Top apps in China: what’s hot now?

What are the top apps in China?

It’s obvious that China is a massive mobile market: 1 of the most critical on the planet. With a population of 1.4 billion people, China’s second only to India. And those 1.4 billion people pay for perhaps 1.9 billion cellular subscriptions, almost 20% of the global total. The result is a massive, tech-savvy, and increasingly wealthy population unlike any other nation in the world.

This year, those 1.4 billion people will collectively spend about $3.5 trillion online this year, more than any other country and almost half of global e-commerce spend. And most of that will be on mobile devices, which also support a massive and quickly-growing digital advertising market that could surpass $150 billion this year.

All of that fuels a lot of mobile innovation. And a huge number of mobile app installs.

So what are the top apps in China right now?

2 ways to answer …

There are 2 ways to look at what matters in China’s mobile economy right now.

1. Everyday stack
   The first is what people are using now: the everyday, must-have apps with hundreds of millions of daily active users. These define the present. These are the apps that, if you visit China, you have to load up on just in order to get around, buy food, and basically exist.
2. New and hot
   The second is what people are downloading most right now: the new wave of apps that are surging in popularity right now. These signal the next big shift in consumer behavior. They hint at the future.

We’ll start with #1: top apps in China that are part of the everyday stack.

Top apps in China part 1: the everyday stack

The apps people cannot live without in China look very different from those you might use in the United States, or Europe, or South America.

There’s essentially 10 to 14 top apps in China that are almost must-haves. And no, unless you’re Chinese or visit often, you probably haven’t heard of all the top apps in China.

1. WeChat (Weixin, 微信)
   WeChat is China’s default for messaging, social feeds, bill-splitting, mini-apps, and payments. It’s used at national scale with something like 1.4 billion combined monthly average users.
2. Alipay (支付宝)
   There’s no total monopoly in China: Alipay is the other half of the daily payments ecosystem: paying in shops, utilities, taxis, and more. Plus, it offers finance and service mini-apps.
3. Amap / Gaode Map (高德地图)
   This is the go-to for driving, public transit, bike-share, ride-hailing aggregation, and nearby services. It’s widely regarded as the most used maps app with something like 800M+ monthly active users.
4. Meituan (美团) (with Dianping 大众点评 inside)
   If you’re hungry, you’ll want Meituan. This app is for food delivery, groceries, local services, and restaurant reviews/deals.
5. Taobao / Tmall (淘宝 / 天猫), JD.com (京东), and Pinduoduo (拼多多)
   When you’re buying a TV or makeup or diapers or a new phone, you’re probably using 1 of these big 3 e-commerce apps for everyday shopping. E-commerce is close to universal behavior online in China as online shopping activity is at almost 90% of the online population.
6. Didi (滴滴出行)
   Yes, you can get rides and cars in a bunch of different apps, but Didi is the primary ride-hailing app in most cities. Didi delivers 10s of millions of rides every single day, which gives you some sense of its scale in urban life.
7. 12306 (中国铁路12306)
   Travel by train is extremely important in China, and the official national train-ticketing app processes enormous volumes: hundreds of millions of tickets for some holiday events.
8. Ctrip / Trip.com (携程)
   Ctrip is a full-stack travel app: everything including hotels, flights, trains, and trip packages or holidays.
9. Douyin (抖音)
   Need entertainment? This is the Chinese version of TikTok. It’s short-video + search + shopping, and a ton of product discovery, local tips, and entertainment happens here every day. Third-party sources put Douyin at close to 800 million users.
10. Kuaishou (快手)
    Kuaishou is the other giant short-video platform in China. It’s strong outside top-tier cities and for live-commerce with close to 400 million regular users.
11. Baidu Maps (百度地图)
    Baidu Maps is an alternative to Amap. It’s tightly connected to Baidu search results and features countless local points of interest.
12. Weibo (微博)
    Often compared to Twitter years ago but significantly different, Weibo is China’s public square for news, trends, and celebrity chatter.

You’ll almost certainly have most of these top apps in China on your phone if you live in the country or visit frequently. That’s especially true of WeChat and Alipay and Douyin and Weibo, but largely of the others as well.

Why are these top apps in China so popular?

Essentially, because they’re must-haves, not nice-to-haves.

These apps dominate daily life. Mobile payment usage is over 90% in China, so Alipay/WeChat Pay are just how you pay for coffee, taxis, street food, and more. Your social graph from personal to work is probably all in WeChat, plus dozens of other things you do in mini-apps on the platforms, and almost 100% of Chinese people watch online video, so Douyin and Kuaishou almost essential. Plus, they’re not just entertainment apps but also search engines for products and experiences.

Unlike the west, where mobile functionality is largely fragmented (messaging, paying, buying, mapping, ride-hailing, entertainment), in China some super-apps cover dozens if not thousands of daily functions, like payments, shopping, entertainment, and social networking.

This makes user loyalty stronger and competition fiercer

It also makes unseating an incumbent incredibly hard.

Top apps in China part 2: what’s getting downloaded right now

When we look at the top apps in China from a perspective of what’s being downloaded the most right now, a very different picture emerges.

While in the United States for instance games, social apps, and utilities are often high on the list of the most-downloaded apps, in China, AI-powered tools and short dramas are leading the way.

Here’s the most-downloaded apps in China over the past 3 months, based on Apptopia data:

Rank	App	Category
1	Doubao – ByteDance AI Assistant	Productivity
2	Red Fruit Short Dramas	Entertainment, Books & Reference
3	UnionPay APP	Finance
4	Douyin Mall	Shopping
5	Qishui Music – Douyin Music	Music
6	JD.com	Lifestyle, Shopping
7	Hippo Theater – Short Dramas	Entertainment
8	China Mobile (Service Hall)	Business, Tool & Utilities
9	Quark Browser – AI Search	Tool & Utilities, Productivity
10	Croissant – Photography Community	Social
11	Railway 12306 – Train Tickets	Travel
12	DeepSeek – AI Assistant	Productivity
13	Traffic Management 12123	Tool & Utilities, Lifestyle
14	Xianyu – Alibaba Resale Marketplace	Lifestyle, Shopping
15	Tencent Yuanbao – DeepSeek+ AI Assistant	Productivity, Tool & Utilities
16	Meituan – Lifestyle Services	Travel, Lifestyle
17	KFC China (Official)	Lifestyle, Food & Drink
18	Electronic Tax Bureau	Finance
19	Taobao – Online Shopping App	Lifestyle, Shopping
20	Ele.me – Food Delivery	Lifestyle, Food & Drink
21	大麦 – 演出、体育购票平台	Lifestyle, Entertainment
22	Dianping: Discover Good Places	Lifestyle, Shopping, Food & Drink
23	AMap Global	Maps & Navigation, Lifestyle, Travel
24	国家网络身份认证	Tool & Utilities
25	三角洲行动	Games, Action
26	悟空浏览器-看短剧小说影视	Tool & Utilities
27	醒图 – 拍照&修图&修live神器	Photo & Video
28	BOSS直聘-招聘求职找工作神器	Business, Social
29	百度网盘	Productivity, Lifestyle
30	拼多多 – 多多买菜，百亿补贴	Lifestyle, Shopping
31	1688- B2B Market	Business, Shopping
32	剪映 — 视频剪辑&Live实况图编辑	Photo & Video
33	rednote	Social, Shopping
34	迅雷-随心搜，放心存，畅快看	Tool & Utilities, Productivity
35	即梦AI – 抖音旗下AI图片和视频工具	Photo & Video, Entertainment
36	WeCom-Work Communication&Tools	Business, Tool & Utilities
37	番茄小说 – 热门短剧全本小说电子书阅读器	Entertainment, Books & Reference
38	中国农业银行	Finance
39	bilibili – All Your Fav Videos	Photo & Video, Entertainment
40	Alipay – Simplify Your Life	Lifestyle, Finance
41	得物 – 得到美好事物	Sports, Lifestyle
42	DiDi: Ride Hailing in China	Travel, Lifestyle, Maps & Navigation
43	快手	Social, Photo & Video
44	中国电信-全国统一官方服务平台	Tool & Utilities, Lifestyle
45	中国工商银行	Finance
46	携程旅行-订酒店机票火车票	Travel, Lifestyle
47	58同城-求职招聘找工作租房二手车	Tool & Utilities, Lifestyle
48	去哪儿旅行-订酒店机票火车票	Travel, Lifestyle
49	DingDing – Make It Happen	Business, Social, Productivity
50	学信网	Tool & Utilities, Education

Looking at this top list and the top 250 most-downloaded apps in China, 3 major patterns emerge.

1. Daily life & commerce apps are everywhere
   We see shopping and lifestyle apps like Taobao, JD.com, Douyin Mall, Xianyu resale, Meituan, Ele.me, and the KFC app).
2. AI assistants & productivity tools are surging
   Chinese people are diving hard into AI assistants and AI-driven productivity apps, making Doubao (ByteDance AI assistant), DeepSeek, Tencent Yuanbao, and Quark AI Browser among the top apps in China.
3. Utilities, finance, and official apps
   People need core utilities and official apps to pay bills, access government services, and more. They include UnionPay, the China Mobile service app, Railway 12306, a traffic management app, and more.

Here’s the distribution of the most-downloaded top apps in China by app category:

 

AI is super-mainstream in China right now: much more so than in western app stores. There are multiple AI apps in the top 20 and many more appear in the top 250 most-downloaded apps list. Short-form dramas are huge.

Interestingly, this is very much like Brazil, where short-form drama is a major app category.

Commerce is super-critical in China, but despite super apps that will do almost anything, there is some significant fragmentation in the market, with players like Taobao, JD.com, Douyin Mall, and other resale apps (think eBay or Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace) all in heavy competition for the Chinese consumer’s time and money.

Another key element of the Chinese mobile market: official apps are critical. Government is highly sophisticated and digital in China, so government apps for tax and other purposes get massive numbers of installs.

Based on what Chinese people are downloading right now, here are the top 5 categories for top apps in China:

1. Lifestyle and utilities
2. Shopping
3. Finance
4. Productivity (driven by AI)
5. Entertainment

Notice the key missing category? Games.

Why games aren’t a top category for mobile in China

In the U.S., games dominate top download charts with titles like Roblox, Candy Crush, and Royal Match). Not in China.

Why?

While they are important, games do not rank high in lists of top apps in China: lifestyle, AI, and commerce are bigger. In fact, in the top 250 most-downloaded apps in China recently, games captured only just over 5% of all downloads: vastly different than most other markets.

That’s not because Chinese people don’t like games, though. There are 4 key reasons why games are less downloaded in China:

1. Different regulations
   China limits new game licenses, so there are fewer new games. China also caps the amount of playtime kids under the age of 18 can engage in..
2. Different consumer behavior
   Where in the west people might download a game to take a 5-minute break, in China short videos and short dramas are filling the entertainment gap.
3. Different ecosystem
   Tencent and NetEase dominate gaming and their flagship titles are successful, popular, and entrenched. That means they are less likely to appear as new downloads in a top apps in China list.
4. Different monetization
   In the U.S. and other western nations, ad monetization works well and ad-driven casual games thrive. In China, commerce and service apps monetize more reliably at scale, so innovation in the mobile space moves there.

All that said, games are still huge in China.

Honor of Kings has probably 100 million daily active users, and was the highest-grossing mobile game globally in 2024, earning approximately $2.6 billion. PUBG Mobile / Peacekeeper Elite is massive as well, and not far behind, while you also see Genshin Impact, Honkai: Star Rail, Arknights, and Black Myth: Wukong among the top games in China.

In the last 3 months, these are the most-downloaded mobile games in China and where they rank in overall number of installs”

1. 三角洲行动 (Delta Force: Hawk Ops) — Rank 25
2. 王者荣耀 (Honor of Kings) — Rank 62
3. 暴吵萌厨 (Cooking game) — Rank 68
4. 和平精英 (Peacekeeper Elite / PUBG Mobile China) — Rank 73
5. 超自然行动组 (Supernatural Action Team) — Rank 81
6. 蛋仔派对 (Eggy Party) — Rank 93
7. 我的花园世界 (My Garden World) — Rank 100
8. 无畏契约：源能行动 (Valorant Mobile: Source Ops) — Rank 105
9. 我的世界：移动版 (Minecraft Mobile, China) — Rank 115
10. 开心消消乐 (Happy Elimination) — Rank 128
11. 掌上无畏契约 (Valorant Companion App) — Rank 129
12. 燕云十六声 (Where Winds Meet / RPG) — Rank 137
13. 迷你世界 (Mini World) — Rank 149
14. 金铲铲之战 (Teamfight Tactics, China) — Rank 151
15. 地铁跑酷 (Subway Surfers China) — Rank 159
16. 贪吃蛇大作战 (Snake Battle) — Rank 179
17. 球球大作战 (Battle of Balls) — Rank 197
18. 腾讯欢乐斗地主 (Tencent Happy Landlord, card game) — Rank 210
19. 永远的蔚蓝星球 (Forever Blue Planet) — Rank 212
20. 斗罗大陆：猎魂世界 (Soul Land RPG) — Rank 233

Top apps in China: good news about measurement

One piece of good news for those bringing their apps into China: your mobile marketing measurement doesn’t need to change, as Singular offers mobile attribution services in China along with virtually everywhere else on the planet.

That means:

• China-based servers
• China-based data processing (required by Chinese cybersecurity law)
• Integrations with local Chinese networks and media partners
• Integrations with third-party Android app markets
• Fraud protection
• Global customers who are looking to add China to the markets they publish in should chat with their Singular representative. We have local people in China who can help you navigate some of the challenges of entering the market.

Perhaps even more importantly, Singular can ensure that all of your marketing efforts get the measurement that they deserve, enabling best-in-class growth optimization in China.

Book some time with us here.