Chrome Web Store has 188k extensions with at least 1.2 billion installs

The Chrome Web Store for Chrome extensions hosts more than 188k extensions that have a total installation count of at least 1.23 billion; a scan by Extension Monitor brought additional details to light.

Only 13 Chrome extensions have more than 10 million users, the largest user count group that the Store uses. These 13 extensions have more than 10 million users but the exact number is not revealed.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are more than 19k extensions with 0 installs, and 50% that have fewer than 16 installs.

Extensions with fewer than 1000 installations make up about 87% of all Chrome extension installations.

Tip: check out our list of the top Chrome extensions and top Firefox add-ons.

As far as top extensions with more than 10 million installations is concerned, it can be divided into two groups: extensions that get installed by a service or software installation, and extensions that get installed manually by users.

The following extensions are on the list at the time of writing:

1. Adblock
2. Adblock Plus
3. Adobe Acrobat
4. Avast Online Security
5. Avast SafePrice
6. Cisco Webex Extension
7. Google Translate
8. Grammarly for Chrome
9. Honey
10. Pinterest Save Button
11. Skype
12. Tampermonkey
13. uBlock Origin

Three of the top 13 extensions are content blockers, two price comparison extensions, and five can be linked to popular programs or services.

The next tier, extensions with less than 10 million installs consists of ten additional extensions, all with an installation count of more than 6.8 million.

These are:

1. Amazon Assistant for Chrome
2. Avira Browser Safety
3. AVG SafePrice
4. Google Hangouts
5. Google Photos
6. Hola Free VPN Proxy Unblocker
7. LastPass: Free Password Manager
8. Rung Rinh
9. Text
10. Video Downloader for Chrome

Two official Google extensions, two extensions by security companies, the first video downloader, and others make up this group.

One surprising takeaway from the data that Extension Monitor published is that 8.9% of extensions fall into the paid category. Paid extensions are further divided into those that require payment upfront and those that use in-extension purchases.

While paid extensions make up 8.9% of all extensions in the Chrome Web Store, they make up less than 2.6% of all installs. The distribution is similar to that of free extensions. The top five paid extensions make up 48.5% of all paid installs. The dominant paid extension is IE Tab with 4.1 million installs (31.5%):

1. anonymoX
2. Gantter Project Management
3. IE Tab
4. Lucidchart Diagrams
5. Polarr Photo Editor

Comparison to Firefox extensions

Mozilla lists installs for all Firefox add-ons on the official Mozilla AMO website. Ten Firefox extensions with more than 1 million installs are listed on AMO currently. The top extension, Adblock Plus, has roughly 9 million installs.

Adblockers make up the bulk of top Firefox extensions and you find several that made up the Chrome top list as well.

Firefox users have an advantage when it comes to video downloaders as Chrome extensions face limitations imposed by Google (no YouTube dowloads).

Closing Words

Is the number of installations an important metric? It is an indicator and it is certainly the case that extensions with lots of installs are pushed more than extensions with fewer installs.

Now You: Do you take installs into account when installing browser extensions?

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