Vertical Drama Apps

Crazy Maple Studio, a COL Group company. 70M+ monthly users and 2.7M daily (up 125% year over year), ~3,000 titles in 22 languages, and roughly 70% of the US market. Gross consumer spend reached $1.2B in 2025 (Appfigures / Sensor Tower); parent COL Group booked CNY 5.72B (~$800M) in its FY2025 accounts — the gap is the app-store cut and refunds. The catch sits in the same books: about $27M of monthly user acquisition against $30M of monthly revenue.

The largest catalogue we index — 2,902 titles, more than any other app on this site. Around 50 million monthly users, and quarterly in-app revenue of roughly $140M, level with ReelShort (Sensor Tower). Strongest on romance, revenge and translated content, and the first vertical app to pass a Hollywood streamer on daily usage in a major market: 27.9 minutes a day in Mexico against Prime Video's 23.8 (Omdia, February 2026).

红果短剧 — the largest vertical drama platform in the world, and the one that proved the format does not need a paywall. A ByteDance subsidiary launched in mid-2023, Hongguo is free and entirely ad-funded. Monthly users climbed 212M (June 2025) → 236M (Q3 2025) → 245M (October 2025) → 304M at the February 2026 Spring Festival peak, per QuestMobile, on more than 100 million daily users (Caixin). Users spend 93 to 120 minutes a day inside it. It is also where Chinese AI enforcement bites hardest: 670 AI-made dramas sanctioned out of 15,000 in Q1 2026, and 1,718 titles pulled (Global Times).

TikTok's own microdrama platform, launched in January 2026 in the United States and Brazil. Free and ad-funded — the US App Store listing carries no in-app purchase at all, which makes it the Western mirror of ByteDance's Hongguo rather than a rival to the coin apps. It is also the first to sign a Hollywood showrunner: Issa Rae's Hoorae Media released Screen Time on 29 April 2026, a 27-episode thriller that drew close to 75 million views in seven days, a watch-time record for both platforms. Read the second number alongside the first, though — episode one took 22 million views, episode twenty-seven took 2.4 million. An 89% drop-off. The launch figure measures acquisition; it says nothing about whether anyone stayed.

Holywater Tech, out of Kyiv, runs My Drama, My Passion and My Muse — 85M+ users across the group (Deadline). Its $22M Series A in January 2026, led by Horizon Capital with Endeavor Catalyst and Wheelhouse, is the largest microdrama raise outside Asia. Revenue tripled in 2025 to around $70M, Fox Entertainment holds equity with 200+ titles committed, and ten of SocialPeta's February 2026 top twenty were its titles. Watch the audience shift rather than the funding: My Drama's male share of monthly users hit 30.3% in Q1 2026, up 28-fold in seven quarters.

A COL Group platform — same parent as ReelShort. Content in 11 languages across 240+ countries, on iOS, Android and web. Behind the Neymar Jr. World Cup 2026 microdrama franchise, the format's first real bet on event-driven sports fiction.

Published by NETSTORY PTE. LTD. out of Singapore, NetShort runs the steepest price in the category — $29.99 a week on the App Store, against a coin path where a 68-episode series lands around $50. Roughly $15M a month and ~$180M annualised, growing 171% quarter over quarter, and one of four apps that together hold just over half the Gulf's monthly users (Omdia / Media City Qatar, May 2026). India is its fastest lane: +193% month over month in January 2026.

Leading the charge on AI-generated live-action dramas, and the first platform to send an AI production to the top of its own chart (Too Late! The Daughter of Olympus, April 2026). Its centre of gravity is Southeast Asia — Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines are its top markets — where revenue hit $7.2M in May 2025, up 279% in a single month (InsighTrackr).

Headquartered in Singapore under Chinese ownership and launched in September 2024, DramaWave reached #2 worldwide on monthly users by April 2025 and 15M+ MAU by December. 53M cumulative downloads, 72% of them across Southeast Asia and Latin America, and 42% of revenue from the United States. Its peak day — 16 April 2025 — brought in $520K. More than 80% of that revenue is paid, not advertising.

Built by Spoon Labs in Seoul and financed by games publisher Krafton — KRW 120B in equity (roughly $86M), taking Krafton to about 42.7% by December 2025 with a call option toward 50%. 200 originals in 2025 and 400+ planned for 2026. Half its revenue comes from the United States, and its audience breaks the format's stereotype: 70% aged 35 and over, 60% women. In March 2026 it shipped Bloodbound Luna, the first fully AI-produced English-language microdrama — fewer than ten people, eight weeks.

Built by Mebigo Labs (Kuku Technologies, also behind audio app Kuku FM) for India and India alone. 36.7M monthly users in the country and more than 41% of the local market (Media Partners Asia), 100M+ cumulative downloads, a catalogue of 5,000+ shows and 150,000+ episodes in Hindi, Telugu, Kannada and Bangla. Subscription only, no advertising — INR 899 a year. Cricketer MS Dhoni is both investor and brand ambassador, and the audience is over 90% male, the mirror image of the Western apps. The group has filed confidentially for an IPO at ₹2,500–3,500 crore.

Focuses on higher production value with a smaller, tighter catalogue. Two thirds of its revenue — 66% — comes from North America, one of the most US-weighted revenue mixes in the category.

The category's listed outlier — owned by Mega Matrix (NYSE American: MPU), which means its numbers are filed rather than briefed. They tell an uncomfortable story: $26.1M in 2025 against $36.18M in 2024, down 27.9% year over year, on 10M+ monthly users. The only platform on this page whose audited revenue is falling.

Launched as MicroCo in August 2025 and renamed aTwist in April 2026, this Cineverse–Banyan Ventures joint venture is the closest thing the format has to a Hollywood establishment play: Jana Winograde (ex-Showtime) as CEO, Susan Rovner (ex-NBCUniversal, ex-Warner Bros. Television) as chief content officer, Lloyd Braun (ex-WME, ex-ABC Entertainment) as executive chairman. Its distinguishing move is off-app — a National CineMedia deal putting vertical drama into cinema pre-shows across 18,500+ screens in 1,650+ theatres, the first time the format has been sold to a seated audience rather than a scrolling one. BET Studios signed on in May 2026 to co-develop microseries windowed across both cable and vertical. Unscripted budget around $200,000, with 10 to 15 weeks of post.

Strong focus on multi-language content distribution, reaching audiences across linguistic boundaries.

Growing presence in social media advertising, per SocialPeta's public weekly ranking.