,000 a month) while it has fewer than 150 ratings. 15 of the 357 met that rule, among them social chat, drama-story and phone-tracker apps. For a solo developer without an ad budget, those are the wrong apps to copy.

#Subscriptions are the default business model

We had in-app purchase data for 79 of the young apps. 67 of those 79 sell a subscription. Normalised to a monthly price, the median across all 246 of their subscription price points is $16.32 a month. That is higher than many indie developers dare to charge, and it is what the earners charge.

The flip side shows up in reviews. In every concept with enough low ratings to count, the most common theme in 1- and 2-star reviews was price, paywall and billing, ahead of crashes, ads and lost data. Being the clear, fairly priced option is a real way to stand out.

#The app concepts that repeat

A single successful young app could be luck or a big marketing budget. A concept that several unrelated developers make money with is a pattern. We grouped the young earners into app concepts (the job the app does for its user) and scored each one on proven revenue, repeat success, real user pull and how recently the newest earner launched. For repeat evidence we also counted apps up to 12 months old from the UK, Canada, Australia, Germany and Finland charts.

Of 114 concepts, 33 got a Build verdict (proven, repeatable, still open, buildable by one developer), 43 Consider and 38 Skip. The twelve highest-scoring Build concepts:

Young apps and developers include the five extra stores. "Fastest app" can be outside the US.

A few things stand out:

• AI is the engine of most young earners, but not the product. Photo-to-video, virtual try-on, note taking and technique coaching are all thin apps on top of a model. They win on a narrow job, a fast first result and shipping the next trend first. Their weak spot is cost: every generation costs money, so pricing and usage limits decide whether they're profitable.
• Crowded is not the same as closed. Budget meal planners (31 young apps) and resale-value scanners (28) are crowded, yet new ones keep reaching the charts within weeks of launch. Demand is large and no app dominates yet.
• Narrow audiences pay. A benefits finder for service members and veterans is not a big-market idea, but two young US apps earn with it. The same pattern could work for other groups with complicated benefits.
• Some rows rest on thin evidence. The healthy-eating-out concept is essentially one app, MenuFit, with a very new and tiny German follower. It scores high because MenuFit's pull is exceptional, not because many developers have proven it. Treat it as Consider.

#What earns but can't be copied

Some of the fastest-growing young apps are in concepts a solo developer can't reasonably build. The top four young apps by new ratings per month are short-drama streaming apps and a news and sports service from a TV network. Their product is content and rights, not code.

These concepts are real businesses, but the moat is not the app: dating and social rooms need a crowd on day one, licensed content and short dramas need rights or a studio, official service apps need the service, and camera-based health measurements run into Apple's guideline 1.4.1 on unproven medical claims.

#Methodology

• Data: Apple's US Top Grossing charts for iPhone apps (legacy RSS feed, top 100 per chart), overall and 20 categories, collected on October 26, 2026. App facts (release date, ratings, category, developer) from Apple's public lookup API. In-app purchase prices from App Store listing data, available for 79 of the 357 apps.
• Young: released at most 24 months before the snapshot day (US) or 12 months (UK, Canada, Australia, Germany and Finland, used only for repeat evidence in concepts).
• Games and big tech were excluded. The big-tech filter is deliberately narrow (Google, Meta, TikTok, X), so a few apps from large companies remain, for example FOX One.
• Ratings per month = total ratings divided by age in months. It favours apps that ask for ratings aggressively, but it is the best public proxy for real users.
• Concepts were assigned with the help of an AI model (Claude). Misclassified apps are possible, and we update the classification daily.
• Revenue: Fledly estimates monthly revenue from overall-equivalent rank with a power law (roughly $70M × rank^−0.75 for the US, with a ×3 range either side). For 256 of the 357 young apps, the overall-equivalent rank comes from a category chart whose mapping we couldn't fit that day, so their estimates are rough guesses. That's why this post reports chart presence, ratings and prices instead of dollar totals.

We'll repeat this study as the charts change. If you use the numbers, please link to this page.

#Frequently asked questions

#Can a new app still make money on the App Store?

Yes. On October 26, 2026, 357 non-game iPhone apps launched in the previous 24 months were on Apple's US Top Grossing charts, about one in five of all non-game apps there, and 39 of them were less than three months old. None was in the overall top 100, though: young apps earn on category charts first.

#How many ratings does an app need to be on the Top Grossing chart?

Fewer than most developers think. The median young app on the US Top Grossing charts had 718 ratings, and a quarter had fewer than 44. Ratings help ranking and conversion, but revenue, not ratings, decides the Top Grossing position.

#What do successful new iPhone apps charge?

Most sell subscriptions. Of 79 young earning apps with price data, 67 had a subscription, and the median subscription price was $16.32 a month once weekly and yearly plans were converted to a monthly price.

#What kinds of new apps are making money right now?

In October 2026 the concepts with several unrelated young earners were AI photo-to-video apps, budget meal planners, resale-value scanners for thrift shoppers, AI virtual try-on, AI note takers, single-sport technique coaches, self-care routine planners and benefits finders for specific groups.

#Which categories have the most young earning apps?

Developer Tools (53), Shopping (45) and Food & Drink (33) on the US charts in October 2026. Smaller categories have easier charts, so a high count doesn't mean those categories pay the most.