How much do Shopify apps make? What is public, and what is not

What Shopify publishes: one total a year

Shopify gives a rounded total in an announcement, never a figure per app. What it has said, as of October 20, 2026:

The April 2026 post speaks of "the developers who build across its ecosystem", and a Shopify post of July 28, 2026 calls the same sum what "the app ecosystem earned". Neither says whether Theme Store sales are part of it. For app counts from other sources, see Shopify App Store statistics.

What the total tells you, and what it does not

It shows that a large amount of money reaches developers, and that the announced figure rose from 2024 to 2025. It does not give a typical income, for four reasons:

• It is money paid out, after Shopify's share and fees, so merchants spent more than that on apps.
• Both figures start with "more than", so the exact growth from 2024 to 2025 cannot be worked out.
• Dividing it by the number of apps gives a figure that matches no real app. The count includes apps that charge nothing, one developer can own several apps, and Shopify does not say how many developers received a payout.
• Shopify does not publish how the money is split. The one public attempt we found is a model: RevenueHunt, which makes a quiz app, estimated in June 2026, from public prices and review signals, that the top 1% of apps (225 of 22,546 live apps) take about 72% of revenue and that about 36% of apps look like they earn anything. It labels these figures as estimates, not billing data. Its count taken from the listings themselves is firmer: 51% of live apps had no review.

How a Shopify app makes money

Through Shopify. App charges appear on the merchant's Shopify invoice, Shopify collects them and pays the developer its share. Apps in the App Store must bill through Shopify App Pricing or the Billing API (requirement 1.2): off-platform billing is not allowed unless Shopify has told the developer otherwise.

Since May 12, 2026, Shopify App Pricing (formerly Managed Pricing) is the default for new public apps, and the Billing API is legacy, though it still works. App Pricing plan prices are set in US dollars; merchants billed in another supported currency pay the converted amount. See Shopify app pricing.

What the developer keeps from each charge

Most of the price, minus Shopify's deductions. The rules as of October 20, 2026:

A made-up example to show the arithmetic, on a $20 monthly plan: the 2.9% fee is $0.58, which leaves $19.42 below the first million. Above it, the 15% share takes another $3.00, which leaves $16.42, before taxes, refunds and currency conversion. See Shopify's app revenue share.

When the money arrives

Twice a month, and only after the merchant has paid Shopify. A recurring charge can take up to 37 days from the merchant's approval to show as an earning, and a one-time charge shows within 7 days. If a merchant's bill fails, your earnings wait until Shopify retries it successfully; if the store is frozen for non-payment, they wait until it is unfrozen and has paid.

A balance under $25 waits for the next payout. Payments go through Hyperwallet, to PayPal, a bank account or a wire transfer, depending on your country.

What developers have published about their own apps

A few founders give figures. They are individual results, told because they are successes, and nobody audits them:

The same founders describe what came before. Mat De Sousa's first app, in 2017, reached $1,000 MRR before he shut it down, and his next two found no users. Erikas Mališauskas had failed with five startups before building his first app. Shopify does not say how much of Postscript's revenue is billed through the App Store.

Before comparing your app with a figure seen in a forum thread or a blog, check its date, whether it is monthly recurring revenue or yearly revenue, whether it is before or after Shopify's share, and whether it covers one app or several.

How to work out what your own app makes

Keep three numbers apart, because they answer different questions:

1. Monthly recurring revenue (MRR): the monthly price of every active paid plan, an annual plan divided by twelve, leaving out trials, frozen stores and test charges. You build it from the subscription events of the Partner API. See how to calculate MRR for a Shopify app.
2. Money collected: each Partner API transaction carries grossAmount (what the merchant paid, excluding taxes), shopifyFee (what Shopify kept) and netAmount (what is added to or deducted from your payout). When the Partner Dashboard's charge overview and its Payouts page disagree, Shopify says the Payouts page is the accurate one.
3. Churn: the paying stores and the MRR you lose each month, counted separately. See how to measure churn for a Shopify app.

Shopify's Dev Dashboard also shows revenue, already after revenue share, fees, refunds and chargebacks, and an install count that includes development stores and stores with no active plan, so it runs ahead of the number of merchants paying you. See what the Dev Dashboard numbers mean.

Luseri reads your Partner account with read-only access and shows your MRR with what moved it (new subscribers, plan changes, cancellations, returning merchants), next to the money actually collected, in the currency of your payouts.