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The app store didn't die. It multiplied into ten.
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- AbnAsia.org
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For fifteen years, distribution was a short list. You shipped to the App Store, then to Google Play, and if you were enterprise you shipped a sales team. Users opened a store, searched, installed.
That is not how anyone finds software now. They ask an assistant, and the assistant either can call your product or it cannot. The store did not close — it split into ten of them, and most product teams have listed in none.
You added AI to your product. Nineteen thousand other companies added their product to AI. That is the difference between having a feature and being reachable.
The ten directories
- Claude — 9,808 connectors, +845 in the last seven days.
- ChatGPT — 9,292 plugins, +816 in the last seven days.
- Google Connected Apps — 57 apps, +1 this week; opened 28 October inside Gemini and AI Mode.
- Meta Muse — 65 connectors, +2 this week. Meta reviews security and legal before listing.
- Grok — 44 connectors, unchanged this week. Custom MCP servers on paid plans.
- Microsoft 365 Copilot Agent Store — submit through Partner Center; each customer's IT admin switches you on.
- Salesforce AgentExchange — AppExchange and the Slack Marketplace merged into it in April; 1,000+ agents and MCP servers.
- AWS Marketplace, AI Agents & Tools — 900+ providers at launch; MCP servers listed, free listings allowed.
- Cursor Marketplace — plugins bundle your MCP server, skills and rules; one-click install.
- The official MCP Registry — the open catalogue. Publish here first; the other directories pull from it.
Two speeds, one gap
Claude and ChatGPT add more than 800 apps a week between them. Google added one. That is not a judgement on Google's product — it is a description of where the supply is going right now, and it should decide where you spend your first month.
The second thing that matters is not the count. It is the review. Meta checks security and legal before listing; Microsoft routes you through Partner Center and then through each customer's IT administrator. Being reachable is now a compliance exercise as much as a marketing one.
The registry is the point
Every one of those directories can pull from the same source. Publish an MCP server to the open registry and you have one artefact to maintain, one security posture to defend, and ten places that can discover you.
One MCP server
Your product, exposed as tools an assistant can actually call — with scoped credentials, not a customer password.
Published to the open registry
The canonical listing: name, description, tools, auth model, security contact.
Directories pull from it
Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and the enterprise catalogues ingest the same source, so a fix lands everywhere.
Assistants can reach you
The user asks, the assistant calls, your product answers. No store search, no install.
What this means for a product team
The work is not "write an integration". It is four things, in order: expose the product as tools with narrow, revocable scopes; make the security story reviewable before someone asks; publish the canonical listing; then work the directories that match where your buyers already are.
We do this for a living — MCP servers, connector work, and the unglamorous part of getting through a security review without a rewrite. The products that win the next two years are not the ones with the most AI features. They are the ones an assistant can reach, safely, in the ten places people now look.
The app store didn't die. It multiplied. Being absent used to cost you one listing; now it costs you ten.
Source: connector and plugin counts compiled November 2026 from the public directories listed above; weekly deltas are as reported at the time of writing.
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