Introduction: How We Gathered Our Salesforce AppExchange Stats
At SFApps.info, we already have a good tradition of analyzing the AppExchange marketplace every 6 months. For this, we create a snapshot of all apps available on the Salesforce apps marketplace and further calculate trends based on the number of apps in different categories, by developers, ratings, etc., and compare the same metrics with our previous measurements.
December 2025 wasn’t an exception, and we did our semiannual analysis. This time, data scraping on December 1, 2025 showed 6,233 apps in total: nearly 600 more than the same analysis done exactly a year earlier. Salesforce AppExchange tools market continued to grow in size, but that growth also increased the effort required to assess app relevance, maturity, and real-world usage.
This article provides structured Salesforce AppExchange analytics as it stood at the end of 2025. The purpose is not to rank apps or promote specific vendors, but to document how the marketplace itself is changing over time. We focus on what is measurable: how many apps exist, which business needs they address, who develops them, and how users respond through reviews.
The analysis is based on four comparable points in time:
- May 2024 (read full research),
- December 2024 (read full research),
- May 2025 (read full research),
- December 2025 (current research).
Using the same data sources and classification rules across all snapshots allows us to track real changes and see an objective picture. All numbers reflect apps listed under the Business Need and Industries categories on Salesforce AppExchange during those periods.
This article looks at three core aspects of the marketplace:
- Marketplace structure , including total app volume and Business Needs category distribution, and industry coverage.
- Developer activity , focusing on how many companies publish apps and how their portfolios evolve.
- Review behavior , covering review volume, coverage, and rating distribution.
Taken together, these elements provide a factual view of where the Salesforce AppExchange stands as we enter 2026 and establish a baseline for evaluating how the marketplace continues to change over the coming year.
- Salesforce AppExchange Marketplace Overview 2026 Start
- Salesforce AppExchange Apps by Business Need
- App Developers Ecosystem on AppExchange
- Salesforce AppExchange Reviews Snapshot
- AppExchange App Analytics by Industry
- Summary of AppExchange Trends 2026
Salesforce AppExchange Marketplace Overview 2026 Start
By the start of 2026, the Salesforce AppExchange marketplace shows steady growth across all core marketplace indicators, but the pace of that growth varies depending on what you measure.
Salesforce Applications
Between December 2024 and December 2025, the total number of listed apps increased from 5,661 to 6,233, a net gain of 572 apps. This represents 10% year-over-year growth and confirms that new solutions continue to enter the marketplace at a steady pace.
The marketplace continues to expand, but at a more moderate rate compared to earlier periods when app volume was growing faster than overall adoption signals. App volume remains the fastest-growing metric among the core indicators tracked.
Salesforce App Developers
Developer growth followed a similar but slightly slower trajectory, according to Salesforce AppExchange stats 2025. The number of unique Salesforce app developers reached 3,668 by December 2025, up 237 developers compared to a year earlier , or 7% growth. While new vendors continue to publish apps, the pace of developer onboarding slowed during 2025. Only 53 new developers were added between May and December 2025, compared to much larger increases earlier in the period.
AppExchange Reviews
User review activity increased in absolute terms, but did not keep pace with app growth. The total number of Salesforce app reviews rose from 76,882 to 81,240 over twelve months, an increase of 4,358 reviews, or 6% year over year. Despite this increase, the average number of reviews per app remained unchanged at 13. This indicates that new listings are absorbing most of the growth in reviews, rather than existing apps seeing deeper engagement.
One of the most telling indicators is the number of apps without any reviews. By December 2025, 3,157 apps, or 50.65% of all Salesforce listings, had no reviews at all. This represents a 13% increase compared to December 2024. In practical terms, more than half of the marketplace still lacks user feedback, which directly affects how easily Salesforce customers can assess app maturity and real-world usage.
Taken together, these metrics describe an AppExchange that is still expanding, but also becoming harder to evaluate at a glance. App supply continues to expand faster than validation signals, creating a widening gap between the number of available solutions and the amount of user feedback available to assess them.
Salesforce AppExchange Apps by Business Need
Looking beyond overall marketplace growth, the updated category distribution shows how AppExchange development effort is unevenly allocated across business needs as of December 2025.
Categories with the Largest App Volume
Sales remain the largest category, but its share is gradually declining relative to the total marketplace. With 1,675 apps, Sales Salesforce apps represent 26.87% of all listings. The category added 252 apps year over year, reflecting 18% growth. Sales tools still dominate AppExchange, but faster growth in other categories is slowly reducing their relative weight.
Productivity is firmly established as the second-largest category. By December 2025, it reached 1,003 apps, accounting for 16.09% of the marketplace and showing 13% annual growth. This category includes document generation, scheduling, project tracking, and workflow utilities that are commonly used across multiple teams rather than tied to a single Salesforce cloud.
Categories Showing Above-Average Growth
Several categories expanded faster than the overall marketplace:
- Analytics grew by 27%, adding 129 apps and reaching 604 listings.
- Commerce increased by 29%, reaching 365 apps.
- Collaboration recorded the highest relative growth at 68%, expanding from 105 to 176 apps.
These trends point to growing interest in data-driven use cases, commerce-related workflows, and internal collaboration inside Salesforce environments.
Categories Experiencing Decline
Not all business areas expanded during the year:
- Marketing declined by 15%, losing 87 apps.
- Customer Service decreased by 6%.
- Finance declined by 3%.
These reductions suggest consolidation, product retirements, or vendors narrowing their AppExchange presence rather than continued category expansion.
Stable and Mature Categories
Some categories showed little to no movement year over year.
- IT & Administration remained effectively flat, adding just 3 apps year over year. With 688 apps, it continues to represent a stable and mature segment of the marketplace.
- ERP also remains largely unchanged, with 122 apps and a share below 2%. Despite frequent discussion around the usefulness of ERP integration, this category remains limited in size on AppExchange.
Subcategories Without App Coverage
Some areas remain completely unrepresented:
- Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality under IT & Administration.
- Content Delivery Network (CDN) under IT & Administration.
As of December 2025, no apps are listed in these subcategories, which leaves clear opportunities for developers to address unmet needs on AppExchange.
Classification Gaps and Marketplace Concentration
Industry-specific or Uncategorized apps reached 306 listings after 17% year-over-year growth. Although they account for 4.91% of the marketplace, apps in this group do not specify a Business Need on their AppExchange listing. As this segment grows, a larger share of the marketplace lacks clear guidance, making it harder for AppExchange users to identify relevant solutions.
Overall, the business need breakdown shows a marketplace where growth is increasingly concentrated. Salesforce Analytics apps, along with Commerce, Collaboration, and Productivity, continue to expand, while several established categories remain stable or decline. Together, these patterns help explain shifts in developer focus and set the context for examining how developer portfolios are structured in the next section.
App Developers Ecosystem on AppExchange
This section looks at the companies behind AppExchange apps and how the developer ecosystem has changed over time. The focus is on the number of unique developers, the pace at which new vendors enter the marketplace, and how app portfolios are distributed across developers.
Total Number of Unique Developers
By December 2025, the AppExchange included 3,668 unique developers, up from 3,431 in December 2024. This represents a net increase of 237 developers, or 7% year-over-year growth. While new developers continue to enter the marketplace, this growth rate is lower than the increase in total app volume over the same period.
The pace of new developer onboarding slowed noticeably during 2025. Between December 2024 and May 2025, 184 new developers were added. From May to December 2025, that number dropped to 53 new developers. This shift suggests that app growth in the second half of the year was driven more by existing vendors expanding their portfolios than by a large influx of new publishers.
Developer Distribution by Number of Apps
Most AppExchange developers continue to publish a single app. As of December 2025:
- 2,771 developers , or 75.55%, maintained one app.
- 810 developers , or 22.08%, managed 2-5 apps.
- 69 developers , or 1.88%, published 6-10 apps.
- 18 developers , or 0.49%, maintained 10 or more apps.
While developers with larger portfolios represent a small share of the ecosystem, they show the fastest relative growth. The number of developers with 10+ apps increased by 38% year over year. Developers with 2-5 apps increased by 18%, and those with 6-10 apps grew by 19%. In contrast, the number of single-app developers grew by just 4%.
This pattern suggests that existing vendors are increasingly investing in expanding and diversifying their AppExchange portfolios.
Concentration Among Top Developers
A small number of developers continue to account for a disproportionate share of total app listings. The top 10 developers by number of apps include vendors with portfolios ranging from 15 to over 500 apps. Most of these developers were already present in the top group in December 2024, indicating limited turnover at the top of the ecosystem.
Despite their large app counts, review volume and average ratings vary widely across these developers. This highlights that portfolio size alone does not directly translate into higher user engagement or stronger feedback signals.
Overall, the AppExchange developer ecosystem is still expanding, but at a slower pace than app volume. Growth is increasingly driven by existing vendors adding more apps rather than by a steady inflow of new developers. At the same time, app ownership is becoming more concentrated among a small group of publishers, setting important context for how competition and visibility evolve in the marketplace. The next section examines how these structural patterns are reflected in user reviews and ratings.
Salesforce AppExchange Reviews Snapshot
As of December 2025, 3,157 apps, or 50.65% of all listings, had no reviews at all. This marks a continued increase in non-reviewed apps compared to previous snapshots and means that more than half of the marketplace still lacks direct user feedback.
The share of apps with reviews has gradually declined over time. In May 2024, 52.21% of apps had at least one review. By December 2025, this figure dropped to 49.35%. While the changes are minor, they confirm a steady trend toward lower review coverage as new apps enter the marketplace.
Distribution of Apps by Review Count
Among apps that do have reviews, most receive limited feedback:
- 33.58% of apps have 1–10 reviews,
- 10.94% have 11–50 reviews,
- 4.83% of apps have more than 50 reviews, including 2.44% with 51–100 reviews and only 2.39% with 100+ reviews.
This distribution shows that a relatively small group of well-established apps accumulates most user feedback, while the majority of listings remain lightly reviewed or entirely unrated.
Rating Distribution
Looking at star ratings further highlights this imbalance. While 36.55% of apps hold a 5-star rating, more than half of all listings have no rating at all, which directly mirrors the share of apps without reviews.
Apps with lower ratings represent a very small portion of the marketplace. Combined, apps rated 1–3 stars account for less than 6% of all listings. This suggests that negative ratings are rare, but also that many apps never receive enough feedback to show evidence of the app’s quality.
Concentration of Reviews Among Salesforce AppExchange Top Apps
Review activity is highly concentrated among a small number of apps. The top 10 apps by review count each have several hundred to several thousand reviews and are dominated by long-established solutions in the Sales, Customer Service, and IT & Administration categories.
Most of these apps were already present in the top 10 a year earlier, indicating limited turnover among the most-reviewed listings. This stability reinforces the idea that review visibility on AppExchange builds slowly and tends to favor mature, widely adopted products.
Overall, reviews are not growing as fast as the number of apps. More apps are added each year, but many of them never receive user feedback. As a result, Salesforce customers often have little information to rely on when comparing apps, especially outside the most well-known listings. Most review activity remains focused on a small number of well-known apps.
AppExchange App Analytics by Industry
In addition to Business Need categories, many AppExchange apps are tagged to specific industries. Looking at industry labels provides another view of how vendors position their solutions and which sectors receive the most attention.
Industries with the Highest App Concentration
As of December 2025, Horizontal Product apps represent the largest share of industry-tagged listings, with 830 apps, or 15.65% of all apps that specify an industry. These are general-purpose solutions designed to work across multiple industries rather than targeting a single vertical.
Among industry-focused segments, Financial Services leads with 691 apps (13.03%), followed by Healthcare & Life Sciences with 511 apps (9.63%) and High Tech with 412 apps (7.77%). These industries reflect long-standing Salesforce adoption and continued demand for specialized workflows, compliance support, and data models.
Industries with Moderate App Representation
Several industries show moderate but meaningful app representation:
- Retail and Manufacturing each account for just under 7% of industry-tagged apps.
- Professional Services and Consumer Goods together represent over 11% of listings.
- Education and Engineering , Construction & Real Estate each contribute slightly over 4%.
These segments suggest steady vendor interest, but without the same level of concentration seen in Financial Services or Healthcare.
Industries with Limited App Coverage
Toward the lower end of the distribution are industries such as Media & Entertainment , Energy , and Agriculture & Mining , each accounting for less than 2% of industry-tagged apps. While these sectors are present on AppExchange, the relatively small number of apps indicates more limited coverage compared to other industries.
Overall, the industry breakdown shows that AppExchange development effort is unevenly distributed. A large share of apps are positioned as horizontal tools, while industry-specific development is concentrated in a small number of sectors with strong Salesforce adoption. At the same time, several industries remain lightly served, highlighting areas where future industry-focused solutions could emerge.
Summary of AppExchange Trends 2026
Based on the statistics provided in this article, several clear conclusions can be drawn about the current state of Salesforce AppExchange:
- The number of apps is growing faster than other indicators. App volume increased by 10% year over year. Developer growth and review activity increased more slowly. This means that the size of the marketplace alone does not show how mature or widely used apps are.
- User reviews are concentrated on a small number of apps. More than half of all apps still have no reviews. Most reviews are left on long-established apps. As new apps are added, review coverage does not increase at the same pace, which makes ratings less helpful for evaluating newer listings.
- Growth differs by business category and industry. Most new apps appear in Analytics, Commerce, Collaboration, and Productivity. Other categories remain stable or decline. Industry data shows a similar pattern, with many apps focused on a small number of industries and limited coverage in others.
- App classification gaps are increasing. A growing number of apps do not clearly define a Business Need category. This makes it harder for AppExchange users to search, compare, and understand where these apps fit.
Taken together, these findings show an AppExchange that continues to grow, but is becoming harder to navigate and evaluate.
The post State of AppExchange Salesforce Apps Market 2026 first appeared on Salesforce Apps.
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