In categories like Shopping, Health & Fitness, Photography, and Business, top apps grew engagement by over 1,000% between 2022 and 2023

Similarweb released its new Apps 100 official ranking today, showcasing 100 of the fastest-growing mobile apps in the US.

The most successful digital businesses build engagement with consumers across all channels, but pay ever-increasing attention to the intimate and constant connections mobile apps make possible. Convincing the right consumers to download your app is a victory, but getting them to use it regularly is the ultimate goal. Similarweb’s Apps 100, a new companion to the Digital 100 ranking of websites, distinguishes itself from other app rankings by providing insight into user engagement.

“I suspect many of the other apps in other categories are employing AI behind the scenes.”

Building on the Digital 100 methodology, Similarweb identified the apps with the most growth between 2022 and 2023. The ranking is based on estimates of average monthly active users (MAU) for iOS and Android combined within the US. Studying MAUs, rather than app downloads, shows how much apps are actually used – a metric far more significant than downloads for most businesses.

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The winners in 10 categories

The full Apps 100 identifies 10 winners in 10 industry categories, with the 10 category winners listed below, ranked by those that showed the biggest percentage gain.

• Shopping: Temu: Shop Like a Billionaire, +4,173%, 107M average MAU for iOS and Android combined in 2023
• Health and Fitness: Hims: Telehealth for Men, +2,175% to 1.5M MAU
• Photography: Lisa AI: Cartoonify Avatar Art, +1,064% to 979.2K MAU
• Streaming and Media: The Chosen, +1,014% to 511.4K MAU
• Personal Finance: Fidelity Bloom: Save & Spend, +748.4% to 827.7K
• Business: Etsy Seller: Manage Your Shop, +451.2% to 1.3M
• Travel and Tourism: Airalo: eSIM Travel & Internet, +369% to 540.1K MAU
• Food and Drinks: Food Lion To Go, +143.5% to 441K MAU
• Education: Plantum – Plant Identifier, +106% to 847.2K MAU
• Home and Real Estate: Wansview Cloud, +55.3% to 429.5K

“The best digital businesses are not web-only or app-only, but understand how to meet their customers wherever they are and pay close attention to their needs,” Similarweb CEO Or Offer said. “Clearly, getting your app on a device people carry with them wherever they go is huge, but only if they actually open your app and use it on a regular basis. That’s what makes the Apps 100 winners so impressive.”

To qualify for inclusion, each app had to have averaged more than 300,000 monthly active users in 2023 and at least 30,000 in 2022. Discount shopping juggernaut Temu qualified even though it launched in the US in late 2022. Temu grew so fast that the engagement in those first few months averaged out to more than 2.5 million MAU in 2022. That growth continued into 2023, when Temu’s average monthly active users topped 107 million.

“While Temu also saw dramatic growth in web traffic, it always encourages app downloads and delivers many of its most powerful features through mobile apps, including enhanced gamification of the shopping experience,” said Inès Durand, Senior Market Insights Manager at Similarweb and one of the lead authors of the report. “Many of the other winners also take an app-first approach and rightfully so.”

“We saw another megatrend at play in the photography category, where the top 5 apps all used AI to enhance or modify images,” Durand said. “I suspect many of the other apps in other categories are employing AI behind the scenes.”

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