New Data on How Much Money App Developers Make

It is that there are 2.9 million mobile developers in the world, creating more than 2 million apps and this is no wonder since nowadays you can easily learn app development on websites like Udemy or TreeHouse. But how many of them are actually doing something profitable? Slashdata released recently the “State of the Developer Nation Q3 2014”, a research program on 10,000 app developers in over 130 countries that reveals interesting numbers on revenues, apps, preferred platforms and more.

We hear everywhere that only a tiny fraction of developers are making most of money in the app stores, but let’s look at what the numbers say.

Looking at the bottom of the app revenue pile we see that 69% of developers make under $1k, out of these 46% make under $100. Considering that you have costs with design, testing, publishing the app, not to mention marketing, we can surely say that for 69% of developers, their activity is not sustainable. Those that are making between $1k and $10k represent 19% of developers, so depending on where you’re located this can mean a good living or just some extra money. The top 12% of app developers make over $10k and earn 89% of all revenue made in app stores. 

Things look different depending on what platform are you developing for, 64% of developers on Android make under $500 and just 50% on iOS. The percent of people that make over $5k is also significantly bigger on iOS than on Android, 27% vs. 16%.

These numbers may seem like a discouragement for some people, but the wish that exists within us to put ideas into practice, to turn nothing into something, is most of the times stronger than any logical arguments. So up next, I’m expecting to see more and more people targeting that $5k monthly level.