Public · Data freshness & history
A current read, with years of memory
Apps Almanac rebuilds its market read regularly, typically weekly. Every category, every signal, refreshed and rescored as one consistent batch, so each number on the site is measured against the same cut. That keeps the picture current without chasing real-time noise.
What sets the read apart is depth. We don't just know what the Shopify app market looks like now. We have a record of what it looked like as far back as 2018, when the public store held a fraction of today's apps. That long memory is what turns a single number into a trend you can trust.
Refresh cadence
Weekly
The latest read is live. The dashboard updates within minutes of each successful refresh.
History depth
Since 2018
A multi-year record of how categories, pricing, and the catalog itself have shifted not just a single moment's reading.
Trend reliability
Moderate
Category-level trend lines (app density, average rating, catalog size) are the most dependable. Single-app review-count history spans a change in how counts were recorded between the early archive and the live read, so read those trajectories as direction, not precise totals.
Catalog size
20k+ apps
The live read covers first-party and third-party apps on the public store today; the historical record tracks how that grew from a few thousand.
Why a batched read, not real-time
Market opportunity moves on the scale of weeks and months, not minutes. A consistent batched cut means every comparison this category vs. that one, this read vs. the last is apples-to-apples. Real-time figures would flicker without telling you anything you could act on. We optimize for a read you can make a build decision against, backed by years of context.
What we analyze
- Category-level opportunity signals (app density, weak-incumbent share, pain themes).
- Per-app trajectory: rating drift, review velocity, support responsiveness, pricing stability.
- Developer portfolio shape (concentration, neglect ratio, abandonment risk).
- New entrants and exits between refreshes.
Everything is built from public Shopify App Store listing information, refreshed regularly. See data sources for what is covered and how to request a takedown.
What we don't analyze
- Anything behind merchant authentication.
- Private analytics, install counts, or revenue (Shopify doesn't expose these).
- Review "helpful" counts (Shopify doesn't expose these).
How we gather it, responsibly
Apps Almanac is an independent service. We read only public listing information, identify ourselves clearly, gather gently on a calm, regular cadence, and respect the public store's access rules. We're not affiliated with Shopify Inc., and we don't republish their data wholesale we publish our own derived read on top of it. The full posture is on the compliance page.
See also: methodology · data sources · compliance · changelog · errata.