Hi everyone,
Today the team published The Business of Building 2026, our first data report on app monetization. It’s about the stretch after launch, and what separates the apps that go on to make money from the ones that don’t.
Most of the conversation in our industry stops at launch day. Every platform, us included, has a number for how fast you can get an app running. On Bubble it’s three days for the typical app. That’s not interesting anymore, so we looked at the part nobody has put numbers on, across more than 250,000 apps and the 11.9 million deploys and 233 million edits behind them.
Four patterns separate the apps that make money from the ones that don’t, and none of them are about speed. They charge early: 31% process their first transaction on day one. They ship steadily: 45 deploys in six months, against two for everyone else. They edit ruthlessly: 46 separate days of editing, against four. And they build boldly, adding AI features their users have come to expect. The report has all four in detail, plus who’s building these apps, what people are making, and where we think this goes next.
A lot of this will not surprise the people reading this post. Many of you have been shipping on Bubble for years, and the behavior in the report is a description of how you already work. That’s sort of the point. Now we have numbers attached to it, plus a way to show someone who’s three days into their first app that the habit is more important than the launch.
If a finding resonates, or even if it contradicts your own experience, we’d love for you to share it. Most of the people who should see this data aren’t on the forum, and you reach builders we don’t. We put together a set of images you can use if you want to post about a specific stat on LinkedIn, X, or anywhere else. Tag us and use #BusinessOfBuilding so we can join the conversation.
Read the full report
— Emmanuel
Thanks for this report.
I do agree that charging from day 1 is important…
whether it’s a 7-day, 14-day trial or whatever initially. Trials let the user get connected and then not want to give up their progress.
Also, without preselling the app before it’s released, you won’t get those paying customers on day 1.
Preselling is 80% of the app’s importance.
Too many people overlook the preselling part and then wonder why their app goes nowhere.
Of course, if you’re building an internal tool for a company, etc., your preselling is different.
I saw some interesting statistics recently about number off apps on app stores that make what percent of all money on App Store versus apps released date. Apparently around only 3 cents for every dollar is going to apps released in 2025 or later and 69 cents for every dollar on apps released before 2020.
Was statement focused on excessive volume of apps launched since AI made it so much less restrictive and how important it is now to market the app properly.
This report is cool. Bubble should do something annually like Susana’s does the ‘state of the startup’ annually. Would be nice to see yearly updates on Bubble development ecosystem.
I like this dig at vibe coded apps…”That’s an uphill battle for anyone who can’t understand and control every facet of what they built.”
I have to say, I was pretty surprised by the results of this report. Personally, I almost always look for apps that let me try things out before asking for my credit card or charging me anything.
I think charging from day one only really works for a small percentage of products, usually well-known ones where people already know what they’re getting and how the product works.
For most apps and SaaS products, I think there’s a huge advantage in letting people experience the product first and only then asking them to pay.
I had assumed the report was referring to what I had mentioned about charging from day 1, where you offer a trial?
“We expect the free-beta-then-figure-out-pricing sequence to keep losing ground, and the put-a-price-on-it-and-find-out sequence to gain.”
I believe this part is referring to what some builders do when they build an app and give everything away for free to get users. Then decide to start charging…
when they do this, they lose a lot of users who really weren’t that interested in the app anyway.
By charging from day 1 (which usually includes a trial), you get the really interested people.
That’s how I read it.
I think we may actually agree here and are just interpreting “charging from day 1” differently.
I was reading it very literally, as in actually charging the user before they’ve had a chance to properly try the product. If a free trial is included in that definition, then I completely agree with your point. Having clear pricing and a monetization model from day 1 is very different from launching a completely free beta and only figuring out how to monetize it later.
That said, I don’t think the report makes this distinction very clear. When it says that 31% of apps “start charging on day 1” and mentions collecting payments from day one, my first interpretation was that an actual payment happens immediately.
Maybe @emmanuel can shed some light on this: does “charging from day 1” include apps that have paid plans from the beginning but offer a free trial before the first payment, or does it specifically mean that the first payment happens on day 1?
It’s agnostic of paid plans or a free trial - it simply means their first payment flow (stripe or payment processor API) ran within a day of launch.
