About the site — how it is made
Ten app studios, profiled at length rather than listed. Here is how they were checked and who did the checking.
App design has almost no barrier to entry as a category label. A studio that has shipped forty apps and a web shop that has shipped two describe themselves identically, and the usual fifty-entry listicle gives them the same two sentences and the same logo treatment.
Worse, the thing that separates them is not visible in a portfolio. Screens photograph well whether or not the app was released, whether or not the studio built the engineering, and whether or not the people who made it still work there. A short entry cannot carry any of that. A proper profile can.
So this site profiles ten studios in depth. Good ones are missing, which is the honest cost of the format. What you get instead is enough detail to rule studios in and out before you spend a call finding out.
The method
Named work is looked up in the App Store and Google Play where it should be findable. Case study pieces that were never released, or were pulled, do not count as shipped work.
Confirmed against recent published work, hiring, and press. Domains renew automatically for years after a studio stops working, so a live site establishes nothing on its own.
Whether a studio designs and hands off, designs and ships, or is an engineering firm with a design practice attached. Each is a different purchase and the profile says which.
Independent, private-equity held, or inside a consultancy. frog under Capgemini, Huge under AEA Investors, and Work & Co under Accenture are all noted rather than left implicit, because ownership changes rates, process, and who you actually deal with.
Names come from case studies, credible press, or the client's own materials. Where a studio publishes no roster, the profile says so and points you at the portfolio instead of inventing one.
The limits
Portfolios lag by years and teams turn over. A studio's best work may have been led by people who left. Every profile is a starting point for questions, not a substitute for asking them.
App budgets vary by an order of magnitude across the ten, depending on scope, platform count, and whether engineering is included. We describe tier and positioning, not numbers.
Nothing verifiable from outside predicts the working relationship between a specific team and a specific client, and that determines more than anything else here.
Ten places, no stars, no percentages. The order reflects breadth of shipped work and the profiles carry the actual judgment.
We do not sit between you and the studios, take a referral fee, or receive your brief. Contact details go to the agency and the conversation is yours.
Get in touch
If a fact here is wrong, tell us. Studios get acquired, offices close, apps get pulled from the stores, and attributions can be inaccurate. Corrections are made promptly and you do not need to prove standing to report one.
Studios can put themselves forward. Useful to include: whether you design, build, or both, your platform experience, two or three shipped apps with store links, and the kind of client you are genuinely best for. Store links carry more weight than anything else you can send. With ten fixed places, adding a studio usually means removing one, so the bar is high.
If a factual question would help your evaluation, such as whether a studio handles engineering or how its ownership has changed, ask and we will point you at what we verified. We will not recommend a studio for your project or make introductions. Contact the agencies directly using the details on each profile.
For questions about the profiles, the research, or the site itself.
Response time: corrections within a few days. Submissions take longer.