Consumers spent $167 billion on in-app purchases worldwide in 2025, up 10% year over year, according to Sensor Tower’s State of Mobile 2026 report, published in January 2026. That total has climbed every year since at least 2022, and for the first time on record, more of it came from non-gaming apps than from games.
How much did consumers spend on in-app purchases in 2025?
Global in-app purchase spend reached $167 billion in 2025, up from $150 billion in 2024, $135 billion in 2023, and $127 billion in 2022, according to Sensor Tower’s State of Mobile reports across those years. Sensor Tower does not publish the underlying panel size behind these global totals; the figures are the firm’s own modeled estimate from its app intelligence tracking, not a disclosed survey sample, so treat the exact dollar figure as an informed estimate rather than an audited total.
Figure 1: Global in-app purchase spend, trending upward every year. Source: Sensor Tower, State of Mobile reports, 2023-2026 editions.
The United States remains the largest single market, accounting for nearly $60 billion of the 2025 global total, with the United Kingdom, Germany, and France named by Sensor Tower as the next-largest contributors in Western Europe, though the firm does not break out exact figures for those three.
Four straight years of growth means a store’s in-app purchase terms are covering more money every year, not less, which raises the stakes on getting the licensing language right the first time.
Are in-app purchases now bigger in games or non-gaming apps?
Non-gaming apps out-earned games in in-app purchases for the first time in 2025. Sensor Tower puts non-gaming in-app purchase revenue at roughly $85 billion, up 21% year over year and nearly three times what the category earned five years earlier, while gaming revenue grew a comparatively flat 1.3% to about $82 billion. AI apps drove much of that non-gaming growth: ChatGPT’s in-app purchase revenue alone grew 254% year over year and finished 2025 as the third highest-grossing app worldwide, per our full App Store spend breakdown.
Figure 2: The 2025 crossover: non-gaming in-app purchases edge past gaming for the first time. Source: Sensor Tower, State of Mobile 2026.
Games still generate more revenue than almost any other single app category, but the days when “in-app purchase” meant loot boxes and gem packs by default are over. A generic EULA written for a gaming app rarely covers the AI-feature licensing, data-use, and subscription-cancellation terms a non-gaming app now needs.
How do in-app purchases compare by app category?
| Category | 2025 in-app purchase spend | Year-over-year change |
|---|---|---|
| Non-gaming apps | ~$85 billion | +21% |
| Gaming apps | ~$82 billion | +1.3% |
| Global total | $167 billion | +10% |
Source: Sensor Tower, State of Mobile 2026, published January 2026.
The two categories are converging in size while growing at almost opposite speeds, which is the clearest sign the app economy’s center of gravity is shifting away from games even though total game revenue keeps inching up.
What do people actually buy with in-app purchases?
Subscriptions dominate how apps monetize purchases overall, but gaming looks different. RevenueCat’s State of Subscription Apps 2026 report, based on more than 115,000 apps and $16 billion in revenue analyzed from 2025, found that 63.5% of monetizing apps use a subscriptions-only model. That share drops to 40.5% among gaming apps specifically, where consumable purchases (extra lives, in-game currency, single-use boosts) appear in 27.5% of apps versus just 10.7% of apps overall. Lifetime, pay-once purchases show up in 23.2% of monetizing apps, and only 2.5% of apps combine all three purchase types (subscriptions, consumables, and lifetime unlocks) at once.
Figure 3: How monetizing apps mix subscriptions, one-time purchases, and consumables. Source: RevenueCat, State of Subscription Apps 2026.
Purchase type also changes how much a paying customer is worth. Realized lifetime value per payer in the first year after launch reaches a $32 median in North America but only $14 across India and Southeast Asia, against a global median of $23, and apps priced at the high end of their category post a $62.19 median annual value per payer versus $10.69 for low-priced apps in the same category, per RevenueCat. A clear EULA generator that states plainly what a subscription includes, what a consumable purchase does and does not renew, and how a refund request gets handled matters more as the purchase menu inside an app gets more varied, not less.
Three purchase types on one screen means three different sets of terms a user needs to actually understand before tapping buy, and most apps only offer one or two of them at a time for exactly that reason.
What counts as an in-app purchase a store actually takes a cut of?
Not every dollar spent inside an app is a commissionable in-app purchase. Apple’s own report on its App Store ecosystem, published in June 2026, states that developers paid no Apple commission at all on more than 90% of the $1.4 trillion the ecosystem generated in billings and sales during 2025. Commission only applies to digital goods and services sold through Apple’s in-app purchase system, at a standard 30% rate or a reduced 15% rate for smaller developers; physical goods, services booked through an app such as ride-hailing or food delivery, and in-app advertising all fall outside that system entirely.
Figure 4: What actually counts as a commissionable in-app purchase under Apple’s current rules. Source: Apple Newsroom, “Apple’s Global App Store Ecosystem and Its Growth 2025,” June 2026.
This distinction matters for a EULA or terms document because the legal language covering an in-app purchase, a booked service, and an ad-supported feature is not interchangeable. A document that only addresses “purchases” in generic terms leaves the ride-hailing booking, the ad-free upgrade, and the consumable currency pack all governed by the same vague clause when each one is actually a different kind of transaction under the platform’s own rules.
How has in-app purchase spending trended since 2022?
Figure 5: Four years of steady growth, capped by the 2025 non-gaming crossover. Source: Sensor Tower, State of Mobile reports, 2023-2026 editions.
The trend line matters as much as any single year’s total. In-app purchase spend has not had a down year since at least 2022, and the category driving that growth has flipped from games to everything else. This growth sits inside the broader shift toward mobile as the primary commerce channel; see our mobile commerce statistics for 2026 and our breakdown of what percentage of ecommerce is mobile for how in-app spend fits into mobile purchasing overall. How much of that in-app spend routes through mobile wallets specifically, rather than stored cards, is a related question we have not published dedicated figures on yet.
A category that grows every year regardless of which app type is winning is not a fad a developer can wait out. It is the default way a growing share of digital commerce happens now.
The Bottom Line
In-app purchases crossed $167 billion in 2025, a fourth straight year of growth, and for the first time more of that money came from non-gaming apps than from games. Both facts point the same direction: in-app purchases are no longer a niche gaming mechanic, they are a standard revenue line for almost any kind of app, from AI assistants to fitness trackers to productivity tools. Not every dollar spent inside an app is legally the same kind of transaction, and only digital goods and services sold through a platform’s own purchase system carry a commission at all. A EULA that treats subscriptions, consumables, and lifetime unlocks as one undifferentiated “purchase” clause is already behind where the market moved in 2025.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much do consumers spend on in-app purchases each year? $167 billion globally in 2025, up 10% from 2024’s $150 billion, according to Sensor Tower’s State of Mobile 2026 report. That figure has climbed every year since at least 2022, when global in-app purchase spend sat at roughly $127 billion.
Do people spend more on in-app purchases in games or non-gaming apps? Non-gaming apps overtook games for the first time in 2025, per Sensor Tower: non-gaming in-app purchase revenue grew 21% year over year to roughly $85 billion, while gaming revenue grew a comparatively flat 1.3% to about $82 billion.
What do people actually buy with in-app purchases? Subscriptions dominate: 63.5% of apps that monetize through purchases use a subscriptions-only model, versus 40.5% of gaming apps, according to RevenueCat’s State of Subscription Apps 2026 report (115,000+ apps, $16 billion analyzed). Consumable purchases, like in-game currency or extra credits, appear in only 10.7% of apps overall but 27.5% of gaming apps.
Does every in-app purchase get taxed by a commission from Apple or Google? No. Apple reports that developers paid no commission at all on more than 90% of the App Store ecosystem’s $1.4 trillion in 2025 billings and sales, since commission only applies to digital goods and services sold through in-app purchase, not to physical goods, services booked through an app, or advertising.
Sources and References
- Sensor Tower. (2026). “State of Mobile 2026.” Global in-app purchase spend, category, and regional data, published January 21, 2026.
- RevenueCat. (2026). “State of Subscription Apps 2026.” Analysis of 115,000+ apps, $16 billion in revenue, and 1 billion-plus transactions from 2025.
- Apple Newsroom. (2026). “Apple’s Global App Store Ecosystem and Its Growth 2025.” Ecosystem billings and commission structure, published June 4, 2026.
Note: All figures verified as of September 2026. In-app purchase spend and monetization-mix figures update on each firm’s own annual reporting cycle, so headline figures here are refreshed at least twice a year.
