The Longest-Running App on the App Store

Eighteen Years, Then Two Days

Apartment Guide Home Rentals, from Rent Group Inc., has been pushing out updates for eighteen years and twenty-four days straight, no gaps. That streak, 18 yrs 24 d, is now the longest on this board. Oddly, the app never worked its way up gradually; it wasn't anywhere in the top ten before this run started, and it's only actually held the #1 spot for 2 of the 94 days we've been tracking. Eighteen years of steady maintenance, and the payoff is two days at the top.

A Tight Top, A Long Tail

Quick Graph, from KZ Labs, trails the new leader by just five days (18 yrs 19 d versus 18 yrs 24 d), a gap that barely registers over an eighteen-year stretch. The top 100 here is packed in close; the distance at the very top doesn't tell you much compared to the overall spread. Even the #100 entry sits at 17 yrs 292 d, only a little over three months behind first place. On a board built from decade-plus histories, three months is basically a rounding error.

Look at what fills the space in between and you get a sense of who actually survives in this business. Google Earth and Deezer: Music Player, Podcast sit in the middle of the pack right alongside apps most people have never heard of, like Ferienplan or Savings Calculator, both still shipping updates after 17-plus years. Map My Ride With GPS Tracker and Map My Run GPS Running Tracker, both from Outside Television Inc, land in neighboring ranks, which is a rare case of one company running two separate long-haul apps at the same time. The real outlier is i41CX, built by a solo developer named Antonio Lagana, who sits at #3 among apps made by Google, OCBC Singapore's bank, and a broadcast network. One person has kept pace for 18 years right next to a bank's entire team.

Ultralingua, Inc. shows up five separate times in the top 100, more repeat ownership than any other developer on this board. One language-reference publisher has kept five different apps updated without interruption for the better part of two decades, the kind of patience most developers simply don't have.

The Crown Doesn't Sit Still

This board moves fast, despite appearances. The #1 spot has changed hands 25 times during the period we've tracked, and the top ten reshuffles by an average of 3.5 places over that same window. That's a lot of churn for a leaderboard meant to measure the slowest, longest-running thing an app can do.

Map My Run GPS Running Tracker is the clearest climber in all that churn, moving from #5 up to #3 over the tracked window. It got there through a steady update cadence while rivals stumbled, or in at least one case, got leapfrogged entirely by an app like Apartment Guide Home Rentals arriving out of nowhere. On a board built around endurance, the actual ranking moves like a sprint.

What's Actually in First Place

Apartment Guide Home Rentals, now the longest continuous run on the entire App Store, gets a mixed reception from the people who actually use it. Sentiment sits at 0.15 and hasn't moved across 103 reviews. Reviewers point to scams and false information, search filters that don't really work, and customer service that never answers, plus functionality problems that undercut the basic job of finding a place to rent. Not the crashes or dated design you'd expect from an older app, but something more fundamental. A handful of reviewers still call it helpful anyway.

So the app with the longest unbroken update history in the store is also the one pulling the sharpest complaints about trustworthiness right now. Eighteen years of continuous shipping bought it longevity, not a clean record. This board measures one thing, and quality just isn't it.