I analyzed 21,509 Shopify apps to see if the market is saturated

I’ve been building Shopify apps for years, and one question keeps coming back:

“Is the Shopify App Store saturated?”

The honest answer is: yes and no.

But I was tired of answering based on intuition.

So for May 2026, I indexed every public Shopify App Store listing I could find and looked at:

• how many apps are live
• how many new apps launched
• how many new reviews were posted
• which categories are the most crowded
• how many apps mention AI
• how many apps are English-only
• how concentrated reviews are among top players
• how some developers build huge portfolios of low-traction apps

Here are a few things I found:

• 21,509 public Shopify apps are live
• 2,713 apps launched in May alone
• 21,254 new reviews were posted in May
• 828,076 reviews exist across live apps
• 23.8% of apps launched in May mention AI
• 76.6% of live apps are English-only
• Analytics is the biggest category, with 982 apps
• One developer has 151 apps live, but only 20 total reviews across all of them
• Judge.me has 39,809 reviews from one listing

The biggest thing I learned:

App count is a bad way to measure opportunity.

A category can have a lot of apps and still have room if merchants are actively reviewing, switching, and searching.

A category can also look small and “less competitive,” but be completely dead if there is no review activity.

So I think the better question is not:

“Is this category crowded?”

It’s:

“Is demand still moving in this category?”

For Shopify apps, I’d look at:

1. Review velocity
   Are apps in the category getting new reviews, or are they just sitting there?

2. New app entry
   Are founders still launching in this category?

3. Review concentration
   Are all reviews captured by 2 or 3 leaders, or is there room for smaller apps to grow?

4. Keyword competition
   Can a new app realistically rank for important search terms?

5. Positioning gaps
   Are incumbents weak in design, pricing, localization, support, onboarding, or specific use cases?

6. Localization
   This one surprised me. 76.6% of live apps are English-only. For some apps, localization might be one of the simplest growth opportunities.

The most interesting pattern was what I call “portfolio publishers.”

Some developers launch dozens of apps.

One had 151 live apps.

But across all of them, only 20 total reviews.

That really changed how I think about volume.

Shipping more products is not a strategy by itself.

In a marketplace, distribution compounds more than product count.

One strong listing with reviews, ranking, trust, and clear positioning can beat a huge portfolio of invisible apps.

That’s the main lesson from the report:

The Shopify App Store is not dead.

But it is no longer an easy marketplace where you can just ship an app and wait.

It behaves more like a competitive search engine.

If you don’t understand categories, reviews, keywords, competitors, and positioning, you’re mostly guessing.

That’s why I’m building App Store Pulse.

I wanted a way for Shopify app founders to track their app, competitors, keywords, reviews, and market movements in one place.

The report is basically the market-level version of that idea.

Full report here:
https://www.appstorepulse.com/reports/state-of-shopify-app-store-may-2026

Curious to hear from other founders:

If you were starting a Shopify app today, would you rather enter a crowded category with proven demand, or a smaller category with less competition but weaker demand signals?