Google Play Store Statistics 2026: Catalog, Fees and Enforcement

AppBrain’s continuous index counted 1,967,225 apps on Google Play as of August 2026, or roughly 1.97 million live listings. Google’s 2024 ecosystem-safety report explains much of the pressure on that number. Google prevented 2.36 million policy-violating apps from being published on Google Play in 2024 and banned more than 158,000 bad developer accounts.

Google Play’s June 30, 2026 fee restructure, documented in the Play Console Help schedule, splits developer take-rates by user install age. In the schedule’s EEA, UK and US table, the auto-renewing subscriptions column carries 10% plus a 5% billing fee, while standard-rate other transactions run 20% plus that billing fee on new installs and 25% plus that billing fee on existing installs, the latter carrying a 20% external web-link alternative. The same schedule confirms that 97% of developers distribute at no charge and pay no service fee at all.

Key Takeaways

• Google Play carried 1,967,225 apps in August 2026, and July 2026 alone saw 81.6 thousand launches against 32.6 thousand removals.
• Google Play Protect scans more than 200 billion apps daily, and over 92% of Google’s human reviews for harmful apps are AI-assisted.
• 97% of Google Play developers distribute their apps at no charge, and among developers subject to a service fee, 99% are eligible for 15% or less.
• Free apps make up 96.6% of the Google Play catalog, 1,899,887 listings against 67,456 paid ones, per AppBrain’s August 2026 index.
• Android 15 leads the Google Play device install base at 19.3%, in the snapshot Google last published in December 2025.
• Combined iOS and Google Play in-app purchase revenue reached $167 billion in 2025, up 10.6% year over year, on close to 150 billion downloads.
• The Ninth Circuit affirmed the Epic Games verdict on July 31, 2025, upholding a three-year permanent injunction against Google.

Editor’s Choice

• Trial evidence showed the Play Store accounted for 95% of all Android app downloads in the United States as of 2020, and more than 80% worldwide excluding China.
• The same report found the Play Store was turning a 71% operating profit as of 2021.
• Alphabet’s Google Services segment, which contains Google Play, reported $82.5 billion in Q2 2025 revenue, up 12% year over year.
• Google Play Protect identified more than 13 million new malicious apps from outside Google Play during 2024.
• Combined iOS and Google Play in-app purchase revenue crossed $150 billion for the first time in 2024, up 13% year over year.
• Generative AI app downloads across iOS and Google Play doubled year over year to 3.8 billion in 2025, while their in-app purchase revenue nearly tripled to exceed $5 billion.
• Android held 68.36% of the global mobile operating-system market in July 2026 against 31.6% for iOS.

Google Play Store Size and Catalog

• AppBrain measured 1,967,225 apps on Google Play in August 2026, described on the same page as 1.97 million available apps.
• The free and paid split of that catalog runs 1,899,887 free listings against 67,456 paid ones, last updated in August 2026.
• Google prevented 2.36 million policy-violating apps from being published on Google Play in 2024.
• July 2026 produced 81.6 thousand new listings and 32.6 thousand removals, a net gain of 49 thousand apps in a single month.
• Google also prevented 1.3 million apps from getting excessive or unnecessary access to sensitive user data during 2024.

Source: AppBrain Google Play index and Google Security Blog 2024 ecosystem-safety report.

The direction of travel is what most roundups still get wrong. Figures above two million circulate widely, yet the live index now reads under it, because enforcement and dormant-listing removal both pull against new-app supply.

By the numbers: Google’s 2024 enforcement wave blocked 2.36 million policy-violating apps before publication and banned more than 158,000 developer accounts. Against that, Google Play added a net 49 thousand apps in July 2026. One year of blocking outweighs roughly four years of net additions at that pace.

Google Play Store Revenue and What Alphabet Actually Discloses

• Alphabet’s consolidated revenue reached $96.4 billion in Q2 2025, up 14% year over year and 13% in constant currency.
• Google Services revenue rose 12% to $82.5 billion, Google Cloud rose 32% to $13.6 billion, and total operating margin was 32.4%.
• The earnings release reports Google Play inside Google Services, a segment that also spans ads, Android, Chrome, devices, Google Maps, Search, and YouTube, and that earns from advertising, consumer subscriptions, the sale of apps and in-app purchases, and devices.
• Trial evidence in Epic Games, Inc. v. Google LLC put the Play Store at a 71% operating profit as of 2021.
• The same proceedings established that Google charged a 30% commission on in-app purchases routed through Google Play Billing.

Source: Alphabet Q2 2025 earnings release, Form 8-K Exhibit 99.1, filed via SEC EDGAR in July 2025.

That reporting choice makes Play revenue hard to pin down. Alphabet discloses Google Services as a whole, so widely quoted Play totals originate with panel vendors rather than with Google. Litigation is the rare exception, because it forced internal numbers into the open.

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Recent Developments

• August 2026: AppBrain’s index update put Google Play at 1,967,225 live apps.
• July 2026: Google Play recorded 81.6 thousand app launches and 32.6 thousand removals in a single month.
• June 30, 2026: Google’s restructured service-fee schedule for EEA, UK, and US transactions takes effect, introducing separate rates for new-install and existing-install users plus a 5% billing-fee overlay and a 20% rate for external web-link purchases.
• December 2025: Google last published an Android version distribution snapshot, showing Android 15 in front at 19.3%.
• July 31, 2025: The Ninth Circuit affirmed the Epic Games jury verdict and the district court’s three-year permanent injunction.
• July 23, 2025: Alphabet’s Q2 2025 results reported Google Services up 12% to $82.5 billion.

Google Play Store Developer Service Fee Structure

• 97% of developers on Google Play distribute at no charge, and among developers subject to a service fee, 99% are eligible for 15% or less.
• For all remaining markets, until Google’s announced updated service fees roll out globally, developers enrolled in the 15% service fee tier pay 15% on the first $1 million of annual revenue and 30% on earnings above it, while automatically renewing subscriptions are charged 15% regardless of revenue.
• From June 30, 2026, in the EEA, UK, and US, the fee depends on whether the user’s first install or first update happened on or after that date.
• The auto-renewing subscriptions column, which the schedule labels as covering new and existing installs, carries 10% plus a 5% billing fee on the first $1 million of annual earnings.
• In the EEA, UK, and US, standard-rate other transactions carry 20% plus the 5% billing fee on new installs and 25% plus the 5% billing fee on existing installs, or 20% for external web links on existing installs.
• In the EEA, UK, and US, developers in the Play Games Level Up or Apps Experience programs pay 15% plus the 5% billing fee on new-install other transactions and 20% plus the 5% billing fee on existing installs, the latter carrying a 15% external web-link alternative.
• Developers offering an alternative billing system in South Korea or India receive a 4% point reduction on the applicable service fee.

Source: Google Play Console Help, Service fees, retrieved August 2026.

Why it matters: Google’s June 30, 2026 restructure determines the service fee by whether the transacting user’s install is new or existing, and splits the charge into a service fee plus a separate 5% billing fee. A developer whose European base is mostly existing-install customers now faces the higher tier on every non-subscription purchase, while the external web-link route caps the same transaction lower.

App Downloads Across iOS and Google Play

• Sensor Tower reported downloads across iOS and Google Play roughly flat year over year at 136 billion in 2024.
• The same report described downloads hovering around 135-140 billion a year since 2020.
• Sensor Tower later reported combined iOS and Google Play downloads edging up 0.8% year over year to nearly 150 billion, surpassing the previous high set in 2023.
• Mobile game downloads fell 6% year over year to 49.6 billion in 2024, their lowest total since 2019.
• Consumers spent 4.2 trillion hours across iOS and Google Play apps in 2024, or roughly 3.5 hours per day per mobile user.
• No vendor in this source set publishes a Google Play-only annual download figure that can be verified against a primary source. Every download total in this section is iOS and Google Play combined.

Source: Sensor Tower State of Mobile 2025 and State of Mobile 2026.

Those two rows do not reconcile. A 2025 total near 150 billion that grew by under one percent implies a 2024 base far above the 136 billion the previous edition published, so the editions sit on different measurement bases. This article states each figure against its own edition and computes no growth across them.

Generative AI Apps and the 2025 Download Story

• Generative AI app downloads doubled year over year to 3.8 billion in 2025, while in-app purchase revenue from the category nearly tripled to exceed $5 billion.
• Time spent in Generative AI apps reached 48 billion hours in 2025, roughly 3.6x the prior-year total and nearly 10x the level two years earlier.
• Sensor Tower describes Google, Microsoft and X as investing heavily in AI assistants to challenge the market leader, ChatGPT.
• Consumers spent 5.3 trillion hours across iOS and Google Play apps in 2025, up 3.8% year over year, or roughly 3.6 hours per day per mobile user.

Source: Sensor Tower State of Mobile 2026. Figures cover iOS and Google Play combined.

Category totals are what survive the sourcing test here, because the published reports carry category figures rather than per-title ones. The curve generative AI apps traced rhymes with the TikTok breakout and with the Character AI statistics roundup.

Google Play Free vs Paid App Split

• 96.6% of apps in Google Play are free to download, and 3.4% are paid, per AppBrain’s continuous index.
• In absolute terms, that runs 1,899,887 free listings against 67,456 paid ones as of August 2026.
• The free-heavy mix aligns with Google’s own fee disclosure, where 97% of developers distribute at no charge and pay no service fee.

How much does an app with 10,000 downloads make on Google Play?

96.6% of apps on Google Play are free to download, against 3.4% paid. Google’s service fee then applies at 15% on the first $1 million of annual revenue for developers enrolled in the 15% service fee tier, the schedule covering all remaining markets outside the EEA, UK and US until Google’s announced updated fees roll out globally. A free listing earns nothing at install, so takings rest entirely on in-app purchases, subscriptions or advertising.

Android Version Distribution on Google Play

• Android 15 was the most popular version at 19.3% in Google’s distribution feed, whose most recent publication is dated December 2025.
• Android 16 sat at 7.4% in that same snapshot, well behind the leader rather than ahead of it.
• Android 14 held 17.2%, Android 13 13.9%, Android 11 13.7%, Android 12 11.4%, Android 10 7.8%, and Android 9 4.5%.
• Older releases hold the remainder, with Android 8.1 at 2.3%, Android 8.0 at 0.8%, and every version below that at 0.4% or less.
• The feed describes the relative number of devices on Google Play, so devices that do not access Google Play fall outside these percentages.
• More than 91% of app installs on Google Play now use the latest security protections of Android 13 or newer.

Treat any Android version figure dated after that snapshot with care. Google has published no newer one, and the HTML dashboard no longer carries a version table. A percentage attributed to a 2026 month restates this data or estimates from elsewhere.

Google Play Protect and App Security Enforcement

• Google prevented 2.36 million policy-violating apps from being published on Google Play in 2024 and banned more than 158,000 bad developer accounts.
• Over 92% of Google’s human reviews for harmful apps are AI-assisted, allowing quicker and more accurate action against harmful apps.
• Google prevented 1.3 million apps from getting excessive or unnecessary access to sensitive user data in 2024.
• Google Play Protect scans more than 200 billion apps daily and identified more than 13 million new malicious apps from outside Google Play during 2024.
• Apps that adopt Play Integrity features see 80% lower usage from unverified and untrusted sources on average.
• More than 95% of app installations from major malware families that exploit sensitive permissions highly correlated to financial fraud came from internet-sideloading sources rather than from the Play Store.

Source: Google Security Blog 2024 ecosystem-safety report.

Key finding: Google’s 2024 disclosure documents more than 200 billion daily scans, over 92% AI-assisted human reviews and more than 13 million out-of-Play malicious apps caught. The moat is shifting from contractual to computational. A rival Android store cannot replicate that scanning infrastructure cheaply, so any shift of installs away from Play carries a security cost most comparisons leave out.

Which games have been removed from the Play Store?

Google prevented 2.36 million policy-violating apps from being published on Google Play in 2024, a figure Google reports across the catalogue as a whole rather than by category. Google removed Epic Games’ Fortnite from the Play Store for noncompliance with its terms of service, the removal that prompted the antitrust suit the Ninth Circuit ruled on in July 2025.

Google Play’s Share of Android App Distribution

• The Play Store accounted for 95% of all Android app downloads in the United States as of 2020, and more than 80% around the world excluding China.
• As of 2021, the Play Store was turning a 71% operating profit.
• Android held 68.36% of the global mobile operating-system market in July 2026 against 31.6% for iOS, per StatCounter.
• The jury found Google unlawfully tied use of the Play Store to Google Play Billing and charged a 30% commission on in-app purchases.

Source: Epic Games v. Google, Ninth Circuit opinion, and StatCounter Global Stats.

Scope is the distinction worth holding. StatCounter measures which operating system a device runs; the court findings measure which store Android users download from.

Google Play Developer Economy and App Release Velocity

• Google Play saw 81.6 thousand new applications launch in July 2026, against 32.6 thousand removals and a net gain of 49 thousand.
• Google Play charges a one-time $25 developer registration fee, while Apple charges $99 per year for its developer program and $299 per year for Enterprise.
• 97% of Google Play developers distribute their apps at no charge and pay no service fee, per the Play Console Help schedule.
• Neither store charges a commission on a free app with no digital sales; the fee applies once a developer sells digital goods.

Source: SplitMetrics, Google Play and App Store fees.

Category Mix: Games Versus Non-Gaming

• Non-gaming apps drove most of the 2024 revenue growth across iOS and Google Play at 23% year over year, while gaming grew 4% to reach $81 billion.
• In 2025, non-game in-app purchase revenue across iOS and Google Play climbed 21% year over year and surpassed games for the first time.
• Gaming posted a third consecutive year of growth in 2025, with in-app purchase revenue across iOS and Google Play approaching $82 billion, up 1.3%.
• The United States remained the largest mobile market by revenue, with consumers spending nearly $60 billion in 2025.
• The United States accounted for $52 billion of combined in-app purchase revenue in 2024, more than a third of the global total.

About This Data

The primary tier carries the load here: Alphabet’s quarterly earnings release, the Play Console fee schedule, Google’s security blog, the Ninth Circuit opinion, and Google’s Android distribution feed. Two prior sources were dropped as banned citation domains rather than re-attributed.

Conclusion

Google Play carried 1,967,225 apps in August 2026, or roughly 1.97 million live listings. Google’s 2024 enforcement report blocked 2.36 million policy-violating apps and banned more than 158,000 developer accounts. Combined iOS and Google Play in-app purchase revenue reached $167 billion in 2025, up 10.6%. The Ninth Circuit’s July 31, 2025 affirmation upheld a three-year injunction prohibiting Google from giving app distributors, developers, device makers, or carriers benefits in exchange for advantaging the Play Store.

The story competitors have not yet written is the fee restructure, which prices take-rates by install age for the first time and adds a separate billing fee on top. That math has changed enough to reopen developer decisions about billing routes, and the court record’s operating-profit finding shows what those decisions are worth to Google.