Figures
How much work goes into an app that hasn't made a cent yet? We counted.
248 apps not profitable yet · read on November 8, 2026 · repos re-read every night · the method · JSON
Population widened on September 22, 2026. Before, only free apps counted. Since then, every listed app: free or paid, that hasn't made money yet according to its maker, or just its first euro. Medians moved that day: if you quote an older figure, give its date.
What it says
- 27% of apps have passed 100 days with commits (66 of 248).
- 42% have a single human author in their history (105 of 248).
- 69 apps are over a year old and still getting commits. See them
- A day of work is 6.2 commits at the median.
- 15 of 53 Mac apps are on the App Store or notarized, according to their repo. See them
Before the first euro
Not enough apps for a median yet: none has declared a first euro, and it takes 5. The figure will show up here by itself.
Active days counted in the repo up to the day of the first euro, as declared by the maker. The work is verified; the date of the first euro is not. The “First euro” apps
Which day they work
27% of work days fall on a Saturday or a Sunday. If work were spread at random, it would be 29%.
8,529 active days over the last 365 days, 102 public repos, dates in UTC. Private repos are left out: their older days are only known to the week.
By platform
| apps | days, median | months, median | |
|---|---|---|---|
| CLI | 73 | 65 | 8 |
| Mac | 53 | 41 | 7 |
| iOS | 41 | 60 | 11 |
| MCP | 39 | 65 | 7 |
| Web | 37 | 64 | 7 |
| Windows | 6 | 71 | 8 |
| Android | 4 | 40 | 6 |
| Linux | 4 | 85 | 9 |
By language
| apps | days, median | months, median | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Swift | 82 | 53 | 8 |
| TypeScript | 52 | 66 | 7 |
| Rust | 51 | 74 | 9 |
| Go | 21 | 49 | 7 |
| Python | 16 | 69 | 7 |
| JavaScript | 9 | 61 | 6 |
| C | 3 | 40 | 4 |
A group with fewer than 3 apps is not shown: it would not be a statistic, it would be a card.
To quote
These figures are free to reuse (CC BY 4.0): a link to this page is enough. A sentence ready to paste:
On Not a Cent, an indie app that hasn't made money yet represents a median of 61 days with commits spread over 8 months (248 apps, read on November 8, 2026). Source: https://notacent.app/en/chiffres
What these figures do not say
- This is not a sample of all indie apps: these are the ones listed here, which have not made money yet (or just their first euro), with a GitHub repo, found by us or listed by their maker. Apps that last, by construction.
- Revenue is declared by the maker, not verified. An unclaimed card has declared nothing: it still counts, because its work is read in the repo.
- A day with commits is not an eight-hour day. It is a day when someone opened the project and left something in it.
- Medians are recomputed every night: the figure you quote today will have moved in a month. Give the date.