In short: AI-powered “vibe coding” tools led to an 84% increase in new app submissions to Apple’s App Store in one quarter, the biggest increase in a decade, according to a report by The Information. The flood is straining Apple’s review infrastructure, with approval times increasing from 24 hours to 30 days. Apple responded by pulling back apps that violated its self-restriction rules, sparking a confrontation with platforms that fueled the boom.
Apple’s App Store is getting more new apps than at any point in the past decade. The reason isn’t a wave of professional developers: it’s a term Collins English Dictionary named the word of the year for 2025, coined by Andrej Karpathy, co-founder of OpenAI and former head of artificial intelligence at Tesla, in a post he shared on social media in February of that year. Vibe coding, the practice of creating software by describing what you want in simple language and letting a large language model write the code, has lowered the barrier to app development so much that it now surpasses the infrastructure Apple built to protect its platform.
According to The Information, the number of new apps submitted to the App Store increased by 84% in one quarter as the vibe became mainstream coding. The figure confirms broader data from Sensor Tower, which tracked 56% year-over-year growth in iOS app launches in December 2025 and 54.8% growth in January 2026, the fastest growth rate in four years. Apple had a total of 557,000 new app launches in 2025, the biggest annual surge since 2016.
The tools behind the flood
This growth belongs to a small group of platforms that turn natural language into executable software. Cursor, developed by Anysphere and used by seven million developers, surpassed $2 billion in annual revenue in March 2026 and was valued at $29.3 billion in November 2025 after a $2.3 billion funding round co-led by Accel and Coatue. Targeting non-technical builders, Lovable has reached $202 million in annual revenue by the end of 2025. grew fifty-fold within a year and raised $330 million in Series B at a valuation of $6.6 billion in December 2025. Replit generated $240 million in revenue in 2025, serves more than 150,000 paying customers, and aims to reach $1 billion in revenue by 2026. work
The commercial argument for these platforms is simple: anyone with an idea and an internet connection can now build and deliver an app. The problem for Apple is that the same dynamic that makes vibe coding commercially attractive is structurally incompatible with how the App Store review process works.
Why Apple has a structural problem
Vibe Coding’s power lies in creating and executing new code on demand, in response to user requests in real-time without a fixed code base. Apple’s App Store review process follows a different model: a developer submits a static build, Apple reviews it, and the approved build is what users accept. Guideline 2.5.2 of Apple’s App Review Guidelines clearly states that apps “may not download, install, or execute code that introduces or modifies the app’s features or functionality.” Vibe coding programs, almost by definition, do just that.
Volume results are already visible in Apple’s infrastructure. Developers submitting to the App Store in March 2026 reported review delays of seven days to 30 days or more versus a historical baseline of 24-48 hours, with the majority of delay time spent in the “Awaiting Review” queue before a reviewer can pick up a submission. The influx of AI-powered apps is straining a system designed for a world where app creation takes months, not minutes.
The pressure is on
Apple’s enforcement response has been progressive and sometimes opaque. In mid-March 2026, reports surfaced that Apple had quietly blocked updates for a number of vibe encoding programs, including Replit and Vibecode, without public explanation. The developers cited Guideline 2.5.2 and described receiving a rejection but not receiving advance warning that enforcement had intensified.
The most notable loss was the Anything app, which allowed users to create small tools and automations through natural language commands. Its co-founder Dhruv Amin said that Apple is blocking updates from December 2025 before ending the program entirely on March 30, 2026. Amin attempted a compromise by modifying the program so that the vibe-coded output would appear in the web browser instead of being executed in the program itself; Apple blocked that update and removed the app.
An Apple spokesperson told The Information that the company doesn’t target vibe coding as a category, but instead enforces guidelines that prevent apps from changing their behavior after being reviewed. In practice, the difference is narrow: the defining ability of a vibe coding program is its ability to create and run new functionality on demand, which is what Guideline 2.5.2 prohibits.
Counter argument
Critics of Apple’s position have been brought to attention. A CNBC column published in late March 2026 argued that Apple’s crackdown put it on the “wrong side of history,” arguing that the research-based model was designed for a world that no longer existed, and that blocking vibe coding apps was a disadvantage of the platform against Android, which imposes fewer restrictions on dynamic code execution.
A deeper tension is one of gatekeeping economics. Apple’s App Store review process isn’t just a security mechanism: it’s the basis of the 15-30% commission the company collects on in-app purchases and subscriptions. The wave of vibe-coded apps that bypass review by generating code outside of the approved package also structurally challenges the store’s business logic. Regulators in Europe are probing the doors of Apple’s App Store Under the Digital Markets Act and the vibe coding controversy adds another dimension to this ongoing examination.
Computing platform
What Vibe’s coding exposes is the mismatch between the speed at which AI can create software and the speed at which existing review infrastructure can evaluate it. Apple considered about 200,000 app submissions per week at its peak in 2025, and growth has surpassed that capacity. The platform now faces a choice between significantly expanding its review capabilities, updating its guidelines to ensure dynamic code execution in a controlled manner, or continuing to enforce existing rules and accepting friction with a rapidly growing developer class.
Capital will be deployed in AI infrastructure in 2026 vibe makes it harder for volume coded apps to slow down on their own. Tools are getting faster and cheaper; the category produces some of the highest-growing companies in the technology industry. As AI moves from innovation to commercial infrastructurethe question of who controls the distribution layer and under what conditions is becoming a central battleground of the platform era. Apple created the App Store as an answer to this question. Vibe coding forces him to ask the question again from the beginning. The AI acceleration of 2025 reached the gate. Apple decides whether to open it or not.
