Apple says developers have earned $550 billion from the App Store since 2008, and that 90 percent of everything spent on the store goes directly to developers rather than to Apple. Both figures come from a services recap Apple published on its newsroom site on January 12, 2026, covering the 2025 calendar year.
The recap is one of the few places Apple states its own App Store money-flow numbers plainly, outside of a courtroom filing. It landed months before iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone Duo reached the market this month, and it remains the newest set of figures Apple has published about how money actually moves through its marketplace, ahead of iOS 27’s release on September 14.
Key facts
| Item | Figure |
|---|---|
| Cumulative developer earnings | $550 billion since 2008 |
| Share of App Store commerce paid to developers | 90% |
| 2024 developer billings and sales | $1.3 trillion |
| Average weekly App Store users | 850 million |
| Countries and regions covered | 175 |
| Source | Apple Newsroom, published January 12, 2026, covering 2025 |
Apple’s newsroom page attributes all of these figures to the App Store specifically, listed separately from the numbers it gave the same day for Apple TV, Apple Music and Apple Pay.
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What the 90 percent figure actually measures
Apple’s own wording is that “90% of commerce goes directly to developers.” Apple did not define commerce beyond that phrase in the material reviewed here, and it did not publish the remaining 10 percent as a single blended commission rate. The 90/10 split describes an average across every kind of transaction on the store, not a rate tied to any one purchase, developer size, or country.
That distinction matters because Apple’s actual commission rates vary by the kind of purchase and the kind of developer. None of those individual rates is itself 90 percent or 10 percent. The 90 percent figure is a company-wide outcome Apple chose to publish, not a posted price a single developer could point to on an invoice.
How the scale behind the number breaks down
Apple’s recap paired the earnings figure with a set of scale numbers for the same period:
| Measure | Apple’s figure |
|---|---|
| Average weekly users | 850 million, globally |
| Countries and regions | 175 |
| Developer billings and sales, 2024 | $1.3 trillion |
| Cumulative developer earnings since 2008 | $550 billion |
Measured against the $1.3 trillion single-year figure, the $550 billion cumulative total spans the App Store’s entire history to date, not one year of activity. Apple did not restate how the two figures relate beyond publishing them on the same page.
The record holiday Apple mentioned but did not quantify
The same recap credited the App Store with its highest number of visitors between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day, and record customer spending over that same stretch. Apple called both a record without attaching a visitor count or a dollar figure to either claim, which keeps the statement unverifiable beyond Apple’s own word.
Why the figure matters to developers building today
Every developer shipping an update for iPhone 18 Pro, iPhone Duo, or any other Apple device this month is selling into the same marketplace these figures describe. The $550 billion total is a lifetime figure, so it says nothing about how any single app, category, or region is performing today. It is a scale statement about the App Store as a whole, published once a year, not a live dashboard.
Because the figure is a running, cumulative total rather than a one-year snapshot, it is useful for describing the App Store’s overall size, but it is not a substitute for the specific commission rates, thresholds, or country-level breakdowns a developer would need to plan around. None of those appear on this particular page.
What Apple has not said
- Apple has not broken the $550 billion figure down by year, by country, or by category of app.
- Apple has not published a single blended commission percentage alongside the 90 percent developer-share figure.
- Apple has not said what share of the $1.3 trillion in 2024 billings and sales moved through a route that carries no Apple commission at all.
- Apple has not attached a number to its record Christmas Eve to New Year’s Day visitor count or holiday spending for 2025.
As of September 12, 2026, this recap remains Apple’s most recently published statement on App Store developer earnings, and Apple has not said when its next services recap will appear. Our recap of this month’s Apple event covers what else the company has announced since.
