What we found.
A survey of 8 Mac apps. Nothing here is estimated, modelled or scored — every figure is a count over apps we have actually read, and every share says how many that was. The same data is available as JSON, under CC BY.
What Mac apps cost
Across the 2 of 8 apps whose price model is established, read from the app’s own pricing page or its App Store entry. The rest are not counted here at all.
- no subscription
- 100%
- one-off purchase
- 100%
- free
- 0%
- subscription
- 0%
The 2 apps with no subscription, listed.
What Mac apps are built with
Across the 0 apps whose bundle has been opened. “Native” means an AppKit or SwiftUI binary — not a quality claim, and an app we have not opened is never counted as native by default.
- native
- —
- Electron
- —
- sandboxed
- —
- notarised
- —
Whether anyone is still working on them
Across the 0 apps with a known release date, from each app’s own update feed, its GitHub releases or the App Store. A long gap can mean a small utility is finished rather than abandoned.
- nothing in 2 years
- —
- Apple Silicon
- 0%
- apps listed
- 8
- clicks sent out
- 464
The 0 that have not shipped in two years, oldest first.
Every category
17 categories, each with its own board. The leader is the most-installed app in that category, by Homebrew’s published 30-day counts.
Where these come from
- Runtime, architectures, signing, permissions and download size are read from the application bundle itself — its Info.plist, its code signature and its Mach-O headers. Each listing links to the exact artifact that was opened.
- Price model comes from the app’s own pricing page or its App Store entry, and each listing links to the page that establishes it. A page that states neither a recurring price nor a one-off purchase leaves the app unclassified.
- Release dates come from the app’s Sparkle update feed, its GitHub releases or the App Store — whichever the app itself publishes.
- Install counts are Homebrew’s published 30-day figures. They cover people installing through Homebrew only, so they compare apps to each other rather than counting an app’s users.