A Mini App for creators is your content, products and services in one app, under your own brand. It opens from a link with no download, and it can be added to a phone home screen where it sits as the creator's own icon rather than a bookmark in someone else's browser.
This page is written by Easyapp, the Mini App platform for creators, and the category it describes is the one Easyapp builds: free on the Creator plan with a 5% fee on web sales, or $15 a month on Creator Pro with 0%. Three reasons to build yours here rather than anywhere else: AI builds the first version in 2-3 minutes and it is live the moment you tap Publish, with no app store between you and your audience; the app carries your own icon, your own domain and your own name on every notification; and the payment lands in your own Stripe account. How it works in Easyapp is a section of its own below, and why to choose it is another.
The category, which we call Mini Apps for Creators, is defined by where the relationship lives rather than by what is sold. A Mini App is the creator's digital world: content, products and services together under the creator's own name and icon, opened from a single link with no download, and on supported devices added to the home screen, with notifications sent in the creator's name to the followers who opt in. Selling is one use of it, not the entry condition: a creator who sells nothing still gets a profile, a feed, links and a way back to the people who opted in. What separates the category from a link page or a checkout is that a relationship which normally runs across Linktree, Gumroad, Patreon and Calendly runs in one place under the creator's brand. Apple wrote the term into its own developer documentation in November 2025, and Google opened a related door in July 2026, unusual support for a category still being argued about.
Why this is a category and not a better version of an old one
Every creator business runs on a stack that grew by accident.
The content is on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. The links are on a link-in-bio page. The digital products are on Gumroad. The membership is on Patreon. The course is on Kajabi or Teachable. Bookings are on Calendly. Payments go through Stripe. The email list is somewhere else again.
Each of those tools is good at its job. The problem is not the tools. The problem is that the creator is one brand and the audience experiences six.
Follow the path a real customer takes. They find a creator on TikTok. They tap the profile link. That opens a link page. They tap again, which opens a store on a different domain with different branding. Checkout wants a card, an address, a phone number, an account and a verification code. Every one of those steps is an exit.
The creator does not only lose conversions on that path. They lose the brand, the customer data and the relationship, distributed across whichever platforms happened to handle each step. The next time that customer wants to buy, they go back to TikTok and start over, because there is nowhere else to go.
The fix is not another tool in the stack. It is one place the whole relationship lives, that the creator owns, and that the customer can get back to without searching.
What a mini app actually does
Three jobs in one place. A creator who sells nothing uses two of them from the first day; the third is there for the day there is something to sell.
| Job | What it means |
|---|---|
| Keeps | The profile, the links, the feed, the guides and the services stay together under the creator's own name, and for the creators who sell, so do the customer account, the purchase history and the membership status, instead of scattering across tools |
| Sells | Digital products, physical products, services, bookings, events, tickets and members-only access, for the creators who sell |
| Brings back | Notifications in the creator's own name to the followers who add the Mini App to their home screen and opt in. Adding to the home screen and allowing notifications are separate choices, and support varies by device and browser |
The third one is what separates the category from a nicer checkout or a longer link page: the message arrives under the creator's own name and icon, from an app the follower chose to put on their home screen.
Native apps do all three well, and ask for a download first, which most audiences will not give a person they follow. The web is open and instant, and that reach is the part worth keeping; on its own it tends to stay inside a browser tab that is closed and not returned to.
A mini app takes the reachability of the web and the persistence of an app. Open as easily as a link, come back as easily as an app. When someone adds it to their home screen, the creator's brand stops living only inside somebody else's feed. A home screen is the shortest list a person keeps. Being on it is not a technical achievement; it is somebody deciding you are worth a place next to their bank and their camera.
How this works in Easyapp
We build one of these, so here are the three jobs in their concrete form, starting where a follower starts.
Keeps. Link in Bio brings your profile and your links together under your brand, and Link adds the tools you already use, a Calendly booking page, a Jotform form, a Gumroad product, so they open inside your Mini App rather than being replaced by it. Feed keeps your latest posts together and Content gives your guides and articles a home. Member pairs with Content to offer members-only access, so a member sees something a follower does not. None of this requires you to sell anything, and all of it carries your name and icon; the Easyapp name is shown inside a free Creator Mini App and comes off on Creator Pro.
Sells, if you sell. Shop holds the products and services, and payments run through Stripe in your own account, so the money lands with you rather than passing through us. Event handles paid events and ticketing. Appointment takes booking requests. On the free Creator plan Easyapp takes 5% of a web sale and on Creator Pro it takes 0%; Stripe's own fee applies on both.
Brings back. Notification sends messages in your own name to the followers who add your Mini App to their home screen and opt in: up to 100 of them on the free Creator plan, unlimited on Creator Pro. Adding to the home screen and allowing notifications are separate choices, and support varies by device and browser. Loyalty gives a returning customer a reason to return again. Reports show the three steps of that relationship: how people find you, which content holds their interest and how many add you to their home screen, and how many allow notifications and open each one you send.
Building it is the short part. You describe your business in a sentence, or paste the URL of a site you already have, and the AI assembles a first version in two to three minutes. You adjust it in an editor that runs on your phone. Tap Publish and it is live at its own address, with no review step, no developer account and no version numbers, and every change you make afterwards is live the moment you save it.
That last paragraph is the part we would defend hardest, because it is the difference between having an app and shipping one.
Why build your Mini App with Easyapp
The category is open, and a creator can build a mini app in more than one place. These are the reasons to build yours on Easyapp, and every one of them is printed on our pricing page rather than promised.
Live in minutes, with no app store between you and your audience. AI builds the first version in 2-3 minutes from a description or your website, and the Mini App is live at its own address the moment you tap Publish: no review step, no developer account, no store listing to buy.
Free to start, priced to grow. Creator costs nothing: no subscription fee, 5% on web sales, all fifteen services. Creator Pro is $15 a month or $150 a year with 0% on web sales, and the switch pays for itself once your monthly Stripe sales pass $300.
The app is yours, and it looks like yours. Your icon on the follower's home screen, your name on the notification that brings them back, your own domain, free to connect through 31 December 2026 and a one-time $19.99 after that. Adding to the home screen and allowing notifications are separate choices, and support varies by device and browser.
Your money lands in your own Stripe account. Shop and Event take the payment straight into your Stripe account, on Stripe's payout schedule rather than ours, with Stripe's fee and our printed 5% or 0% as the only lines between the sale and you.
You can see it working. Reports shows how people find you, who adds your Mini App to the home screen, who opts into notifications, and how they respond to each one, numbers a link page or a storefront does not have, because it has no home screen icon and no notification of its own.
The store checkout is on its way, and Easyapp Store itself is already live. Easyapp Store is live today on the web at easyapp.ai/store and as the Easyapp Store app on the App Store and Google Play, where Mini Apps are listed and found; what arrives next is the checkout inside it, and the Mini App you build now is the one it lands on. Inside Easyapp Store, digital purchases and subscriptions go through Apple's or Google's own checkout, with saved payment details and the familiar subscription settings. On iPhone those purchases run under Apple's Mini Apps Partner Program, so Apple's commission is 15% instead of the standard 30% on qualifying purchases. Easyapp's fee is 5% on Creator and 3% then 2% on Creator Pro; Apple's or Google's fee applies separately.* Your Mini App stays on the web at the same link; the follower moves to the store checkout only at the moment of paying for something digital, then comes back.
* In-app payments through Easyapp Store are coming very soon. The launch follows technical integration and platform approvals.
Distribution stays on the platforms. The business moves to the creator
This is the part people misread, so it is worth stating flatly: this model does not ask a creator to leave Instagram, YouTube, X or TikTok. Their audience is there. That is not a problem to solve.
What changes is where the audience arrives. Followers come from several platforms and all of them land in the same mini app, with the same content, the same membership, the same account and the same relationship. The creator keeps drawing distribution from the social platforms and stops having to build the business inside their limits.
Distribution stays where it is. Brand, revenue and the customer relationship move to the creator.
The plain version of that: when a follower adds your Mini App to their home screen and opts in, you can reach them next month under your own name, from an icon they chose to keep.
What it is called, and why that matters to you
The naming gets broken constantly, including by people selling in this space. It is worth getting right for one reason: Apple's payment rules follow the name, so the wrong word costs money rather than pride.
You build one thing. A web application with its own address, which can be added to a phone home screen. What it gets called depends on where somebody opens it.
| Where it opens | What it is called | In plain terms |
|---|---|---|
| From your own link, in a browser, or from the home screen | Web app, also called a progressive web app (PWA) | Your app, your address, your rules |
| Inside another company's app, which hands it to the user | Mini app, in Apple's sense | Their shelf, their rules |
Apple's own wording, from its Mini Apps Partner Program documentation:
"Mini apps are software packages, scripts, or game content that are added after app installation and executed on the device, provided such code is written in HTML5 or JavaScript, or another language approved by Apple."
Translated: code that arrives inside an app somebody has already installed.
A mini app and a web app can be the same thing under two names, and what decides the name is where it opens rather than how it was built. You build one thing, and it shows up in two places. First, opened from your own link, in a browser or from a phone home screen: that is a web app, also called a progressive web app or PWA. Second, handed to someone inside another company's app: the same build is a mini app in the sense Apple means; its definition, published in November 2025, covers "software packages, scripts, or game content that are added after app installation", which is a long way of saying code that arrives inside an app somebody already installed. Both do the same three jobs. The reason the name matters is money: the payment rules are different on each, and Google opened a separate door on 22 July 2026.
So an app you open in Safari and save to your home screen is a web app. It is a perfectly good web app, it does the three jobs above, and it is not a mini app in the sense Apple means. Anyone telling you otherwise is either confused or hoping you are.
Apple named the category, which is unusual and useful
Category arguments are normally made by vendors. This one has a rarer kind of support: the largest mobile platform in the world wrote the term into its own developer documentation and defined the economics around it.
On 13 November 2025 Apple published the App Store Mini Apps Partner Program, which sets terms for a native host app distributing third-party mini apps inside itself. Two details are worth knowing beyond the definition quoted above.
The program has an eligibility condition that says something real about the model. Apple's own language:
"A qualifying mini app within the Mini Apps Partner Program is one that's put out by a person or entity that's not directly or indirectly controlled by you, nor under common control with you."
In plain terms: the mini apps have to come from independent parties, not from the company running the host app. Apple is describing a genuine third-party ecosystem, not a company shipping its own content in a wrapper. That condition is the clearest signal that Apple is treating this as a distribution model rather than a packaging trick.
Separately, Apple's review rules already describe this shape of business. A section called Creator Content covers apps that present content from a community of creators, give that community tools to make, share and earn, and deliver a single integrated experience to the customer. That section grants permission and hands you duties at the same time. You have to filter what gets published, give people a way to report a problem, actually answer those reports, be able to block someone who abuses the platform, and publish a way to contact you. Any platform in this category that has not thought about those is not ready to operate in it.
Google opened a different door. On 22 July 2026 it launched the Play catalogue access programme, which lets US-based third-party Android app stores access the Play catalogue and offer those apps in their own stores, with the download still completing through Google Play. It is a store-level opening rather than a content-level one, it is limited to the United States, and it exists because of litigation rather than product strategy. It is a different mechanism pointing the same direction.
We are not going to characterise our own standing in Apple's program on this page. It is a category definition, and our status is not what makes the category real.
Two rails, not two options
A mini app for a creator runs on two rails, and the payment rules differ between them. The first rail is the open web: the app opens from a link, gets shared, can be found by search and can be added to a phone home screen. The second rail is a store, added on top of the first rather than replacing it. Inside a store it comes down to one question, whether the thing sold is used inside the app or outside it. Apple's App Review Guidelines answer it both ways: guideline 3.1.1 requires in-app purchase, meaning Apple's own checkout, for anything unlocked within the app; guideline 3.1.3(e) forbids in-app purchase for physical goods used outside it; and guideline 3.1.3(d) grants one exception for live one-to-one services such as tutoring, which group sessions do not get. The consequence for a creator: the same mini app may take payment two different ways depending on what is sold and where the customer opened it.
The store rail adds a familiar purchase flow, the phone's own checkout and subscription settings, and takes nothing away from the independence of the web version; discovery still happens where your audience already is. Anyone who tells you there is one payment answer has not read the rules.
The store is a door. The experience belongs to the creator.
This has been tried before, and it closed
The obvious objection, before anybody else makes it.
The short answer is that this category has been tried once already and it closed. Koji let creators build mini apps on the web and ran a creator app store with more than 400 of them; Linktree acquired Koji in December 2023 and the product shut down on 31 January 2024. Two differences separate now from then, and both of them are open questions rather than answers. First, Apple published a mini app framework in November 2025 carrying a definition and an eligibility condition written by the platform itself, none of which existed in Koji's time. Second, production got cheap: building the app was still the barrier in 2023 and AI has largely removed it. Neither reason has been shown to be sufficient where Koji's version was not, and anyone answering that question confidently is guessing.
Both differences are real and neither is proven. If you are evaluating this category, that is the open question, and it is the question we would put to us.
There is a second thing worth knowing. When the technology press writes "mini app" in 2026 it usually still means WeChat or Telegram. The category is not established and being claimed; it is being built. That is slower and more expensive than entering a category that already exists, and it should be priced in by anyone betting on it, including us.
What is not the same as this
The category is easier to see against its neighbours.
AI app builders such as Lovable, Bolt, Replit and v0 generate a working web application from a description. They have moved down the stack fast, adding hosting, databases, domains and payments; Lovable offers Paddle as one merchant-of-record option inside Lovable Payments. What none of them has solved is distribution and discovery. Lovable's own documentation states there is no public discovery directory. Replit's own page states it is not an app store and does not distribute apps to mobile devices, and it now prepares your app and walks you through submitting it yourself, with your own Apple developer account and Apple's own review. Lovable built a directory of apps made on its platform in January 2025 and has since retired it. Building is close to solved. Being found is not.
Creator business platforms such as Kajabi, Podia and Teachable run the creator's business, and do it well. Courses, students, communities, email. Kajabi also gives you a branded native app with unlimited push notifications, listed on its pricing page as included on every plan and marked as a $199 a month value, published under your own Apple and Google developer accounts. The difference is architectural rather than featural: those platforms are where the business is administered, and the audience's experience is one of several outputs.
Link-in-bio and checkout tools such as Linktree, Stan, Beacons and Gumroad are excellent at the first tap and the transaction, and Linktree in particular owns the profile habit, link management and analytics. The difference is what happens after the tap: a Mini App gives the follower an icon on their home screen and a notification under the creator's own name to come back to. Gumroad, for that matter, does not have to be replaced; it can be one of the tools linked inside the Mini App.
Super apps such as WeChat and Telegram proved the mini app model works at enormous scale, and their version is platform-centred: the mini app lives inside the super app's ecosystem and the relationship is mediated by it. In this category the mini app lives around the creator.
Here is the gap that made us think this was a category rather than a feature. The branded-app vendors argue about native apps and app stores. The link-in-bio vendors argue about selling. Almost nobody connects "monetise your audience" to "installable, link-distributed app on the home screen." Two industries each saying half of the same sentence.
Is the label actually unclaimed?
We checked, because a category claim with no evidence is just a slogan.
Searching in August 2026 for companies positioning on "mini apps for creators" as a category, we did not find another one. The nearest conceptual neighbour, Wabi, raised a $20 million pre-seed led by a16z and positions on "personal software" rather than on a creator category, and its apps live inside its own network rather than being portable. Google's Opal calls itself a "no-code AI mini-app builder" and has no gallery or marketplace. Whop operates a genuine third-party web app store with hundreds of apps and, as far as we can tell from its own site, has never used the term.
Two things about that method. The search is ours rather than an auditor's, and a label nobody has taken is not automatically a label worth taking. What makes this one worth taking is the structural gap above, not the vacancy.
What is live today, and what is next
Here is where Easyapp stands today, and where it is going.
Live today. Your profile and links under your brand, a feed, guides and articles, and the tools you already use linked inside. Selling products and services through a shop, with payments in your own Stripe account. Paid events and ticketing. Appointment requests. Loyalty. Members-only access to content. Notifications sent in your own name to followers who add your Mini App to their home screen and opt in, up to 100 people on the free Creator plan and unlimited on Creator Pro. Reports: how people find you, what holds their interest and how many add you to their home screen, and how they respond to each notification. Your own address, home screen installation, and your own domain, free to connect through 31 December 2026 and a one-time $19.99 after that. All fifteen services are included in both plans.
Coming very soon. Your followers buying subscriptions and digital purchases inside Easyapp Store, through the App Store or Google Play checkout on their phone, with saved payment details and the familiar subscription settings for managing or cancelling. On iPhone those purchases run under Apple's Mini Apps Partner Program, so Apple's commission is 15% instead of the standard 30% on qualifying purchases; Easyapp's fee is 5% on Creator and 3% then 2% on Creator Pro, and Apple's or Google's fee applies separately. Today Member already gates access: you choose what is members-only and the content opens for the people who have it. What arrives next is the recurring charge itself, collected without a separate mobile app to publish, while your Mini App stays on the web at the same link. The launch follows technical integration and platform approvals. If your business runs on recurring revenue, that is the release to watch, and the Mini App you build now is the one your audience will already be inside on the day it lands. Easyapp Store itself is live today, on the web at easyapp.ai/store and as the Easyapp Store app, where Mini Apps are listed and found; being listed there is a channel rather than a result, and your Mini App keeps serving your own audience from its own link. What the Store adds next is the checkout inside it.
Also coming very soon. Store API, which runs in the opposite direction from the Link service: Link connects the tools you already use into your Mini App, and Store API opens Easyapp's membership, payment and other services to a web app built in Lovable, Bolt, Replit or your own code, including the Easyapp Store payment flow, without publishing a separate mobile app. No date; the launch follows technical integration and platform approvals. It is worth knowing if you already have a working web product and are choosing what to build on next.
Who this is for
If your income arrives from people who already know your name, this is written for you.
It suits a creator whose work depends on an ongoing relationship, whether or not they sell something today: coaches and consultants, educators, fitness, yoga and pilates instructors, finance and analysis publishers, fashion and beauty creators, community organisers, and independent builders with a working web product. It suits anyone whose followers come back, which is the same shape of problem whatever you make.
Where to start
If the description above matches a problem you actually have, the cheapest way to test the category is to build the thing rather than read more about it.
If you would rather keep reading first, the three useful pages are what a mini app actually is for the plain definition, mini app against native app if you are weighing up which kind of app you need, and what the platforms in this space cost if you would rather do the arithmetic. Otherwise, make your free Mini App: describe your work in a sentence, and a first version is assembled in two to three minutes.
If the question underneath all of this is why Easyapp at all, that page makes the whole case in one place, plans, services and prices included.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a mini app for creators?
A creator's own digital world: the content, the products and the services in one app that carries the creator's own name and icon. It opens from a link with no download, and on supported devices it can be added to a phone home screen, where the creator can send notifications in their own name to the followers who opt in. Selling is one use of it, not a condition. The distinguishing feature is not the size of the app but that a relationship normally spread across five tools lives in one place under the creator's brand.
How does Apple define a mini app?
As "software packages, scripts, or game content that are added after app installation and executed on the device, provided such code is written in HTML5 or JavaScript, or another language approved by Apple." That definition is specific to code running inside a native host app. An app opened from its own link and saved to the home screen is a web app, or PWA, and sits outside it.
Is a mini app the same as a PWA?
Not exactly, and the difference is where it opens rather than how it is built. The same web app can be both under two names: opened from its own link it is a web app or PWA, distributed inside a native host app it is a mini app in the sense Apple means.
Has anyone tried this before?
Yes, and it closed. Koji let creators build mini apps and ran a creator app store with more than 400 of them; Linktree acquired it in December 2023 and it shut down on 31 January 2024. Apple's framework and cheap AI-assisted production are the two things that are different now. Both are real and both are untested as answers to why this time would end differently.
Who is this category for?
Creators whose work depends on a relationship with an audience, whether or not they sell something today, and more broadly any brand whose followers come back. It suits a single-transaction business poorly and a company needing custom software not at all.
Update log
16 September 2026, night. Easyapp Store described as live, on the web at easyapp.ai/store and as the Easyapp Store app, where Mini Apps are listed and found; the footnote now says that in-app payments through Easyapp Store are coming very soon, which is the part that is not yet launched. The reasons-to-choose section and the title were added the same night.
16 September 2026, evening. The Coming very soon paragraph now states the Apple Mini Apps Partner Program rate, 15% instead of 30% on qualifying purchases inside Easyapp Store, next to Easyapp's own store fees; the launch sentence is unchanged.
16 September 2026. The category definition no longer makes selling a condition: a Mini App is the creator's content, products and services under their own brand, and a creator who sells nothing is inside the category from the first day. The Easyapp section now starts with Link in Bio, Link, Feed and Content, and describes Reports as the three steps of the relationship. Kajabi's branded app corrected to the pricing page reading of 16 September 2026, with the help centre disagreement noted. Examples narrowed to the creator groups we write for. Wording that framed a social feed as access the creator pays for, and reaching followers as something done without their permission, replaced with the opt-in mechanics. Store API added to what is coming. The closing link now goes to the free plan. Publishing time corrected: live when you tap Publish, with no review step; the earlier "one to two hours" was wrong. Member described as one membership type with members-only access; the "up to three tiers" detail was wrong.
Sources
Apple's mini app definition, the Mini Apps Partner Program eligibility condition, guideline 1.2.1 Creator Content and its obligations, and guidelines 3.1.1, 3.1.3(d) and 3.1.3(e) on payments: Apple Developer documentation and App Review Guidelines, read 25 August 2026 and re-checked 28 August 2026. The program was announced on Apple's developer news on 13 November 2025. Google's Play catalogue access programme terms, launch date and US restriction: Google Play developer support documentation, read 25 August 2026. Lovable's and Replit's statements about discovery and app distribution: their own documentation and product pages, read 25 August 2026. Koji's scale, the Linktree acquisition and the shutdown date: the companies' own announcement of 14 December 2023, which states "over 400 mini apps published to its app store", plus contemporaneous technology press for the 31 January 2024 shutdown. Some press coverage of the same acquisition says 200 rather than 400; we use the figure in the companies' own release. Wabi's funding and positioning: a16z's own announcement, read 28 August 2026. Kajabi's branded app: Kajabi's pricing page, read 16 September 2026, lists it as included on all plans and marks it as a $199 a month value; Kajabi's help centre, read the same day, still describes it as included on Pro with a $199 a month add-on below. The pricing page wording is used here, and the disagreement is set out in our fee data set. The developer-account requirement is from the help centre, read 28 August 2026.