DEV Community: Artur

I Just Published My First Chrome Extension. Now What?

Artur — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 08:42:15 +0000

You clicked Publish. The zip file uploaded. The Chrome Web Store dashboard now shows your extension with a little Pending review badge.

Congratulations — you’re officially a browser extension developer.

But what actually happens next?

We analyzed 185,000+ public Chrome extensions to get a realistic picture of what happens after launch — and what new developers should expect.

Key takeaways

The median Chrome extension has just 18 users.
If you break 100 users, you’ve already outperformed most of the store.
Half of all extensions have zero ratings.
The Chrome Web Store is a distribution channel, not a built-in growth engine.

If you just published your first extension and your numbers look underwhelming, that’s not failure. That’s normal.

First: the review process

After you hit publish, your extension goes into Google’s review queue.

Google says review times vary. In its documentation, it notes that in early 2021, most submissions were reviewed in under 24 hours and over 90% completed within three days — but actual timelines depend on what your extension does and what permissions it requests.

Things that can slow review down:

broad permissions like <all_urls>
remotely hosted code
sensitive behavior like browsing-data access or script injection
a brand-new developer account

Common rejection reasons include:

asking for permissions you don’t really need
missing or vague store listing metadata
broken functionality
privacy-policy issues when your extension handles user data

None of this is unusual. A rejection is usually a revision cycle, not a dead end.

Then comes the part no one tells you about: almost nobody gets users quickly

A week after launch, you open the dashboard and see:

4 users
maybe 11
one of them is probably you

That feels bad until you look at the broader market.

Here’s what the user distribution looks like across 185,459 active Chrome extensions in our dataset:

Percentile	Users
25th	4
50th (median)	18
75th	164

That means the median extension has 18 users total.

And here’s the more useful framing:

70.3% of extensions currently have fewer than 100 users
87.9% currently have fewer than 1,000 users
only 12.1% are at 1,000+ users

So if your first milestone is 100 users, that is not small. That is meaningful.

The Chrome Web Store is extremely skewed. A small number of giant extensions absorb most of the installs. Everyone else is competing in the long tail.

Ratings are even harder than installs

Most new developers assume that if they get a few users, ratings will follow.

Usually they don’t.

In our data, 50.5% of active Chrome extensions currently have zero ratings. The median number of ratings across the store is exactly zero.

Among extensions that do have ratings, the numbers look much better:

median rating: 5.0
average rating: 4.56

That tells you two things:

Getting the first rating is the hard part
Once people do rate, they’re often rating after a positive outcome

So early on, don’t obsess over stars. With only a handful of ratings, one annoyed user can distort the picture completely.

What matters more is whether your early users are actually succeeding with the product.

The Chrome Web Store will not market your extension for you

This is the biggest misconception I see.

A lot of developers publish to the Chrome Web Store as if it were an app marketplace with built-in discovery. It isn’t.

Google’s discovery docs make it clear that ranking and visibility depend on things like:

ratings
usage signals
uninstall rates over time
listing quality
UX quality
clarity of purpose

So yes, new extensions are at a disadvantage. Not because listing quality doesn’t matter — it does — but because quality alone usually isn’t enough to create traction from zero.

There are discovery surfaces:

search
categories
homepage features
editorial placements
badges

But for a brand-new extension with no installs, no ratings, and no retention history, visibility is limited.

That’s why your listing matters so much: the store probably won’t create demand for you, but when traffic does arrive, your listing determines whether that traffic converts.

Badges matter more than most people think

There are two Chrome Web Store trust signals worth knowing about:

Featured Badge

This is awarded by Google to extensions that meet higher UX and technical standards.

It is manually reviewed, but developers can nominate eligible public extensions for consideration through Google’s support flow.

Established Publisher Badge

This badge is granted to verified publishers with a strong compliance track record.

Google says badge holders may receive better visibility in search and filtering, so this is more than cosmetic trust signaling.

If you plan to be in the ecosystem for real, this stuff matters.

What actually helps after launch

1) Treat your store listing like a landing page

A lot of developers underinvest here because it feels superficial. It isn’t.

Your listing should do three things quickly:

explain the problem
show the workflow
create trust

That means:

lead with user benefit, not implementation details
use screenshots that show the extension doing real work
choose the most accurate category for the use case
include clear privacy information, especially if you handle user data

Even a good extension can look sketchy if the listing is thin.

2) Bring your own audience

Early installs usually come from places where your users already hang out, not from the store itself.

For developer-facing or technical extensions, that often means:

dev.to
Hacker News
Reddit
niche Discord servers
Slack communities
X
GitHub discussions
indie maker communities

The best early distribution angle is usually not “here’s my product.”

It’s:

“I built this because I had this problem”
“here’s how it works”
“here’s what I learned”
“here’s the ugly first version”

That performs better with a dev audience because it feels like shipping, not marketing.

3) Use early feedback as product direction

At the start, you do not need scale. You need signal.

If one user emails a bug report, that’s valuable.

If three users get confused at the same step, that’s a usability problem.

If someone asks for the same feature twice, that’s roadmap input.

The first version of your extension is rarely the version that grows.

The extensions that eventually compound are usually the ones where the developer keeps shipping after the silent launch period.

4) Benchmark your progress properly

One of the hardest parts of shipping a Chrome extension is that most developers have no idea what “normal” looks like.

That’s exactly why we built exstats.com: to track installs, ratings, and trends across the Chrome extension ecosystem and make it easier to benchmark progress against the market.

Without context, 30 users feels disappointing.

With context, 30 users might mean you’re ahead of the median already.

That distinction matters.

A more realistic mental model

A lot of developers think launching an extension should feel like launching a SaaS product.

Usually it doesn’t.

A more realistic model looks like this:

Week 1

review approval, if all goes well
a handful of users
probably no ratings

Month 1

maybe 10–50 users if you’ve posted it in a few places
maybe your first review
some first real bug reports

Month 3

clearer understanding of who it’s actually for
better onboarding
a stronger listing
a few iterations based on real usage

Month 6+

compounding starts only if you kept improving it
some organic search visibility may show up
retention and word of mouth begin to matter more

These are not guarantees. They’re just a healthier expectation model than “I launched, why am I not growing?”

The real takeaway

The biggest mistake first-time extension developers make is treating the publish button like the finish line.

It isn’t.

Publishing is the starting line.

Most extensions launch quietly. Most get very few users. Most get no ratings at all for a long time. That does not mean the idea is bad.

It usually means you are now in the real phase:

improve onboarding
simplify permissions
tighten the listing
share it where the right users already are
respond fast to feedback
ship updates

That’s how extensions grow.

Not from launch-day excitement, but from consistency after launch.

Chrome vs Firefox vs Edge: Browser Extension Market in Q1 2026

Artur — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 10:01:58 +0000

The browser extension market grew in Q1 2026. However, the key point is not just that Chrome remained the leader. An analysis based on daily parsing of public data from all three major extension stores shows Firefox had the fastest growth among major stores. Chrome rebounded after a decline in late 2025, reaching a new high, while all three ecosystems continued to have many extensions with minimal usage.

178,299 active extensions were listed in the Chrome Web Store in March 2026, compared to 83,465 on Firefox Add-ons and 28,741 on Microsoft Edge Add-ons.

Firefox's extension ecosystem grew by 74.2% year over year from March 2025 to March 2026, the fastest rate among the three major stores.

70.4% of Chrome extensions, 56.8% of Edge add-ons, and 89.4% of Firefox add-ons have 100 users or fewer, based on the closest available adoption metric for each store.

Market overview

The extension market in Q1 2026 was still dominated by Chrome with a substantial lead. There were 178,299 Chrome extensions at the end of March, more than double Firefox's 83,465 and more than six times Edge's 28,741.

This scale is significant because Chrome also reaches the largest browser audience. StatCounter's worldwide browser usage data for March 2026 shows Chrome at 66.71% market share, while Edge holds 5.79% and Firefox has 2.33% (StatCounter). Chrome remains the main target for distribution, but store size and browser share are not aligned.

Store	Active extensions, Mar 2026	Developers, Mar 2026	YoY growth vs Mar 2025
Chrome	178,299	121,590	22.70%
Firefox	83,465	69,475	74.16%
Edge	28,741	16,510	21.55%

Firefox is the standout in this scenario. Its year-over-year growth outpaced both Chrome and Edge by more than three times, as the table above shows. For developers and reporters, this shifts the narrative: the extension landscape in 2026 involves more than just Chrome's dominance; Firefox is growing significantly faster, even from a smaller base.

One possible explanation is differing policies. Mozilla announced in February 2025 that Firefox would continue supporting both Manifest V2 and Manifest V3, including the ability to use blockingWebRequest, while some other browsers began phasing out MV2. While this doesn't establish a direct cause and effect, it helps to explain Firefox's strong growth in listings.

Q1 2026 was a rebound quarter, especially for Chrome

Q1 2026 saw an increase in listings across all three major stores, but Chrome's recovery stood out. Chrome added 38,015 new extensions and removed 7,890 in Q1, resulting in a net growth of 30,125. Firefox had a net gain of 9,821 listings, while Edge added 2,391.

Those numbers become more meaningful when compared to late 2025. In Q4 2025, Chrome experienced a net loss of 27,249 listings due to a significant deletion wave, while Edge declined by 164. In contrast, Firefox continued to grow with a net gain of 8,040.

Store	Q1 2026 gross new	Q1 2026 deleted	Q1 2026 net new	Q4 2025 net new
Chrome	38,015	7,890	30,125	-27,249
Firefox	12,392	2,571	9,821	8,040
Edge	2,852	461	2,391	-164

Q1 2026 felt more like a reset and recovery than a simple continuation. Chrome ended the quarter with an all-time high after the prior contraction. Firefox maintained its upward momentum into 2026. Edge remained positive, but on a smaller scale.

Chrome's late-2025 purge was real, and it changed the baseline for 2026

The most noticeable change in the market was Chrome's cleanup in October 2025. A total of 47,288 extensions were removed that month alone. No other monthly deletion counts during this period came close.

This is important because simple year-end comparisons can misinterpret the situation. Chrome's total was 175,423 in September 2025, dropped to 134,888 at the end of October, then grew to 140,828 in November and 178,299 by March 2026. Edge also experienced a smaller purge in December 2025 when 2,083 add-ons were deleted. Firefox did not face a similar disruption and showed steady growth every month.

Month	Chrome total	Chrome deleted	Edge total	Edge deleted	Firefox total	Firefox deleted
Sep 2025	175,423	1,302	26,514	57	65,604	258
Oct 2025	134,888	47,288	27,038	92	68,316	303
Nov 2025	140,828	1,354	27,561	102	70,616	233
Dec 2025	148,174	1,515	26,350	2,083	73,644	312
Jan 2026	155,673	3,066	26,937	252	76,350	1,114
Feb 2026	165,405	1,538	27,760	108	78,782	667
Mar 2026	178,299	3,286	28,741	101	83,465	790

This matters because if a store can delete tens of thousands of listings in a single month, raw numbers tell only part of the story. Policy enforcement, spam removal, and compliance efforts can shift visibility and competition much more rapidly than overall counts suggest. Developers should pay attention.

The Manifest V2 shutdown likely contributed to this wave. Google completely disabled MV2 on July 24, 2025, and Microsoft also pushed migration to MV3 with stricter limits on remotely hosted code. Combined with Mozilla's continued MV2 support mentioned earlier, this helps explain both the purge and Firefox's growth.

The market is huge, but demand is still concentrated in a small minority of extensions

Commercially, the most striking pattern is how few users the average extension receives. The median is 18 users for Chrome extensions, 62 active installs for Edge add-ons, and one average daily user for Firefox add-ons. These metrics differ by store, so they can't be directly compared, but they point to the same conclusion: most listings have minimal usage.

The distribution makes this even clearer. Based on each store's closest available user metrics, 70.4% of Chrome listings, 56.8% of Edge listings, and 89.4% of Firefox listings have 100 users or fewer.

Chrome uses usersCount, Edge uses activeInstallCount, and Firefox uses averageDailyUsers, as tracked across store listings.

Adoption bucket	Chrome	Edge	Firefox
0	14.10%	6.54%	34.38%
1-10	28.15%	19.80%	40.62%
11-100	28.17%	30.45%	14.41%
101-1,000	20.66%	25.77%	7.43%
1,001-10,000	6.29%	11.79%	2.48%
10,000+	2.63%	5.65%	0.69%

Growth in the store does not guarantee easier discovery. More listings can lead to increased competition among products with low traction. While there is a real opportunity, it is limited. A store that grows rapidly can still be tough to navigate if ranking, user retention, or promotional advantages cluster around the top few percent. It's akin to opening a cafe in a city where everyone else also had a similar "small but curated" idea.

Category mix varies enough across stores to change launch strategy

The three stores differ not only in size but also in what gets developed.

On Chrome, categories focused on productivity lead the way: 65,135 listings in Tools, 32,175 in Workflow & Planning, and 17,551 in Developer tools. On Edge, the largest category is also Productivity, with 12,609 listings. Firefox has a less structured category system, with Other leading at 22,690, followed by Appearance at 14,801 and Search Tools at 12,234.

Developers should not view "browser extensions" as a single market. Chrome and Edge lean more towards work and utility use cases, while Firefox has a different category landscape shaped partly by looser classification. Firefox also emphasizes privacy and security more prominently among top categories, featuring 8,627 listings in Privacy & Security.

Store	Top categories by listing count
Chrome	Tools (65,135), Workflow & Planning (32,175), Developer tools (17,551)
Edge	Productivity (12,609), Entertainment (4,321), Photos (3,051)
Firefox	Other (22,690), Appearance (14,801), Search Tools (12,234)

No single store is superior overall. Category fit matters more than careless cross-posting. A workflow or utility extension may find a stronger competitive environment on Chrome and Edge, while Firefox might offer different opportunities in privacy, interface customization, and search-related tools.

Feedback coverage is deeper on Chrome, but rated extensions score well across all stores

Feedback coverage varies significantly. Across stores, 49.8% of Chrome listings have at least one rating, compared to 44.5% on Edge and 31.0% on Firefox. Review coverage stands at 43.0% for Chrome, 29.7% for Edge, and 31.0% for Firefox. (Firefox's rating and review numbers match because AMO requires a text review to submit a star rating, unlike Chrome and Edge where star-only ratings are possible.)

At first glance, the average ratings across stores seem low: 2.27 on Chrome, 1.90 on Edge, and 1.29 on Firefox. However, these figures include unrated listings counted as zero. Among extensions that do receive ratings, average scores are high for all three stores: 4.56 on Chrome, 4.27 on Edge, and 4.15 on Firefox.

Metric	Chrome	Edge	Firefox
With at least 1 rating	49.8%	44.5%	31.0%
With at least 1 review	43.0%	29.7%	31.0%
Average rating, all listings	2.27	1.90	1.29
Average rating, rated listings only	4.56	4.27	4.15

The good news for developers is that low overall averages do not indicate users dislike extensions. They reflect the fact that many listings never receive feedback. Extensions that do get reviews are generally well received. Product teams should focus on engaging users early and encouraging reviews, rather than fixating on broad average ratings.

Maintenance is healthier on Chrome than on Edge or Firefox, but freshness is still limited

A growing store remains healthy only if its listings are kept up to date. In this aspect, Chrome currently leads. As of March 31, 2026, 30.80% of active Chrome extensions were updated within the last 90 days, compared to 18.23% on Edge and 17.92% on Firefox.

Looking at a longer timeframe, 62.58% of Chrome listings were updated within the last 365 days, while Edge and Firefox had 38.65% and 48.20%, respectively. The average update interval reflects this trend: 103 days for Chrome, 127 for Edge, and 111 for Firefox.

Store	Updated in last 90 days	Updated in last 365 days	Average update interval
Chrome	30.80%	62.58%	103 days
Firefox	17.92%	48.20%	111 days
Edge	18.23%	38.65%	127 days

This indicates that Chrome's larger ecosystem is not only bigger but also more actively maintained. Firefox's rapid growth has not yet resulted in a similar freshness profile, while Edge appears smaller and slower. This situation affects trust for users and competition for developers. A store filled with older, poorly maintained listings may allow better-supported products to shine.

Security context is also essential. A peer-reviewed ACM study identified 1,349 extensions vulnerable to inter-extension attacks that could lead to XSS issues, along with a cluster of 4,410 "New Tab" extensions involved in stealing traffic. Reuters reported a 2020 spyware campaign that impacted 32 million Chrome extension downloads before Google removed over 70 harmful add-ons. Although these figures are not from Q1 2026, they help clarify why store cleanup and policy enforcement are vital to the market's structure.

What Q1 2026 says about the extension industry

The extension industry in Q1 2026 is larger, cleaner, and more uneven than typical browser statistics imply. Chrome remains the center of gravity in terms of both browser share and store size. Firefox is the standout growth story. Edge plays a role, but it continues to be a much smaller ecosystem.

The pattern is structural. Store growth has not eliminated the long tail. Most extensions still have minimal adoption, many do not receive ratings, and only a small percentage are regularly maintained. So yes, the market is active, but it is not straightforward.

For tech journalists, the best way to sum it up is that the extension market is expanding, but success is becoming more concentrated. For product managers, the takeaway is to select stores based on category fit and maintenance advantage, not just audience size. For developers, the data suggests that both statements can be true: browser extensions still represent a significant platform opportunity, but most listings will likely not achieve success.

A final note on enterprise relevance: research shows that extensions are crucial in workplace browsing. Help Net Security reported, citing LayerX's 2025 enterprise report, that 99% of enterprise users had at least one extension installed, with 53% having more than 10. This context highlights why distribution, management, and store trust are significant issues in 2026.

I've been parsing public data from all three major extension stores daily and built exstats.com to track extension growth, rankings, and competitor trends. This post is based on that dataset.