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App Imp

News apps

  1. Market

    Installs
    4675.3M

    Across 14 of 15 apps we could match.

    • Google News: 4,306,128,469 installs
    • NewsBreak: 94,108,045 installs
    • CNN: 66,244,660 installs
    • SmartNews: 60,559,185 installs
    • NYTimes: 47,766,356 installs
    • BBC: 35,615,716 installs
    • FOX News: 22,417,787 installs
    • NBC News: 9,728,175 installs
    • USA TODAY: 8,276,835 installs
    • ABC News: 7,503,672 installs
    • NPR: 5,999,504 installs
    • Reuters: 4,625,470 installs
    • AP News: 3,549,098 installs
    • Ground News: 2,773,092 installs
    • 92% leader share. Google News, by Google Play installs, across the 14 of 15 apps we could match
    • #3 News rank. NYTimes, top grossing, the best rank any app here holds
    • $4.00 median price. Lowest in-app price, median over the 9 apps that list one. 9 of 15 charge.
    • 15 of 15 recently updated. Updated in the 30 days before 2026-10-05

  2. Competition

    1. CNN28 Sep1.7M ratings$29.99 to $69.99 a year
    2. Apple News14 Sep1.6M ratings
    3. NewsBreak3 Oct1.4M ratings$71.99 a year
    4. SmartNews28 Sep929k ratings$3.99 to $4.99
    5. NYTimes21 Sep792k ratings$4.99 to $29.99
    6. FOX News3 Oct591k ratings
    7. AP News24 Sep359k ratings
    8. USA TODAY8 Sep242k ratings$39.99 to $89.00 a year
    9. Google News23 Sep226k ratings
    10. NBC News9 Sep151k ratings$59.99 a year
    11. BBC28 Sep88k ratings$89.99 a year
    12. NPR2 Oct74k ratings
    13. Ground News23 Sep48k ratings$9.99 to $99.99 a year
    14. Reuters30 Sep8k ratings$4.00 to $45.00
    15. ABC News24 Sep6k ratings

  3. Reviews

    What 8,859 reviews talk about, every star counted.

    1. Billing+7.9%15 of 15 apps
    2. Ads+6.1%15 of 15 apps
    3. Limits & caps+3.9%14 of 15 apps
    4. Content+0.4%15 of 15 apps
    5. Accuracy+0.1%13 of 15 apps
    6. Support−1.4%15 of 15 apps
    7. Wishlist−1.5%15 of 15 apps
    8. Login & auth−1.5%15 of 15 apps
    9. UX−2.4%15 of 15 apps
    10. Performance−4.9%15 of 15 apps
    with
    without

  4. Searches

    Position in Apple’s suggestions
    1510
    010203041
    Countries
    With
    Without

  5. Traffic

    Google Ads, United States, 25 September 2026.

  6. Your test

    Free for 7 days

    What to call it. Where to launch. What a user costs.

    • What to call it
    • Where to launch
    • What a user costs
    • Every review, word for word
    Start free for 7 days

    No card. Nothing to cancel. The counted page stays free either way.

Is there a market for a new news app?

15 apps compete here. They hold 4,675,296,064 installs on Google Play, counted across the 14 we could match. We hold 8,859 of their App Store reviews. Those are counts, not a verdict. The page shows what is unfixed, not whether to build.

How much do news apps charge?

9 of the 15 apps we could check charge inside the app. Half of them start at $4 or less.

What do people search for when they want a news app?

We scan 41 App Store storefronts. Typing News apps completes to “current news” in 28 of them. Then “news to you” in 25, “ferry: news & rss reader” in 24. These are Apple’s own suggestions. They show what gets typed, not how often.

What do users complain about most in news apps?

1. Billing: in 15 of 15 apps, 24.3% of reviews (16.4% in News apps); 2. Ads: in 15 of 15 apps, 20.4% of reviews (14.3% in News apps); 3. Limits & caps: in 14 of 15 apps, 5.2% of reviews (1.3% in News apps); 4. Content: in 15 of 15 apps, 2.7% of reviews (2.3% in News apps); 5. Accuracy: in 13 of 15 apps, 0.6% of reviews (0.5% in News apps). Counted from 8,859 reviews of every star on the 2026-10-05 snapshot, never estimated.

Cited: What RevenueCat measures across subscription apps

Their report has no category matching News apps apps, so only all-category figures are shown. A near-match would be a guess.

  • the median app barely grows; the tails are extreme

    median MRR +5.3% YoY · top decile +306% · bottom decile contracting

  • the launch flood vs the incumbency moat

    ~2,000 → 14,700+ new subscription apps per month (Jan 2022 → Jan 2026), yet pre-2020 apps still hold 69% of subscription revenue

  • even top categories take over 100 days to reach $10k revenue

    >100 days to the first $10k

RevenueCat, State of Subscription Apps 2026, 115,000+ apps · $16B+ tracked revenue · >1B transactions. Published industry figures, shown for context; App Imp’s own numbers are counted from reviews and never mixed with these.

How this is counted

We count the reviews we hold again every week. Nothing is guessed. A topic is found by the words a review uses, so the same review always lands in the same place. Every star counts. A share is the part of all reviews here that mention a topic. We compare it with the same share across 612 News apps, the group most of these apps are in. A topic is a gap when at least 20 reviews mention it, at least half the apps have it, and it comes up at least 1.15 times as often as usual. A problem in one app is that app’s bug. A problem in every app is nobody’s gap. This market has no full report yet, so the per-app notes are absent rather than estimated.