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App Imp

News apps

  1. Market

    Installs
    4637.3M

    Across 13 of 14 apps we could match.

    • Google News: 4,315,249,165 installs
    • NewsBreak: 94,398,700 installs
    • CNN: 66,343,154 installs
    • SmartNews: 60,684,451 installs
    • BBC: 35,641,922 installs
    • FOX News: 22,439,812 installs
    • NBC News: 9,734,544 installs
    • USA TODAY: 8,276,836 installs
    • ABC News: 7,506,751 installs
    • NPR: 6,000,947 installs
    • Reuters: 4,648,876 installs
    • AP News: 3,549,537 installs
    • Ground News: 2,802,103 installs
    • 93% leader share. Google News, by Google Play installs, across the 13 of 14 apps we could match
    • #7 News rank. Ground News, top grossing, the best rank any app here holds
    • $4.00 median price. Lowest in-app price, median over the 8 apps that list one. 8 of 14 charge.
    • 12 of 14 recently updated. Updated in the 30 days before 2026-10-26

  2. Competition

    1. CNN19 Oct1.7M ratings$29.99 to $69.99 a year
    2. Apple News14 Sep1.7M ratings
    3. NewsBreak23 Oct1.4M ratings$71.99 a year
    4. SmartNews26 Oct929k ratings$3.99 to $4.99
    5. FOX News24 Oct600k ratings
    6. AP News22 Oct359k ratings
    7. USA TODAY20 Oct242k ratings$39.99 to $89.00 a year
    8. Google News23 Sep226k ratings
    9. NBC News23 Oct151k ratings$59.99 a year
    10. BBC23 Oct88k ratings$89.99 a year
    11. NPR14 Oct76k ratings
    12. Ground News20 Oct49k ratings$9.99 to $99.99 a year
    13. Reuters16 Oct9k ratings$4.00 to $45.00
    14. ABC News22 Oct6k ratings

  3. Reviews

    What 8,637 reviews talk about, every star counted.

    1. Billing+8.1%14 of 14 apps
    2. Ads+6.9%14 of 14 apps
    3. Limits & caps+4.1%13 of 14 apps
    4. Content+0.3%14 of 14 apps
    5. Accuracy+0.1%12 of 14 apps
    6. Login & auth−1.1%14 of 14 apps
    7. Support−1.3%14 of 14 apps
    8. Wishlist−1.5%14 of 14 apps
    9. UX−2.5%14 of 14 apps
    10. Performance−5.0%14 of 14 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?

14 apps compete here. They hold 4,637,276,798 installs on Google Play, counted across the 13 we could match. We hold 8,637 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?

8 of the 14 apps we could check charge inside the app. Half of them start at $4.00 or less.

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

We scan 41 App Store storefronts. Typing News apps completes to “kittiwake: news topic watcher” in 30 of them. Then “kaireader – news & vocabulary” in 26, “news in levels” in 25. 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 14 of 14 apps, 24.1% of reviews (16% in News apps); 2. Ads: in 14 of 14 apps, 21.4% of reviews (14.5% in News apps); 3. Limits & caps: in 13 of 14 apps, 5.4% of reviews (1.3% in News apps); 4. Accuracy: in 12 of 14 apps, 0.6% of reviews (0.5% in News apps). Counted from 8,637 reviews of every star on the 2026-10-26 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 663 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.