Two thirds of what independent developers ship is mobile, most builders show exactly one finished project rather than a portfolio, and of 62 mobile projects only six link to both the App Store and Google Play. That last number is the one worth carrying into a hiring conversation.
These are counts from Shipfolks itself: 99 live projects across 46 public profiles, counted on 28 July 2026. Small sample, self-selected, and it describes the people who joined this directory rather than the profession. Everything below is stated with that limit rather than around it.
Mobile is most of it
| Platform | Projects | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Mobile | 62 | 63% |
| Web | 34 | 34% |
| Desktop | 3 | 3% |
If you are hiring an independent builder, the pool leans mobile far harder than the general developer population does. That has a practical consequence: for a web project you are drawing from a third of the pool, and it is worth widening your search rather than assuming the first few profiles you see are representative.
By what the thing actually is, rather than where it runs:
| Type | Projects | Share |
|---|---|---|
| App | 37 | 37% |
| AI | 15 | 15% |
| SaaS | 14 | 14% |
| Source code | 11 | 11% |
| Tool | 8 | 8% |
| Web2App | 7 | 7% |
| Web, game, extension | 7 | 7% |
Most people show one thing
| Projects listed | Builders |
|---|---|
| 1 | 28 |
| 2 | 8 |
| 3 or 4 | 6 |
| 7 or more | 4 |
The median builder shows one project. The mean is 2.2, and that gap is doing a lot of work: four people list seven or more, and one lists ten.
So the shape of the pool is a long tail of people with a single finished thing, plus a handful of prolific shippers. If you are shortlisting, that means a one-project profile is normal rather than a red flag, and it also means the single project is carrying the entire signal. Open it and use it properly, because there is no second data point.
The finding worth acting on: store links
Of the 62 mobile projects, here is what is actually linked:
| Store links shown | Projects |
|---|---|
| iOS only | 26 |
| Android only | 10 |
| Both | 6 |
| Neither | 20 |
Six out of sixty-two show both. Counting either way round, 32 link to the App Store and 16 to Google Play.
The practical version, if you are hiring for a cross-platform app: ask for both store listings, and expect that most people can only show you one. "React Native developer" and "has taken an app through Apple review and Google review" are different claims, and the second is much rarer than the first. The parts that are genuinely shared between platforms are the screens and the logic. The parts that are not are the two review processes, and that is where mobile projects overrun.
Twenty mobile projects link to no store at all. Some of those are internal apps or things still in review. Some are apps that never shipped. You cannot tell which from a profile, so ask.
What this does not tell you
- Nothing about quality. These are counts of what people listed, not a judgement of the work. Open the projects.
- Nothing about the profession. 46 people who joined a new directory in its first weeks are not a sample of independent developers worldwide. The mobile skew in particular is probably as much about where this site was shared as about the market.
- Nothing about rates. We do not collect that yet, and we will not publish a number we cannot source.
Using it
Three things transfer to an actual hiring decision:
- For a web project, look harder. Two thirds of the pool builds mobile, so the first page of results is not the whole market.
- Judge the one project properly. Most builders have exactly one, and it carries all the signal. Open it, use it on a phone, do something wrong in it and see what happens.
- For mobile, ask for both store listings up front. Very few can show both. That is not disqualifying, but it changes what you are buying and it should change the estimate.
If you want the estimate too, the project cost estimator has iOS and Android as a separate base from a single platform, because the second one is not free. And how to hire a React Native developer covers the specific questions that separate someone who has shipped to both stores from someone who has written cross-platform code.
We will re-run these counts as the numbers grow. The interesting thing will be whether the mobile share holds.