Stickers, by the numbers

Mochj Cat is the single most-rated app in Stickers, all on its own, with 6,464 ratings. That's nearly identical to the 6,569 ratings Arturo Estrada De Leon has racked up across his entire 57-app catalog, good for 10.2% of every rating in the category. One app is basically matching fifty-seven. Volume clearly isn't what drives this category: a single sticker pack can outrun a publisher's whole back catalog. Pricing tells a similar story about low stakes. Paid apps outnumber free ones across the 4,054 tracked titles, 67.4% to 32.6%, but nobody's charging real money for any of it. 1,924 apps sit in the $0.01-0.99 band, another 749 in the $1-2.99 band, only 13 cross into $5-9.99, and just one app asks for $10 or more.

Zoom in on the publishers with the most apps and the picture gets worse. kazuya fujinami has shipped 69 apps but collected only 31 ratings, under 0.1% of the category total. kupaberu isn't far behind: 64 apps, 25 ratings, the same negligible share. Sergei Fomichev (56 apps, 23 ratings), leehwa ko (56 apps, 6 ratings), and Anass Sebaaoui (54 apps, 6 ratings) round out the top six by app count, each stuck under 0.1% of category ratings too. Arturo Estrada De Leon breaks the pattern here, the only publisher in this group whose output actually turned into attention. The top three publishers by app count control 10.2% of all ratings between them, and nearly all of that comes from just one of the three. Publishers flooding the store with sticker packs fill shelf space. Nobody's actually looking at it.

The winners by rating volume aren't the big licensed names. Super Mario Run Stickers, presumably backed by real IP muscle, sits at 1,277 ratings, well behind FunStick: Stickers & Emojis (5,168), Aminal Stickers (5,085), and Tap Anime Color (3,689). Swapper: Reverse Text Bubbles sits close behind Mochj Cat at 6,304 ratings. These are functional novelties, not franchises: a tool that flips text in a bubble, an app that reverses yes and no answers (Yes No Reverse Stickers Maker, 1,141 ratings), an anime color pack. Users are rewarding the gag here, not the license.

The median rating across the category sits at 4.1, decent but nothing special, against a median download size of just 7.9 MB. Nobody's bloating a sticker pack: 3,916 apps stay under 50 MB, only 137 land between 50 and 200 MB, and exactly one app crosses into the 200 to 500 MB range. That's about as lean as an App Store category gets. Still, the rating spread among the 1,814 rated apps shows quality has nothing to do with file size: 999 apps sit at 4.5 stars or higher, while 297 sit below 3.0. A small file size says nothing about whether the stickers themselves are any good.

Maintenance is where the category thins out. Only 1,157 of the 4,054 tracked apps shipped an update in the last 12 months, so most sticker packs sit frozen once published. The ratings data doesn't suggest that costs much, though: files this small, 7.9 MB median, nothing over 500 MB, don't demand constant updates, and the leaders by rating volume aren't the newest apps in the store either.

For anyone picking a sticker app, this data points somewhere specific. Skip publishers padding their catalog with dozens of near-invisible titles: kazuya fujinami's 69 apps and 31 ratings, or leehwa ko's 56 apps and 6 ratings, aren't signs of quality. They show a publisher throwing packs at the wall and seeing what sticks. Look instead at raw rating volume: Mochj Cat's 6,464, Swapper's 6,304, or FunStick's 5,168 come closest to an actual track record in this category. Expect to pay in the $0.01-0.99 or $1-2.99 bands, since 1,924 and 749 apps respectively sit there, and expect a file under 50 MB too. Don't weigh a recent update too heavily either. Most of the category hasn't had one in a year, and the ratings leaders got there without it.