AI Vibe Coding Lifts New App Store Entries 30% in 2025 as GitHub Growth Accelerates
Updated
Updated · The Verge · May 14
AI Vibe Coding Lifts New App Store Entries 30% in 2025 as GitHub Growth Accelerates
4 articles · Updated · The Verge · May 14
A late-2025 leap in AI coding tools such as Claude Code is pushing nonprogrammers to build personal apps, turning software creation into a low-cost, prompt-driven task for users with specific needs.
Apple’s App Store saw new app launches rise 30% in 2025 after years of decline, and the nearly 2 million apps counted at end-2024 could roughly double by end-2026 if that pace continues.
GitHub also logged its fastest growth year in 2025, with 80% of new users trying Copilot within their first week, underscoring how coding agents are spreading beyond professional developers.
Most of the new output is not venture-backed software but one-off tools for a single user—from planners and trackers to scripts and extensions—often with zero revenue potential.
The shift still has limits: AI remains weak on design, testing, security and multi-device infrastructure, leaving professional developers to supply the underlying primitives while users customize the final experience.
Will the personal software revolution, where users build their own apps, finally dismantle the traditional app store economy?
When AI handles the coding, what is the single most valuable human skill left for creating great software?
As AI learns to both build and break code, are we entering an age of automated cyber warfare?
The AI Coding Revolution: Vibe Coding, App Store Disruption, and the Rise of 5 Million New Developers in 2025
Overview
Between 2025 and 2026, the rise of AI-driven development—especially vibe coding—sparked a dramatic increase in new app submissions to platforms like Apple’s App Store. Vibe coding, a term coined by Andrej Karpathy, made app creation accessible to a much wider audience, including non-coders, by letting people build apps using natural language and AI tools. This democratization of development led to a surge in innovation but also challenged traditional app store policies and review processes. As a result, both the tech industry and major platforms like Apple had to adapt quickly to this new, rapidly evolving landscape.