Vibecoded' Apps Are Flooding the App Store. Is That Good for Apple?

Vibecoding—AI tools that generate software code from plain-language prompts—is driving a surge of new apps on Apple’s App Store, raising the question of whether it helps or harms the ecosystem. Chicago software engineer Marco Pérez, 27, built two apps with vibecoding: InfoDrizzle, released after five weeks of winter prototyping and two more weeks of App Store preparation, and Stampa, launched in May after about a week of work. InfoDrizzle reached about 1,300 downloads and roughly $500 profit, while Stampa drew about 20,000 downloads and about $3,000 profit. Industry estimates from Sensor Tower show new App Store releases rose 30% last year to roughly 600,000, and doubled to about 560,000 in the first half of this year. Apple still reviews apps manually; developers have complained of longer review times, which matters as downloads rose only 3% to 35.4 billion last year and 2% to 17.6 billion in the first half of the year.