Apple's developer ecosystem has long been a powerhouse, but the numbers behind it keep climbing.
On Thursday, the company announced that its App Store facilitated over $1.4 trillion in developer billings and sales in 2025, with a new force shaping this year's results: AI. According to Apple's statement, more than 40 of the top 100 apps on the App Store featured consumer-facing AI capabilities.
Even more notable is that those apps saw four times as much growth in billings as the other top 100 apps, highlighting people's willingness to spend on what emerging technology can do for them.
This means that developers willing to capitalize on the AI moment by integrating AI into their applications have a significant opportunity to make money while also potentially offering more to users through thoughtful AI integrations. Additionally, while ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini are currently dominating the iOS App Store charts, apps that include AI features but aren't explicitly AI-focused, such as photo editing, shopping, and health, are also reaping good results.
"From health and fitness apps that deliver personalized recommendations using on-device intelligence, to photo and video editing apps with AI-powered creative features, and productivity tools that leverage powerful, cloud-based AI models to automate complex tasks — the integration of AI into everyday apps is creating new opportunities for developers," said Apple in the release.
Beyond user-facing offerings, AI is also increasingly used behind the scenes by app developers. For instance, Xcode, the platform used to create apps for Apple's ecosystem of devices, offers a range of AI coding features, including agentic and vibe coding options.
The App Store remains a financially significant platform for developers. Apple said in the release that for more than 90 percent of billings and sales facilitated by the App Store ecosystem, developers paid no commission to the company. This encourages developers to continue building on the platform, even if it's easier to use a wider range of AI tools to build apps for the Google Play Store and other platforms.
It also helps that Apple has a loyal user base with no intention of leaving, making it a vital platform for developers to invest in. As a result, Apple has become a key platform for developers to invest their time and resources, allowing it to capitalize on the AI boom — even without its own frontier language models or a revamped Siri.
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This is another instance of AI driving real-world spending and impacting people's habits. More advanced AI features are typically locked behind in-app purchases, and people are encouraged to spend that money because AI features are directly transactional. For instance, if you want to unlock a feature that gives you higher AI limits or that allows you to access an AI coach, as soon as you make the purchase, you will reap those rewards. Meanwhile, other types of in-app purchases, such as tokens for playing games, don't offer the same direct return on productivity or optimization, limiting developers' opportunities to make more money. However you frame it, AI is winning in the App Store.