22.7k installs, into the US Top Grossing top 25: an app that makes your cat dance, and how it collects the money

ViralPet, from a small Istanbul studio, does one thing in one sentence: upload a pet photo, apply a template, get a short video of your pet dancing. There are over thirty apps like this in the App Store, and most have few users. ViralPet has been live for five weeks. It has only 22.7k installs on Google Play, yet it sits in the top 25 of the US and UK Video Players & Editors Top Grossing charts, surrounded by products with millions or tens of millions of installs. What drives it isn't the product, it's how it collects money. Below: what it is, where the money comes from, where the traffic comes from, who it competes with, and whether you can follow it.

Someone who paid $6.99 and never got their video

In Oct 2026 15, a user named C R gave ViralPet one star on Google Play. He thought a subscription meant unlimited generation. He paid the $6.99 weekly plan, but after the 100 included credits ran out, his video was stuck at 98%. "I still didn't get my video… I feel stupid for paying." 35 people marked the review helpful. Four days later another user wrote: yearly plan at $35, made 3 videos, credits gone, and you have to buy more. "This is robbery."

In the same week, the app sat around #20–25 on the US Google Play Video Players & Editors Top Grossing chart. Put those two things together and the picture is clear: the design is built to get each person who arrives to pay as much as possible.

What it is

ViralPet: AI Pet Video Maker, developed by Origin5 Labs (Origin Five Labs Teknoloji A.Ş., Levent, Istanbul). The Android version launched in Oct 1, and the iOS version followed in Nov 4.

Three steps: upload a clear pet photo → pick a template (dancing, acting, dressing up for Halloween, royal portraits, singing karaoke while driving…) → get a video or image in seconds. The store page says "new templates every week, following current trends" and "designed for pets only, so fur looks like fur." The web version at web.viralpetai.com works without installing the app. Its homepage is split into sections called "Viral This Week," "TikTok Hit," "Halloween Costumes" and "Dancing Cats," with about thirty categories in total.

Where the money comes from: no subscription, no generation

The store description is blunt: "ViralPet Premium unlocks creation." Without paying, you can't make anything. There are only two subscription tiers:

So the subscription is just the entry ticket. Making videos costs credits, and you buy more when you run out. This approach keeps revenue per user high, and it's also the main source of one-star reviews. The top three negative reviews all say the same thing: "I paid for the subscription and still have to buy more credits." The developer replied to each one with the same line: "The subscription should include credits. If you didn't receive them, please contact us." The store rating comes from 4.2,367 reviews (Google Play, 11-06). The negative reviews haven't dragged the overall score down.

It doesn't publish revenue, so we can only look at rankings. In the US Top Grossing chart for this category on Google Play, from 10-29 to 11-06 it held rank 21–24, and in the UK it held 17–21. The #21 spot in the US is vivago.ai at 58.7M installs, #22 is Bending Spoons' Splice (10.3M), and #24 is vidIQ (8.44M). Fofi, a pet AI video app with 670k installs, ranks 102 on the same chart. Measured by installs, ViralPet earns more per user than these products by more than an order of magnitude (inferred from the ranking and install comparison).

Where the traffic came from: one burst of paid pulls, then renewals holding it up

Install curve is very concentrated (third-party estimate): 10-17 ~2,800 → 10-20 ~4,000 → 10-21 about +6,100 a day, 10-22 about +4,200 → 10-25 ~18.7k. After that only a few hundred a day, and dozens a day by early November (Google Play installs, 11-06).

Downloads are falling, but its revenue rank hasn't moved: over the same period it dropped from #59 to #134 in the UK free Photo & Video chart, fell out of the US free chart's top 10-31 after 200, while the US Top Grossing chart still holds it in the twenties. That fits weekly subscriptions renewing week after week to carry revenue.

Where that 10k in installs came from can't be found from outside:

• Paid acquisition setup is there: on viralpetai.com, both the App Store and Google Play buttons carry Adjust attribution links. Only teams preparing to run ads do this.
• Google Ads: searched by company name, product name and domain 11-02, no active campaigns found.
• Meta Ads: not verified.
• TikTok, X, press: none found. TikTok search turns up no videos for it, @viralpetai has 17 followers, X has 0 posts in the last ~30 days, and the only write-up is an auto-generated page on a download site.
• Store search: the title uses the category keyword "AI Pet Video Maker", short description "Pet Photo・Effects・Dance Studio", likely a major source of organic installs (inference).

The most likely explanation is a paid test in late October; once installs came in, conversion and renewal were good enough to keep it on the Top Grossing chart (inference).

Who it's competing with

Dozens, and they look nearly identical:

ViralPet has nothing others can't get: the model is public, the templates copy TikTok trends, and the same positioning is easy to find everywhere. What separates it from the dozens of similar apps that never gained traction is three things: charging from day one, offering only weekly and annual subscriptions, and launching on Android before iOS, plus having attribution set up and ready for paid acquisition. Origin Five Labs is also building the scanning app Scanova and the packaging helper Packwell, each with its own domain and the same terms page, which looks like a studio that tests products in batches and spends more only on what works (inference).

Why a small Android category

The Play Video Players & Editors Top Grossing chart has a lower bar than iOS, and far lower than the overall chart. A small product doesn't need many users, just enough paying per user to make the top 25. Also, iOS is crowded with similar apps (most of the table above is iOS), while Android is much emptier. ViralPet validated paid conversion on Play first and only went to iOS in 4 Nov; the iOS version still has just 0 ratings.

If it were you

One-line take: you can follow it, but don't expect to copy the product. What's worth copying is the monetization and paid-acquisition playbook. The best opening is an audience or language that ViralPet and the Turkish studios haven't seriously pursued, and cleaning up the thing it gets criticized for most (buying credits on top of the subscription).

Who it suits: a 1–2 person who has run Meta or Google UAC ads before and knows the customer acquisition cost per paying user; someone who can plug in a video generation API and ship new templates every week. Anyone who has built a subscription utility app is the best fit.

Who it doesn't suit: anyone hoping to win on product features (no moat, everyone can plug in the same model); anyone who won't spend on ads and just waits for organic store traffic (most of the thirty-plus similar apps died that way); anyone unwilling to handle refunds and one-star reviews (a hard paywall will draw complaints, and you'll need to watch Play's refund and rating policies).

How to do it:

• Launch on Android first, use the category keyword as the title, and pick a category with a low Top Grossing bar;
• Hard paywall + weekly subscription, but state on the paywall how many videos the subscription includes, so people don't find out after paying that they still need to buy credits. This is ViralPet's biggest source of bad reviews and the clearest way to differ from it;
• Update templates weekly and for holidays (next up: Christmas, New Year, Valentine's Day), and launch the web version at the same time so ads can land directly on it;
• Change the audience or language: pet owners in Japanese, Korean, German or Brazilian Portuguese; or change the subject (babies, family members in old photos, your own car) and use the same model.

How to get users: the creative is the generated video itself, a cat dancing to a trending track, vertical, 15 seconds, ending with the app on screen. Start with small test budgets on Meta and Google UAC, with attribution links on the website. Organic TikTok traffic and creators are also worth trying (PetLive got 330k views from a single creator video), but ViralPet itself didn't go that route.

Timing: the Christmas template needs to go live in early December, the last pet content peak of the year. Ideally the Android version and paywall are working by the end of November.

Signs you've read this wrong: (1) ViralPet drops out of the US or UK Top Grossing top 50 in December, meaning its revenue was just the tail of one paid push and weekly subscriptions aren't retaining people; (2) bad reviews keep piling up and the rating falls below 3.5 or the app gets pulled from Play, meaning the hard-paywall-plus-credits model doesn't work on Play; (3) big players like CapCut or PixVerse make pet templates free, one-tap, and updated weekly, flattening paying room in this category.

Data and sources

• Installs and charts: Google Play installs and category rankings (10-29 to 11-06); daily installs for mid-to-late October are third-party AppstoreSpy estimates.
• Prices and reviews: Google Play store listing and user reviews (read 11-06); weekly $6.99 and annual about $35 come from user reviews, not verified by purchase.
• Attribution links and template categories: viralpetai.com and web.viralpetai.com (11-06).
• Ads: Google Ads Transparency Center (11-02); Meta not verified; TikTok and X searched by keyword (11-06).
• "Revenue per user an order of magnitude higher", "paid test" and "store search is the main source" are all inferences.