• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, November 6, 2020

When it comes to generating overall in-app revenue from users, TikTok took the title for the No. 1 non-gaming app worldwide last month -- but the $115 million grossed in October 2020 fell short of the $130.5 million it generated in September.

The estimate for in-app spending, not advertising, comes from Sensor Tower’s Store Intelligence platform.

About 86% of TikTok’s revenue came from Douyin in China, followed by 8% from the United States and 2% from Turkey.

YouTube, Google’s video site, generated the second-highest earnings for a non-gaming app worldwide for overall revenue in October 2020, with more than $94 million in gross revenue, representing 58% year-over-year growth from October 2019.

About 56% of YouTube’s revenue was from the U.S., followed by 11% from Japan. In September, those numbers were 55% in the U.S. and 11% in Japan. 

In September, YouTube generated 12 million downloads worldwide, bringing in about $66 million from the app, according to Sensor Tower.

The next-highest-grossing app was Tinder, followed by Tencent Video and Disney+, Piccoma, iQIYI, Google One, Netflix, and Bigo Live.

Revenue estimates are from the App Store and Google Play worldwide between October 1, 2019 and October 31, 2020 and represent gross user spending.

These rankings do not include app revenue from third-party Android stores.

Sensor Tower also estimated App Store and Google Play revenue.

The ranking for App Store non-game revenue estimates is as follows: TikTok, YouTube, Tinder, Tencent Video iQIYI, Netflix, Disney+, YouKu, Piccoma, and QQ Music.

The ranking for Google Play non-game revenue estimates is quite different, with apps ranking as follows: Google One, Piccoma, Disney+, Bigo Live, Tinder, Pandora, Line Manga, Line, Twitch, and Facebook.