Tony Wang27 min readHow Often Do the World's Biggest Apps Actually Update?
Apple's version history for 104 major apps: a ~6.7-day median cadence, Wise updates every 2.5 days, Khan Academy every 73, and PayPal is 4x overdue.
Type "how often do apps update" into a search engine and you get ASO advice — submit every 2-4 weeks, Apple likes freshness signals — but no actual measurement of what the biggest apps in the world do. Apple's App Store quietly exposes the real answer for any app: a dated version history, one API call away. Nobody seems to have pulled it at scale and looked.
So we did — for 104 of the largest, most familiar consumer apps on the planet, spanning messaging, fintech, banking, shopping, travel, streaming, productivity, AI assistants, gaming, health, dating, education, and utilities — and the spread is bigger than any ASO blog post would guess.
How often do they actually ship?
Apple returns a dated, versioned release history for any app — release date, version number, and release notes — through a single lookup. We pulled it for 104 major consumer apps and computed each one's average gap between releases. Here are the 15 fastest:
And the 15 slowest — note the scale change, Khan Academy is nearly 15x further out than the chart's next-slowest entry:
The median across all 104 apps lands at about 6.7 days — call it once a week. But the tails are extreme. Wise is the fastest updater in the entire sample at 2.5 days, edging out Walmart (2.9 days) and X (3.2 days). At the other end, Khan Academy's last 25 dated releases span nearly five years — a release every 73.2 days on average, more than 29x slower than Wise. WeChat is the only other app in six figures of days-spanned (646 days for its last 25 releases), and the rest of the slow tail is banking and travel apps: Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Southwest, Delta, and Hopper all averaging 16+ days between releases.
The pattern by category is intuitive once you see it laid out: social and messaging apps (WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Instagram, Messenger, Snapchat) cluster tightly in the 4–6 day range, where small UI tweaks and safety/moderation fixes justify near-constant shipping. Banking apps split hard by brand age and regulatory overhead — fintech challengers Wise and Cash App update fast, while incumbents Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and Chase all sit in the slowest third. Airlines and legacy travel booking (Southwest, Delta, Hopper) are uniformly slow; on-demand travel and shopping (Booking.com, DoorDash, Walmart, Temu) are uniformly fast.
Show the full table (all 104 apps, exact cadence, release counts, and spans)
| App | Avg. days/release | Releases sampled | Span (days) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wise | 2.5 | 25 | 61 |
| Walmart | 2.9 | 25 | 69 |
| X | 3.2 | 25 | 76 |
| Booking.com | 3.4 | 25 | 81 |
| Temu | 3.8 | 25 | 91 |
| Notion | 3.8 | 25 | 91 |
| Amazon Prime Video | 4.1 | 25 | 98 |
| 4.3 | 25 | 104 | |
| 4.6 | 25 | 110 | |
| SoundCloud | 4.6 | 25 | 111 |
| Instacart | 4.6 | 25 | 110 |
| Airbnb | 4.7 | 25 | 112 |
| Headspace | 4.7 | 25 | 112 |
| Google Gemini | 4.8 | 25 | 116 |
| DoorDash | 5.0 | 25 | 120 |
| Robinhood | 5.0 | 25 | 120 |
| Duolingo | 5.0 | 25 | 119 |
| eBay | 5.1 | 25 | 123 |
| 5.2 | 25 | 125 | |
| 5.2 | 25 | 125 | |
| Strava | 5.2 | 25 | 125 |
| Signal | 5.3 | 25 | 127 |
| Perplexity | 5.4 | 25 | 130 |
| Tinder | 5.4 | 25 | 130 |
| Threads | 5.5 | 25 | 133 |
| Google Maps | 5.6 | 25 | 134 |
| Snapchat | 5.8 | 25 | 140 |
| Messenger | 5.8 | 25 | 140 |
| 5.8 | 25 | 140 | |
| SHEIN | 5.8 | 25 | 140 |
| Google Drive | 5.8 | 25 | 140 |
| Hinge | 5.8 | 25 | 140 |
| Discord | 6.1 | 25 | 147 |
| Expedia | 6.1 | 25 | 147 |
| Pokemon GO | 6.1 | 25 | 146 |
| MyFitnessPal | 6.1 | 25 | 147 |
| Target | 6.2 | 25 | 149 |
| Etsy | 6.2 | 25 | 148 |
| Microsoft Teams | 6.2 | 25 | 148 |
| Klarna | 6.3 | 25 | 151 |
| 6.4 | 25 | 154 | |
| Netflix | 6.4 | 25 | 154 |
| Uber | 6.4 | 25 | 154 |
| Twitch | 6.4 | 25 | 154 |
| Todoist | 6.4 | 25 | 153 |
| Grubhub | 6.4 | 25 | 154 |
| Life360 | 6.5 | 25 | 155 |
| Lyft | 6.7 | 25 | 160 |
| Tumblr | 6.7 | 25 | 160 |
| Coinbase | 6.7 | 25 | 160 |
| Tripadvisor | 6.7 | 25 | 161 |
| Audible | 6.7 | 25 | 161 |
| Slack | 6.7 | 25 | 161 |
| ChatGPT | 6.7 | 25 | 160 |
| Wayfair | 6.8 | 25 | 162 |
| YouTube | 7.0 | 25 | 167 |
| Roblox | 7.0 | 25 | 168 |
| Evernote | 7.0 | 25 | 169 |
| Cash App | 7.1 | 25 | 171 |
| Nextdoor | 7.2 | 25 | 173 |
| Microsoft Copilot | 7.2 | 25 | 173 |
| CapCut | 7.2 | 25 | 173 |
| Gmail | 7.3 | 25 | 174 |
| Chime | 7.3 | 25 | 175 |
| Canva | 7.3 | 25 | 175 |
| Coin Master | 7.3 | 25 | 176 |
| United Airlines | 7.4 | 25 | 178 |
| TikTok | 7.5 | 25 | 181 |
| Starbucks | 7.7 | 25 | 185 |
| Credit Karma | 7.8 | 25 | 187 |
| Spotify | 8.2 | 25 | 197 |
| Calm | 9.3 | 25 | 224 |
| Subway Surfers | 10.0 | 25 | 239 |
| Bumble | 10.2 | 25 | 245 |
| LINE | 10.4 | 25 | 249 |
| Trello | 10.5 | 25 | 252 |
| Candy Crush Saga | 10.9 | 25 | 262 |
| Capital One Mobile | 11.1 | 25 | 266 |
| Disney+ | 11.2 | 25 | 268 |
| Venmo | 11.4 | 25 | 274 |
| Chase Mobile | 11.5 | 25 | 277 |
| Peacock | 11.7 | 25 | 280 |
| Telegram | 11.8 | 25 | 284 |
| PayPal | 12.0 | 24 | 277 |
| The Home Depot | 12.2 | 25 | 294 |
| Waze | 12.7 | 25 | 304 |
| Hulu | 13.1 | 25 | 314 |
| Paramount+ | 13.1 | 25 | 315 |
| Dropbox | 13.1 | 25 | 315 |
| 1Password | 13.8 | 25 | 330 |
| Clash of Clans | 14.0 | 25 | 335 |
| Wish | 15.5 | 25 | 372 |
| Max | 15.8 | 25 | 378 |
| Delta | 16.0 | 25 | 385 |
| Hopper | 16.3 | 25 | 392 |
| Bank of America | 16.5 | 25 | 397 |
| Zoom | 16.5 | 25 | 396 |
| Southwest Airlines | 16.6 | 25 | 398 |
| Wells Fargo Mobile | 16.7 | 25 | 400 |
| Best Buy | 17.8 | 25 | 427 |
| Amazon Shopping | 18.3 | 25 | 438 |
| Clash Royale | 19.1 | 25 | 459 |
| 26.9 | 25 | 646 | |
| Khan Academy | 73.2 | 25 | 1758 |
Which apps are overdue right now
Average cadence is a baseline, not a promise. Comparing each app's typical gap against how long it's actually been silent surfaces a clear leader and a tight pack right behind it:
PayPal is still the standout, and it isn't close. Its own history says a new build should land roughly every 12 days; the last one shipped June 11, 2026 — 48 days and counting, four times its normal gap. But the field behind it is much richer at 104 apps than it was at 20: Roblox (2.14x), Khan Academy (2.12x), Capital One Mobile (1.98x), and Clash of Clans (1.93x) are all running at roughly double their own typical pace, a genuine cluster rather than a fluke. Khan Academy is a special case — its 73.2-day average is already the slowest in the sample, and it's currently 155 days silent on top of that, meaning the last dated release predates this piece by five months.
Show the full table (all 104 apps, overdue ratio sorted descending)
| App | Typical gap (days) | Days silent | Ratio |
|---|---|---|---|
| PayPal | 12.0 | 48 | 4.0x |
| Roblox | 7.0 | 15 | 2.14x |
| Khan Academy | 73.2 | 155 | 2.12x |
| Capital One Mobile | 11.1 | 22 | 1.98x |
| Clash of Clans | 14.0 | 27 | 1.93x |
| 26.9 | 45 | 1.67x | |
| Waze | 12.7 | 20 | 1.57x |
| Airbnb | 4.7 | 7 | 1.49x |
| Google Gemini | 4.8 | 7 | 1.46x |
| Bank of America | 16.5 | 23 | 1.39x |
| eBay | 5.1 | 7 | 1.37x |
| Clash Royale | 19.1 | 26 | 1.36x |
| Strava | 5.2 | 7 | 1.35x |
| Wish | 15.5 | 20 | 1.29x |
| Disney+ | 11.2 | 14 | 1.25x |
| Hulu | 13.1 | 16 | 1.22x |
| Amazon Prime Video | 4.1 | 5 | 1.22x |
| Snapchat | 5.8 | 7 | 1.21x |
| 5.8 | 7 | 1.21x | |
| Candy Crush Saga | 10.9 | 13 | 1.19x |
| Best Buy | 17.8 | 20 | 1.12x |
| Amazon Shopping | 18.3 | 20 | 1.09x |
| Slack | 6.7 | 7 | 1.04x |
| SHEIN | 5.8 | 6 | 1.03x |
| 1Password | 13.8 | 14 | 1.01x |
| Hopper | 16.3 | 16 | 0.98x |
| Target | 6.2 | 6 | 0.97x |
| Canva | 7.3 | 7 | 0.96x |
| X | 3.2 | 3 | 0.94x |
| Signal | 5.3 | 5 | 0.94x |
| Microsoft Teams | 6.2 | 5 | 0.81x |
| Subway Surfers | 10.0 | 8 | 0.8x |
| Klarna | 6.3 | 5 | 0.79x |
| Peacock | 11.7 | 9 | 0.77x |
| Telegram | 11.8 | 9 | 0.76x |
| Trello | 10.5 | 8 | 0.76x |
| Google Maps | 5.6 | 4 | 0.71x |
| Walmart | 2.9 | 2 | 0.69x |
| Instacart | 4.6 | 3 | 0.65x |
| Starbucks | 7.7 | 5 | 0.65x |
| Booking.com | 3.4 | 2 | 0.59x |
| Calm | 9.3 | 5 | 0.54x |
| Zoom | 16.5 | 8 | 0.48x |
| 4.3 | 2 | 0.47x | |
| YouTube | 7.0 | 3 | 0.43x |
| 4.6 | 2 | 0.43x | |
| SoundCloud | 4.6 | 2 | 0.43x |
| Headspace | 4.7 | 2 | 0.43x |
| Wells Fargo Mobile | 16.7 | 7 | 0.42x |
| Southwest Airlines | 16.6 | 7 | 0.42x |
| Wise | 2.5 | 1 | 0.4x |
| Duolingo | 5.0 | 2 | 0.4x |
| 5.2 | 2 | 0.38x | |
| 5.2 | 2 | 0.38x | |
| Perplexity | 5.4 | 2 | 0.37x |
| Threads | 5.5 | 2 | 0.36x |
| Google Drive | 5.8 | 2 | 0.34x |
| Hinge | 5.8 | 2 | 0.34x |
| Discord | 6.1 | 2 | 0.33x |
| Expedia | 6.1 | 2 | 0.33x |
| Pokemon GO | 6.1 | 2 | 0.33x |
| Netflix | 6.4 | 2 | 0.31x |
| Uber | 6.4 | 2 | 0.31x |
| Twitch | 6.4 | 2 | 0.31x |
| Todoist | 6.4 | 2 | 0.31x |
| Grubhub | 6.4 | 2 | 0.31x |
| Lyft | 6.7 | 2 | 0.3x |
| Tumblr | 6.7 | 2 | 0.3x |
| Coinbase | 6.7 | 2 | 0.3x |
| Audible | 6.7 | 2 | 0.3x |
| ChatGPT | 6.7 | 2 | 0.3x |
| Cash App | 7.1 | 2 | 0.28x |
| Microsoft Copilot | 7.2 | 2 | 0.28x |
| TikTok | 7.5 | 2 | 0.27x |
| Gmail | 7.3 | 2 | 0.27x |
| Coin Master | 7.3 | 2 | 0.27x |
| Credit Karma | 7.8 | 2 | 0.26x |
| Temu | 3.8 | 1 | 0.26x |
| Notion | 3.8 | 1 | 0.26x |
| DoorDash | 5.0 | 1 | 0.2x |
| Bumble | 10.2 | 2 | 0.2x |
| LINE | 10.4 | 2 | 0.19x |
| Tinder | 5.4 | 1 | 0.19x |
| Messenger | 5.8 | 1 | 0.17x |
| 6.4 | 1 | 0.16x | |
| Etsy | 6.2 | 1 | 0.16x |
| The Home Depot | 12.2 | 2 | 0.16x |
| MyFitnessPal | 6.1 | 1 | 0.16x |
| Wayfair | 6.8 | 1 | 0.15x |
| Tripadvisor | 6.7 | 1 | 0.15x |
| Paramount+ | 13.1 | 2 | 0.15x |
| Dropbox | 13.1 | 2 | 0.15x |
| Life360 | 6.5 | 1 | 0.15x |
| Nextdoor | 7.2 | 1 | 0.14x |
| Chime | 7.3 | 1 | 0.14x |
| United Airlines | 7.4 | 1 | 0.14x |
| Evernote | 7.0 | 1 | 0.14x |
| CapCut | 7.2 | 1 | 0.14x |
| Max | 15.8 | 2 | 0.13x |
| Spotify | 8.2 | 1 | 0.12x |
| Venmo | 11.4 | 1 | 0.09x |
| Chase Mobile | 11.5 | 1 | 0.09x |
| Robinhood | 5.0 | 0 | 0.0x |
| Delta | 16.0 | 0 | 0.0x |
The two stores don't even agree with each other
Apple's version history gives a real dated log. Google Play doesn't expose the equivalent through this lookup — the only recency signal is the store listing's own "last updated" timestamp, which is not the same measurement. It can move without a version bump at all (pricing, screenshots, a data-safety declaration), and it can also stay frozen while a real update ships. Treat the two numbers as different instruments, not as the same ruler in two units — and PayPal is the case that makes this obvious:
| App | App Store: days since release | Google Play: days since "updated" | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| PayPal | 48 | ~5 | Play looks fresh; Apple's dated history says otherwise |
| Roblox | 15 | ~6 | Play's timestamp is fresher than the dated iOS history |
| Messenger | 1 | ~9 | Play's timestamp lags nearly a week behind Apple's |
| Amazon Shopping | 20 | ~13 | Both stores agree: this app updates rarely |
| TikTok | 2 | ~6 | Modest gap, same direction |
| Snapchat | 7 | <1 | Play shows same-day freshness |
At the exact moment Apple's dated version history showed PayPal 48 days silent, Google Play's own "updated" field said the listing had touched within the last week. Neither number is wrong — they're measuring different things. It's a reminder for anyone building on top of these datasets that store-listing recency and an actual shipped release are not interchangeable, and Play's API doesn't currently let you tell the difference the way Apple's does.
When do updates actually ship? A Pacific-time habit
Every one of Apple's version-history entries carries a full UTC timestamp, not just a date — so we pulled the last ~10 releases per app (1,040 dated releases across all 104 apps) and looked at what hour they actually went live:
The peak is unmistakable and only sharper at this scale: 8am–11am Pacific, about a quarter of all 1,040 sampled releases. That lines up with where these companies actually sit — the large majority of this 104-app sample, from Meta and Google's apps to Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Roblox, Slack, Airbnb, and dozens more, are Bay Area–headquartered — and it reads like "ship near the start of the Pacific workday," which lands as early-to-mid afternoon on the East Coast, not the other way around. There's a secondary bump overnight, 11pm–2am Pacific (124 releases), driven mostly by DoorDash, Uber, and a handful of banking apps whose automated builds appear to clear review and go live while the US sleeps.
At 104 apps, a whole cluster of apps turns out to run on rails. Slack is the most extreme case in the entire sample: every single one of its last 10 App Store releases landed on a Wednesday, at the same UTC hour — 19:00 UTC, noon Pacific, every time. That's not a habit, it's a pipeline. Lyft comes close behind, shipping at 11am Pacific on a Monday 9 or 10 times out of 10, and Hinge matches it — 7am Pacific, almost always a Monday. A few more apps cluster nearly as tightly on hour alone: Cash App and Coinbase both fire at 9am Pacific most weeks, Nextdoor and Snapchat lock onto a specific hour on Wednesday, and Southwest Airlines and MyFitnessPal do the same on a nine-times-out-of-ten Wednesday and Tuesday, respectively. None of this reads like a person clicking publish at their desk — it reads like a scheduled release train that happens to clear App Review at a predictable hour.
The dated releases carry a full calendar date too, so we checked which day of the week they land on, across the same 1,040-release sample:
Monday alone accounts for 33.7% of every dated release we sampled — more than Tuesday and Wednesday combined — and weekend releases stay rare even at this scale: 4.7% of the total, barely more than 1 in 20. The lean holds up, and holds up more precisely, than it did in a smaller sample: Uber's last 10 App Store releases were all on a Monday, TikTok and Lyft each hit Monday 9 times out of 10, and now Hinge and Robinhood join them at 9 and 8 out of 10, respectively. Wednesday has its own smaller cluster of near-exclusive shippers — Slack (10/10), Pinterest (10/10), and Nextdoor (9/10) all land there almost every time. That pattern — a fixed weekday, a fixed Pacific hour, or both — is what a scheduled release train looks like from the outside, for apps that update often enough to have formed one. Slower-cadence apps (Google Maps, Amazon Shopping, Telegram, Khan Academy) show no such day-of-week lean, which tracks: a release every 2+ weeks doesn't leave enough data points to form a weekly habit.
The bottom line
There's no single answer to "how often do apps update" — there's a 29x range between the fastest and slowest apps in a set of 104 giants, a median around once a week, a real cluster of apps (PayPal, Roblox, Khan Academy, Capital One, Clash of Clans) currently running well behind their own normal pace, and a release clock that ticks to a Pacific Monday morning — or, for a handful of apps like Slack, a Pacific Wednesday noon, to the hour — regardless of where the app's users actually live. The version-history data to check any of this for yourself is one API call away on the App Store side; Google Play, notably, doesn't expose the equivalent, which is itself a useful thing to know before building an ASO or competitive-monitoring tool on top of either store.
How we did this (and the caveats)
We picked 104 large, globally recognizable consumer apps across 13 categories — messaging and social, fintech and payments, banking, shopping and e-commerce, travel, streaming and entertainment, productivity and cloud tools, AI assistants, mobile gaming, health and fitness, food delivery, dating, education, and utilities/navigation — rather than pulling today's literal top-free App Store chart. We checked that chart first: on the date we pulled, it was led by hyper-casual games and short-lived virality (a puzzle game, a sports-betting app, a handful of apps most readers have never heard of), which update on a spikier, launch-driven cycle that has little to do with the "how often does a major app update" question most people are actually asking. This is a hand-picked set of large, durable consumer apps, not a random or exhaustive sample of "top-ranking" software — and every one of the 104 apps we looked up returned a usable, ≥5-release dated history; none had to be dropped for missing data.
Other limits, plainly stated. Trailing-window cadence, not a fixed period — each app's average is computed over whatever calendar span its last 24–25 dated releases happen to cover, which ranges from 61 days (Wise) to 1,758 days (Khan Academy); a longer look-back could shift any single app's number somewhat, though a spread this wide would take a very different history to erase. Treat Khan Academy and WeChat's cadence figures with extra caution for this reason — a 4.8-year and 1.8-year window respectively is a much less "current" measurement than a 2-3 month one. US App Store storefront only — release cadence in another country's storefront, or for a region-specific build, could differ. A single snapshot, pulled 2026-07-29 — an app mid-way through shipping a burst of releases (or a genuine 48-day silence, in PayPal's case) will look different a month later. Google Play has no equivalent lookup in this dataset — the cross-store section above is deliberately a handful of illustrative rows, not a full second cadence measurement, because Play's "last updated" field is a recency snapshot, not a version history the way Apple's is.
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Frequently asked questions
How often do popular apps update?
The median comes out to about once a week (6.7 days), based on Apple's own dated version history for 104 large, globally recognizable consumer apps as of 2026-07-29. The range is enormous, though: Wise averages a release every 2.5 days, while Khan Academy averages one every 73.2 days — a trailing window stretching back nearly five years, more than 29x slower than Wise.
Which major app updates the most often?
Wise, in the set of 104 apps we checked — averaging a new dated App Store release every 2.5 days across its last 25 versions, edging out Walmart (2.9 days) and X (3.2 days). Social and messaging apps generally cluster in the 4-6 day range; banking apps split hard by brand age, with fintech challengers like Wise and Cash App updating fast while incumbents like Wells Fargo and Bank of America sit in the slowest third.
Which major app has gone the longest without updating?
PayPal, by a wide margin. As of 2026-07-29 its last dated App Store release was 48 days earlier — about four times longer than its own typical ~12-day gap between releases, making it the most overdue app in our 104-app sample. Right behind it sits a tight cluster running roughly double their own pace: Roblox (2.14x), Khan Academy (2.12x), Capital One Mobile (1.98x), and Clash of Clans (1.93x).
What time of day do app updates usually go live?
Overwhelmingly 8am-11am Pacific Time — about a quarter of the 1,040 dated release timestamps we sampled across 104 apps. That lines up with company headquarters: the large majority of apps in our sample are Bay Area-based, and the peak reads as the start of a Pacific workday rather than an Eastern one. Some apps ship with mechanically consistent timing that looks like scheduled automation rather than a person clicking publish — Slack shipped every one of its last 10 releases on a Wednesday at the same UTC hour (noon Pacific), and Lyft and Hinge are nearly as rigid on Mondays.
Does Google Play's "last updated" date match Apple's version history for the same app?
Not necessarily — they measure different things. Google Play's app-detail API exposes only a single "last updated" timestamp for the current listing, not a dated version history like Apple's. At the moment Apple's dated history showed PayPal 48 days without a release, Google Play's own "updated" field for the same app was only about 5 days old, since Play's field can move without a version bump (pricing, screenshots, a data-safety declaration) and doesn't necessarily reflect a shipped build.
What day of the week do apps usually update?
Monday, by a wide margin: 33.7% of the 1,040 dated releases we sampled across 104 major apps landed on a Monday — more than Tuesday and Wednesday combined — and just 4.7% fell on a weekend. Several apps are almost exclusively Monday shippers (Uber's last 10 App Store releases were all on a Monday; TikTok, Lyft, and Hinge each hit Monday 9 times out of 10), while a smaller cluster — Slack, Pinterest, Nextdoor — locks onto Wednesday instead, pointing to scheduled weekly release trains rather than ad hoc shipping.