Here are last month’s top grossing mobile games based on in-app purchase earnings, according to Appmagic data.
These IAP estimates do not include ad revenue, web shop spend, Apple and Google’s 30% cut or revenue from China’s fragmented Android ecosystem.
There’s commentary on which way the biggest earners are trending, and other interesting tidbits from the top 20 and beyond below.
DNF Mobile bosses this list for a second month running, earning $45m more than the usual top earner Honor of Kings. Take China out of the equation, though, and July’s top gun is Royal Match, with over $105m earned from IAP in July.
As we noted in July’s downloads rankings, momentum is slowing on installs, but not in earnings – July was the game’s best ever month, with a total of over $105m. It’s also still trending upwards, broadly, but it’ll be fascinating to see what happens if or when Royal Kingdom goes global – will it eat into Match’s earnings…?)
Roblox passed the $100m mark for the first time in July, another best-ever month boosted by pester power over the school summer holidays, no doubt. June’s third biggest earner, LastWar, dropped month-on-month by around $4.6m. It’s down to fifth in July with a total of $91.6m, the first time the game hasn’t posted a month-on-month IAP earnings rise since it started gathering pace in November 2023.
PUBG Mobile is up again after three straight month-on-month declines that saw earnings drop from $119m in March to $77m in June. July’s total of nearly $90m is still way below an average month for Tencent’s big-name battle royale.
King’s Candy Crush Saga has been solidly earning between $85-88m since March, so July’s performance is somewhere in the middle in terms of recent history. Maybe if that Xbox app store ever turns up we’ll see this figure in long-term decline as King moves people over to its web shop…?
Monopoly Go has seen IAP earnings drop for four consecutive months now, following March’s peak of $132m. July’s $83.5m is the lowest monthly total since July 2023, not long after the game’s launch. Hasbro said Monopoly Go‘s earnings were “a little bit bumpy” and was cautious on the game’s earnings for the rest of the year in a recent earnings call (the one in which it said the game had passed $3bn). So Appmagic’s estimates appear to back that caution up.
Hardly panic stations stuff, though Scopely would clearly much rather the lines were still going up – this may also have something to do with the game’s webshop, which might be taking revenue away from the cash generated in Apple and Google’s stores.
The lines keep pointing up for Whiteout Survival, which posted another record month of IAP earnings in July: $78.7m. And rounding out the top ten is a resurgent Pokémon Go, which is up six places and more than doubled its June IAP haul of ~$35m, hitting $71.5m in July. Most of that will have been down to the flurry of live ops and events that made up Pokémon Go Fest last month.
July’s top grossing mobile game: 11-20:
11. Zenless Zone Zero (Mihoyo): $60.7m
12. Brawl Stars (Supercell): $57.7m
13. Coin Master (Moon Active): $55.6m
14. Gardenscapes (Playrix): $37.7m
15. DBZ: Dokkan Battle (Bandai Namco): $36.8m
16. Monster Strike (Xflag): $35.5m
17. Township (Playrix): $32.3m
18. Honkai: Star Rail (Mihoyo): $31.1m
19. Call of Duty: Mobile (Activision): $29.8m
20. Fishdom (Playrix): $29.4m
Mihoyo is eating into its own player base again. Zenless Zone Zero enters at 11th after its release on July 4, with over $60m earned in its first month. That’s a phenomenal debut for most developers, but perhaps not for Mihoyo, which saw Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail each rake in ~$170m in its first month.
The launch also caused notable drops in revenue for those two older games. Honkai: Star Rail dropped from earning $62m in June to $31m in July (and is down eight places month-on-month), and Genshin Impact dropped from $46 to $28m (down nine spots). So roughly across its portfolio Mihoyo is actually only up around $10m from the launch of its latest gacha RPG.
Brawl Stars continues to decline a little month-on-month after that huge revenue comeback, while Coin Master and Gardenscapes post steady months. Dragon Ball Z: Dokkan Battle’s IAP revenue is very spiky and reliant on big, well spaced-out events. One of those happened in July, it seems, boosting the manga battler up to 58 places in the rankings, tripling its June revenue with $36.8m.
COD: Mobile had a pretty strong July too, with IAP revenue up from $20m in June to nearly $30m in July. We assume this was something to do with the success of its Season 6 update, dubbed ‘Synthwave Showdown’. It went live on June 26, and introduced a new ‘combat advisor’ feature that allows more advanced players to team up and ‘train’ lesser shooters, and also a new ‘challenge pass’ feature.
But hang on: where’s Squad Busters? Supercell’s latest launch is down in 78th spot, having earned $10.9m in July, roughly half what it earned in June.
