More than most · 156 of 175 storefronts
What is censored in Namibia?
The App Store in Namibia looks typical: about as many widely-used apps are missing here as in most others Apple operates. 16.3% of the apps with 10,000+ user ratings worldwide that we have tested here are unavailable but still available somewhere else — 610 of 3,738, against 18.7% for the typical storefront.
610 widely-used apps unavailable here3,738 widely-used apps tested here = 16.3%
The 1,140 apps unavailable in Namibia are still sold in other App Stores — a free second Apple ID can install them. How it works — GreatFireVPN ↗
What this number counts, and what it cannot show
Of the apps we have tested here that have at least 10,000 user ratings worldwide and are still on sale somewhere, the share you cannot get here. Both sides of the fraction are what we tested in this storefront, so an app we have not tested here is in neither and cannot move the figure either way — which is the whole reason this is a share and not a count. Nothing about how widely an app is distributed enters it, so an app sold in one other storefront counts exactly as much as one sold in all 175.
610 of the 3,738 widely-used apps we have tested here are unavailable — 16.3%. · median 18.7%
This correlates 0.51 with how many apps we have tested here — better than a raw count of missing apps, slightly worse than the fixed-basket count it replaced, because which widely-used apps we happened to test here is not a random sample of them. Its other weakness is shared by every version of this measure: a region-locked app is missing from nearly every storefront, so about three-quarters of a typical share is a floor almost everyone stands on. That is why the middle of the ranking is much flatter than its ends, and why a rank in the middle should not be read as a finding.
Measured Oct 8, 2026
Which notable apps are missing, by kind
The 257 apps above, sorted by what kind of app each one is. We watched 22 of them disappear from this storefront; the rest have been absent for as long as we have been testing here.
How these kinds are worked out
257 widely-used apps are missing here, sorted by what they are. Every one is classified from its name and Apple's own category, so nothing is left out and nothing depends on a list being kept up to date: 71 of the 257 fall into a kind we defined — VPNs, news, messaging, privacy tools and so on — and the rest are shown under Apple's own category. Within each kind the most-reviewed apps come first, because the point is which apps people actually use.
Each kind is shown twice over: the apps in it people actually use, and the same apps by when they went. Of the 257, we watched 22 disappear from this storefront, 1 of them in the last year. The rest have been absent for as long as we have been testing here.
Names are matched conservatively, and the misses are the deliberate kind: an app called "IP Location Changer" is a VPN and is caught by name, while a privacy browser is filed under privacy rather than VPN. Apple's category is used wherever it is the better answer — every news app it labels `News` is one, whereas a name rule for "news" also catches a football-scores app and a jobs board. Dates are when we last saw an app available here, and we have been testing this storefront since Aug 4, 2020 — anything that went before then has no date in our record.
VPN and proxy4
Social and messaging21
News11
Privacy and security1
Most used
Most recently gone
Religion1
Most used
Most recently gone
LGBTQ+4
Dating24
Gambling and betting5
Shopping26
Most used
- Walmart: Shopping & Savings
- Vinted: Shop & sell pre-loved
- Wish: Shop and Save
- Zalando – fashion & clothing
- OfferUp Buy & Sell Marketplace
and 21 more
Most recently gone
Entertainment24
Most used
and 19 more
Most recently gone
Games21
Most recently gone
Finance15
Most used
and 10 more
Most recently gone
Lifestyle15
Most used
and 10 more
Most recently gone
Food and drink14
Most used
and 9 more
Most recently gone
Utilities14
Most used
and 9 more
Most recently gone
Productivity9
Most recently gone
Music81 in the last year
Most recently gone
Travel7
Business6
Most recently gone
Photo and video6
Most used
and 1 more
Most recently gone
Books5
Health and fitness5
Medical3
Most recently gone
Weather3
Most recently gone
Education1
Most used
Most recently gone
Graphics and design1
Most used
Most recently gone
Navigation1
Most used
Most recently gone
Reference1
Most used
Most recently gone
Sports1
Most used
Most recently gone
How we test
The total at the top of the page is every app we have tested here that we cannot get but that is still available somewhere — 11.5% of the 9,913 apps we have tested in this storefront, at any size. How many we have tested differs eightfold between storefronts, so that total compares poorly across countries. It is the share beside it, whose denominator is what we tested here, that is comparable.
Availability is checked against Apple's own catalog servers for every storefront, the same way the App Store app asks. "Unavailable" means Apple's servers say the app cannot be offered in that country — it does not say who asked for the removal. Removals initiated by the developer and removals demanded by governments look the same from outside; the history and context on this page are how we tell them apart.