Two gatekeepers, one goal
Outside of China, two companies decide whether your app reaches a phone at all. Apple and Google together control well over 95% of the app-store market through iOS and Android. Android runs on roughly 71% of the world's phones and Apple on about 28% — but the install-base numbers hide the part that matters if you plan to charge money.
Both stores want the same four things before the public ever sees your app: a verified developer account, a confirmed identity, a listing that meets their content and privacy rules, and a passing grade from a review process. The order and the friction differ, but the shape is identical. Each store currently carries somewhere north of two million apps, so "just ship it" was never going to be the whole story.
Where the world's apps actually come from
There's no perfect public ledger of "apps per country," because the two stores don't publish clean breakdowns and a single developer can register from anywhere. The clearest sourced snapshot comes from Apple itself, which once shared where its new small developers were based. It's a useful proxy for where the next wave of apps is being built:
Zoom out to the wider developer population and the usual trio leads: China has the largest pool of software developers (roughly 7 million), India is close behind (around 5 million), and the United States sits near 4.4 million, followed by Germany and Japan. App-specific counts wobble year to year, but the headline holds — the U.S., India and China produce the bulk of the world's apps, with Europe a strong collective fourth.
Android vs. iOS: scale on one side, spending on the other
Before you pour effort into one store over the other, it helps to see how lopsided the two platforms are depending on what you measure. Android wins almost everything by volume; Apple wins the one thing that pays the bills. Here's the same rivalry across four yardsticks — green is Android/Google Play, indigo is iOS/App Store:
The takeaway in one line: Android is where the users are; iOS is where the money is. Android runs on roughly 71% of the world's phones and takes the lion's share of downloads, yet Apple's App Store pulled in about 68% of global app revenue in 2024 — on far fewer installs. The two catalogs are now nearly identical in size, a little over 2.3 million apps each. So if your app lives on ads and raw reach, Android's scale is the prize; if it lives on subscriptions or up-front purchases, iOS tends to earn more per user. Most serious launches end up on both, for exactly these reasons.
The price of admission: accounts and fees
This is the first place the two platforms diverge sharply. Apple charges $99 per year for the Apple Developer Program, billed as an ongoing membership. (Approved nonprofits, governments and educational institutions can have that fee waived.) Google charges a one-time $25 registration fee for a Play Console account — pay it once and you're in for good. Apple's recurring fee is a small but real trap: let it lapse and your apps drop off the store.
Both stores also ask you to pick an enrollment type up front, and that single choice quietly shapes everything that follows: individual or organization.
What a D-U-N-S number actually is
If you enroll as a company, Apple won't take your word that the business exists — it verifies you through a D-U-N-S number. The Data Universal Numbering System is a unique nine-digit identifier issued by Dun & Bradstreet, an old-line business-data firm, and it's used worldwide as a standard way to confirm a company is a real legal entity at a real address.
A few things worth knowing before you need one: it's free to request in most countries, your business has to be a genuine legal entity (an LLC, corporation or similar — Apple rejects "doing business as" names, trade names and branches), and getting one issued can take anywhere from a couple of days to about two weeks if Dun & Bradstreet doesn't already have you on file. Apple provides a lookup tool to check whether your company already has a number before you apply. And it isn't only an Apple thing: Google added the same rule for new organization accounts on Google Play in August 2023, so on identity verification the two stores now look alike. The reason Google's organization route can still feel a touch lighter is the one-time $25 fee — and the fact that organization accounts skip the 12-tester closed-testing rule entirely — not a D-U-N-S exemption.
Going solo: simpler, but with strings attached
Enrolling as an individual (or sole proprietor) skips the D-U-N-S requirement entirely, which is why so many indie developers start there. It's faster and cheaper to set up. But "individual" carries trade-offs that aren't obvious on day one:
- Your real name goes public. On the App Store, an individual's personal legal name is shown as the "seller." There's no company name to hide behind.
- It's harder to grow out of. Transferring or selling an app, or converting to an organization later, means contacting the store and untangling the original account.
- On Android, the testing rule lands on you. Google's closed-testing requirement (next section) applies specifically to new personal Play accounts — exactly the path solo developers take.
Google's 12-tester, 14-day gauntlet
This is the single biggest surprise for new Android developers. In November 2023, Google introduced a rule: if you have a newly created personal Play Console account, you can't apply for production access — the green light to publish to everyone — until you've run a closed test with a minimum number of real testers who have stayed opted in for 14 continuous days.
It launched at 20 testers. After heavy pushback from small developers who couldn't round up that many committed people, Google lowered the bar to 12 testers in December 2024, keeping the 14-day window. The clock is the cruel part: those 14 days don't start counting until your test track is actually live and people have opted in, so the requirement quietly adds two-plus weeks to any timeline. And meeting the headcount isn't a guarantee — developers still get bounced if the testing looks hollow or the app isn't genuinely production-ready.
Grandfathered in: who escapes the testing rule
Here's why one friend ships effortlessly and another is stuck herding testers for a month. The closed-testing requirement only applies to personal accounts created on or after November 13, 2023. Two groups are exempt:
- Personal accounts created before that date — effectively grandfathered in. If you registered your Play account in, say, 2021, the rule doesn't touch you.
- Organization accounts — the testing mandate was aimed at individual accounts, so a company account sidesteps it.
It's about when and how the account was created, not the quality of the app. If you're planning a serious Android presence, that's a strong argument for enrolling as an organization from the start — or, if you already hold an older personal account, for not casually deleting it.
Finding 12 testers: solutions and their drawbacks
So how do people actually clear the gauntlet? Three routes, each with a catch:
- Friends and family. Free and trustworthy — until you realize half of them carry iPhones and can't install your Android build at all. Most solo devs run dry well before 12.
- Tester-swap communities. Groups (often on Discord, Reddit or dedicated apps) where you test other people's apps and they test yours. Free, but slow, and engagement can be flaky — a tester who installs and never opens the app may not count the way you'd hope.
- Paid testing services. A small industry now sells "12 real testers" packages starting around $15 and climbing from there, often promising the test starts within hours. Fast and convenient — but with real downsides.
The drawbacks of the paid route are worth spelling out. Beyond the cost, the engagement can be shallow or even faked, and Google has gotten better at spotting testing that exists only to game the gate — which can get your app flagged rather than approved. Some of these services also operate in a terms-of-service gray area. The honest takeaway: paid testers can solve the headcount problem, but they don't solve the "is this app actually ready" problem the rule is really probing for.
The rest of the checklist both stores expect
Accounts and testing get the headlines, but review will still bounce you for the boring stuff. Budget time for all of it:
- A privacy policy — a public URL is effectively mandatory on both stores.
- Data-collection disclosures — Apple's privacy "nutrition labels" and Google's Data safety form. You declare exactly what you collect and why.
- Content / age rating, plus accurate metadata, screenshots and descriptions. Misleading screenshots are a classic rejection.
- Working everything. Reviewers reject crashes, broken links, and login walls with no test credentials. If your app needs an account, hand them one.
- Google's "target API level." Android requires apps to target a recent OS version, and that bar rises every year (more on that next).
Deadlines worth circling now
A few moving deadlines can save you a future scramble if you plan around them today:
- EU trader status (already live). Under the EU's Digital Services Act, apps without a verified "trader status" have been removed from the App Store in the EU since February 17, 2025, and Google enforces parallel requirements. Even if you don't sell in the EU, you must declare a status. The sting for solo devs: if you're a trader, your contact details — address, phone, email — get published on your store listing for everyone to see.
- Google's annual target-API bump. Every year Google raises the minimum Android version your app must target. Miss it and your app eventually stops being installable for new users. Treat it as a yearly maintenance appointment, not a one-time task.
- Apple's yearly renewal. That $99 isn't "set and forget" — let it lapse and your apps come down. Calendar it.
- D-U-N-S lead time. If you're going the organization route, request the number weeks before you need it. It's the one step you can't rush at the end.
A sane order of operations
Put it all together and the path that avoids the most pain looks like this:
- Decide individual vs. organization first — it changes everything downstream.
- If organization: request your D-U-N-S number immediately, before anything else.
- Create both developer accounts and pay the fees ($99/yr Apple, $25 once for Google).
- On Android with a new personal account: start your closed test on day one so the 14-day clock is already running while you finish the app.
- Prepare listing assets, privacy policy, and data-safety/privacy disclosures in parallel.
- Declare your trader status before you submit.
- Submit, and expect a round or two of review feedback — it's normal, not failure.
- Calendar the renewals and the annual target-API bump so future-you isn't blindsided.
None of this is the part anyone dreams about when they start building. But the developers who ship smoothly aren't the ones who write the best code — they're the ones who treated the paperwork as part of the project from day one.