Pixalate’s April 2025 Delisted Mobile Apps Reports Find 62,100 Apps Delisted from Google Play Store & 43,800 from Apple App Store

LONDON, May 21, 2025 -- Pixalate, a leading global platform for ad fraud protection, privacy, and compliance analytics, today released the April 2025 Delisted Mobile Apps Report for the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, analyzing apps that were found to be delisted from these stores in February.

The report identifies applications that are no longer available for download from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, according to Pixalate’s data. Delisted apps do not reflect the initiator of the delisting action, i.e., Apple or Google, or the app developer.

While some apps are delisted for benign reasons, others are removed as a result of more nefarious behaviors, including ad fraud, and non-compliance with privacy regulations or app store policies, which may cause advertisers to be exposed to potential financial or legal risk as well. Because apps can be delisted for a variety of reasons, Pixalate is neither asserting nor assigning a reason for any delisting action. Additionally, the initiator of the delisting is not generally publicly-available information, so it is often not possible to know whether the removal was triggered by the app store or the developer.

Pixalate’s research focuses on app profile information and provides various insights observed in the programmatic advertising bid stream, such as the developer’s country of registry, the level of app abandonment, and the number of delisted apps with advertising (an app-ads.txt file).

Key Findings:

Google Play Store

• Delisted apps: 62K apps delisted in April 2025, representing a 28% increase from March 2025
  • 17,600 apps delisted were enabled for programmatic advertising (i.e., had declared an app-ads.txt file) in April 2025
• Country of origin: United States-registered apps had the highest number of delistings (1,978) in the Google Play Store, followed by India (1,613) in April 2025
  • Among the apps that provided a country of registration, 5,616 were registered in Asia-Pacific (APAC), which is the highest among global regions, followed by 3,602 in EMEA, 2,137 in North America, and 788 in LATAM, according to Pixalate

Google Play Store: Top 5 Delisted Apps in April 2025 (by downloads)

Apple App Store:

• Delisted apps: 44K apps delisted in April 2025, down 26% from March 2025
  • 3,645 apps delisted were enabled for programmatic advertising (i.e., an app-ads.txt file) in April 2025
• Country of origin: United States-registered apps had the highest number of delistings (1,495) in the Apple App Store, followed by China (539) and India (302) in April 2025
  • Among the apps that provided a country of registration, 1,655 were registered in APAC, which is the highest among global regions, followed by 1,592 in North America, 1,419 in EMEA, and 155 in LATAM, according to Pixalate

Apple App Store: Top 5 Delisted Apps in April 2025 (by downloads)

To compile this research, Pixalate’s data science and analyst team analyzed more than 2 million apps delisted from the Apple App Store and 5.7 million apps delisted from the Google Play Store between January 2021 and April 2025.

Download and explore a complimentary copy of the April 2025 Delisted Mobile Apps Reports, which includes a list of the top 100 delisted apps by store with programmatic advertising (based on the presence of an app-ads.txt file).

About Pixalate

Pixalate is a global platform specializing in privacy compliance, ad fraud prevention, and digital ad supply chain data intelligence. Founded in 2012, Pixalate is trusted by regulators, data researchers, advertisers, publishers, ad tech platforms, and financial analysts across the Connected TV (CTV), mobile app, and website ecosystems. Pixalate is accredited by the MRC for the detection and filtration of Sophisticated Invalid Traffic (SIVT). pixalate.com

Disclaimer

The content of this press release, and the Delisted Mobile Apps Report (the Report), reflect Pixalate's opinions with respect to factors that Pixalate believes may  be useful to the digital media industry. Any data shared is grounded in Pixalate’s proprietary technology and analytics, which Pixalate is continuously evaluating and updating. Any references to outside sources should not be construed as endorsements.  Pixalate's opinions are just that, opinions, which means that they are neither facts nor guarantees. Pixalate is sharing this data not to impugn the standing or reputation of any entity, person or app, but, instead, to report findings and trends pertaining to programmatic advertising activity across mobile apps in the time period studied.