Non-Gaming Apps Have Out-Earned Mobile Games on IAP Since 2016

Non-gaming apps have generated more in-app purchase (IAP) revenue than mobile games every year since 2016, according to a new AppMagic report analyzing a decade of data to mark the analytics firm's 10th anniversary. Mobile games last held the top spot in IAP revenue nine years ago, and the gap has only widened since, with TikTok and AI chatbots now leading overall IAP earnings.

The headline performers sit outside gaming entirely. ChatGPT was the most downloaded app globally in 2025, and TikTok has ranked as the top-grossing app every year since 2020. That's roughly half a decade of unbroken dominance at the top of the revenue charts by a single non-gaming product.

What does this change for mobile game studios? The short answer: the addressable top of the IAP market is no longer theirs, and the games that do compete at that level are an increasingly small circle.

Which games still top the charts?

TiMi Studio Group's Honor of Kings and Garena's Free Fire led the mobile gaming charts across the 2016 to 2026 window AppMagic examined. Honor of Kings has led IAP revenue since its 2017 debut, earning $830 million in its launch year and surpassing $1.1 billion in 2026 — a 30%-plus jump over that near-decade span. The MOBA ranked first in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2022, 2023 and 2026.

Free Fire, meanwhile, dominated the downloads chart. It debuted in 2019 with 272 million installs, then added 225 million downloads in 2021, 269 million in 2024 and 221 million in 2026. AppMagic noted that Free Fire generated no revenue at launch but has since earned $3.3 billion.

Downloads don't equal dollars

The report's sharpest contrasts come from pairing install counts against earnings. Among Us achieved 930 million downloads but generated only $52 million in revenue — roughly five and a half cents per install. Umasmusume pulled the opposite trick, earning $1.6 billion from just 19 million downloads, which works out to more than $80 per install.

For studios weighing viral reach against monetization depth, that pairing is the whole argument in two data points. Scale without spending conversion delivers little; niche audiences with high willingness to pay can outperform viral hits by orders of magnitude.

AppMagic also flagged a structural trend: only a handful of top-grossing games continue to grow their revenue. Among the growers named in the report:

• Micro Fun's Gossip Harbor: Merge & Story, up 95% year-on-year from January to October this year
• Century Games' Kingshot, up 126% over the same period
• Honor of Kings, still edging up 5% despite its age

That's a market where legacy leaders mostly plateau, and growth concentrates in a few live-service titles with strong retention and monetization mechanics — merge games and hybrid-casual formats among them.

The takeaway for developers is operational rather than existential. The stores' biggest IAP spenders now fund short-video feeds and AI subscriptions, not game economies. Games that do grow are defending narrow niches with proven monetization loops, and the download charts reward reach while the revenue charts reward depth.

Worth watching: whether ChatGPT and other AI apps can convert their download dominance into sustained top-grossing positions in 2026, and whether any mobile title breaks TikTok's six-year grip on the overall revenue crown.