English is in nine of ten apps. For the world's other billions of speakers, the store looks very different.
By Dor Bass· Based on 61,575 apps· Data updated 15 Jul 2026
Original research by App Store Hall of Records, computed from our index of 61,575 public App Store listings — every figure here is calculated, never estimated. See our editorial standards and glossary.
Localizing an app is a choice, and the App Store makes that choice visible: every listing declares the languages it speaks. Aggregate them across the 61,575 apps that declare any, and a quiet inequality appears. A handful of languages are everywhere; some of the most-spoken languages on Earth are almost nowhere. This is the digital language divide, measured.
91.6%of apps are localized in English
1.5%for Bengali (234M speakers)
1 of 10most-spoken languages clear 50% coverage
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English is the store's default tongue
91.6% of apps that declare any localization include English — it is the near-universal baseline, the language a developer reaches for first regardless of where they are. Nothing else comes close. After English, coverage falls off a cliff: even the largest European and East Asian markets sit in the 20–30% range, and everything else trails behind. For a store used on every continent, its linguistic centre of gravity is strikingly narrow.
The most-spoken languages the store forgets
Rank the world's languages by native speakers and match each to its app coverage, and the gap is stark. Chinese, with around 940 million native speakers — more than any other language — appears in just 23.7% of apps. Bengali has roughly 234 million speakers yet reaches only 1.5%. The pattern repeats across South Asia especially: Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi, Urdu, and the major Indian languages command enormous populations and minimal app support. Of the ten most-spoken languages on the planet, only 1 is localized in more than half of apps.
Chinese23.7%
Spanish26.6%
English91.6%
Hindi6.4%
Arabic12.1%
Portuguese20.6%
Bengali1.5%
Russian18.2%
Japanese22.6%
Punjabi0.7%
Why the divide exists
The driver is not speaker count but spending power and market maturity. Developers localize toward the markets that pay — App Store revenue concentrates in the US, Western Europe, Japan, and a few others — so languages tied to wealthy storefronts get served first, and languages spoken by billions in lower-revenue markets wait. Localization also costs real money to translate, test, and maintain, so smaller and solo developers rationally build for one audience. The result is a store whose language map looks less like the world's population and more like its GDP.
The bottom line
The App Store is global in reach but not in language. If you speak English you barely notice; if you speak one of the world's other giant languages, a large share of the store simply is not built for you. That gap is a real barrier — and a real opportunity: the under-served languages here mark exactly where demand outruns supply. It complements our look at how many languages the average app supports, which is usually just one.
Dig into the data
The boards and tools behind this study, updated automatically:
English. Around nine in ten apps that declare any localization include English, making it the store's near-universal default. No other language comes close.
Which widely-spoken languages are under-served on the App Store?
The biggest gaps are in South and East Asia: Chinese, Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi, and Urdu all have enormous speaker populations but appear in only a small share of apps. Of the ten most-spoken languages, only English clears 50% coverage.
Why aren't apps translated into more languages?
Developers localize toward the markets that spend, and App Store revenue concentrates in a handful of wealthy storefronts. Translation also costs money to maintain, so the store's language map tracks global GDP more closely than global population.
How this was made: this study is computed across 61,575 apps carrying the public App Store metadata it needs, drawn from our live index of 72,021 tracked apps, and is recomputed on a schedule. It is a large, representative sample of the store rather than every app in existence, and the figures shift over time as the store changes. App-coverage figures are computed from our own index; speaker populations are approximate native-speaker estimates from public linguistic sources.
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