14k installs and into the Saudi Top Grossing chart: LigaChat and the low bar of Middle East voice chat rooms
What it is A voice chat room app for Gulf Arab users: take the mic, send virtual gifts, buy premium noble titles, and earn through in-app gift purchases.
Why it took off It hasn't really taken off: Gulf voice-room money is concentrated in a few big gift-sending whales, and the Saudi social Top Grossing bar is so low that 14k installs can get you charted. Add paid hosts recruited in Nigeria and the Philippines to fill the rooms.
CHow you could follow Don't build another Arabic voice-room app to fight head-on in Saudi Arabia. Teams with livestream operations experience could target narrower audiences like Arabs in Europe, and first see whether they can hold a spot on Top Grossing in storefronts like the Netherlands and France.
- Data (updated daily) · first launch 2026-07-09 · 11-07 installs 13,777
Android · Total installs worldwide Data 2026-10-31 → 2026-11-07 (8 days, 4 observations). Google's detail page only refreshes install counts every other day, so a flat day doesn't mean nobody installed.Android · Ratings count (cumulative) Data 2026-10-31 → 2026-11-07 (8 days, 4 observations)
A little-known company in Guangzhou shipped an Arabic voice-room app. Four months after launch it has only 14k installs worldwide, yet it reached the Saudi Google Play social Top Grossing chart, and its iOS version once ranked #33 in Qatar. It has nothing special about it, and that's exactly why it's worth a look: how low the bar for this Middle East voice-room business is, and how crowded it has become.
A five-star review about paying wages
In Oct 2026 11, a user named Mercy Edeh left a five-star review on LigaChat's Google Play page:
As the African Manager, I encourage people to join and work with us. Today, we received our salaries, and I sincerely thank the management for paying the African region. Please keep up the good work, and kindly add more slot games to the app.
Eighteen days later the official reply came: "Thank you for being our Africa region manager... paying partners on time is our top priority."
That review is now one of the most visible on the store page. It makes clear how the app works: users pay in the Gulf, while the people who chat and fill the rooms are paid in Nigeria and the Philippines. Other reviews fit too: Aina Aina (08-20), with a Nigerian name, wrote "great app to earn online," and Jerwin Dalina (08-21) from the Philippines wrote a long five-star review ending with a Philippine flag.
What it is
LigaChat is an Arabic group voice chat app: open rooms, take the mic, send virtual gifts to people, buy "noble" titles and entry effects, and compete on charm and wealth leaderboards. In-app purchases run from $0.49 to $9.99 per item (Google Play store page). The developer is Guangzhou Huiwang Technology Development Co., Ltd., based in Nancun Town, Panyu District, with a customer service mobile number starting +86. The website ligavoice.com is a single Arabic/English landing page with two download buttons.
It launched on Google Play in Jul 9 and on the App Store in Jul 20. In some storefronts the iOS title reads "LigaChat - غرفة دردشة" (Arabic for "chat room"), stuffing the category term into the title. The feature list matches hundreds of packages in this category, and Mercy's "add more slot games" shows the rooms also have mini-games, which is standard for this type of app.
The numbers aren't that big
| Timeline | Google Play cumulative installs | Daily new installs (approx.) |
|---|---|---|
| 7-28 | 646 | 40 |
| End of September | 5,662 | 35–100 |
| 9-30 → 10-13 | 8,951 | 185–285 |
| 10-30 → 11-05 | 13,777 | About 200 |
The figures before October are third-party estimates, so don't take single-day numbers seriously. What is visible: installs sped up once from late September to early October, then held steady at around 200 a day, without any real "takeoff."
The ratings look odd. Of 142 ratings, 1-star: 40, 3-star: 20, 5-star: 81, and there are no 2-star or 4-star ratings at all. Over days 10-31 to 11-05, 5-star ratings rose by 25 while 1-star rose by only 3. Normal users don't rate this way, and combined with the reviews above, staff and hosts are likely rating (inferred, unverified). The store page shows 11-06 at 3.6 stars.
Content and spread are close to zero: TikTok searches for "LigaChat" and "ليجا شات" return no videos, X has no posts mentioning it in the last 90 days, there is no media coverage, and search only turns up APK aggregator sites.
So why did it make the chart
Not because it's well made, but because the chart is easy to get onto.
The bar for Saudi social Top Grossing is low. 11-06 Of the top 200 on this chart, 13 have fewer than 50K installs, and LigaChat sits at #176 with 14K. Top Grossing ranks by revenue, and voice-room revenue comes from a few "big spenders" sending gifts, so a new app with just a handful of paying users can break into the chart.
iOS is even more extreme. Its iOS version has 0 ratings in every storefront, yet from Oct 28 it intermittently appeared on the social Top Grossing charts in 10 storefronts: best in Qatar at #33 (10-30), Jordan 91–133, the UAE 121–187, plus the Netherlands (77–167, on the chart almost daily), Norway, France, Austria and Romania. An app with no ratings reaching Top Grossing means very few downloads, with money concentrated among a tiny group. European storefronts like the Netherlands and Norway also charting most likely means Arabs living in Europe are paying (inferred).
The supply side uses a standard industry playbook. Hire paid hosts and "regional managers" in Nigeria and the Philippines to keep the rooms full of talking, and pay them on time. Paying wages then becomes the reviews on the store page.
No sign of large-scale Meta or Google advertising; growth comes in small, irregular bursts that don't look like paid buying (unverified).
Who it's competing with
Almost everyone. It's one of the most crowded tracks for Chinese going-global teams.
| Product | Scale (Google Play) | Compared with LigaChat |
|---|---|---|
| SUGO | 81M installs, #9 in the Saudi social Top Grossing chart | Top player, mature host and agency ecosystem. Same features, thousands of times the scale |
| Chamet / Poppo Live | 78M / 48M installs, #2 / #3 | Live video plus one-on-one calls, deeper monetization |
| Yalla | Listed company | Leader in Middle East voice-room apps, local brand |
| زافالايف (listed 2025-12) | 430k installs, #7 | Also a new Arabic voice-room app, reached the top 10 in under a year. New packages can climb fast, but LigaChat didn't |
| Nubee, AsalStar, Bishar Chat, NovoLive, HiJoy | 12k–35k installs, #82–#177 | Same batch, same scale, same template as LigaChat |
Hawk-Voice (صقر شات) is often assumed to be the same company as LigaChat. Checking the developer info, it isn't: on Play it's Hada Equipment Rental, LLC, and the iOS seller is a Shenzhen company called HiChat. They just use the same template.
What to learn from it
- Gulf voice-room apps can reach the Top Grossing chart with very few installs. 14k installs got one onto the Saudi chart, and a 0 rating landed it #33 in Qatar. In this category the money is deep, not wide.
- Arab users in Europe look like an underserved paying audience (inference). Social Top Grossing charts in the Netherlands, Norway, France and Austria have low thresholds, and even a small app can stay on them for a long time.
- Hosts can be sourced from lower-cost regions, and paying them on time is itself a reputation signal. Everyone does this, but LigaChat's reviews put it front and center.
If it were you
Grade C: worth learning from, not worth chasing. LigaChat itself didn't break out. What it proves is that the barrier to entry in this category is low, not that the opportunity is big.
Who it's for: global teams already running Middle East or Southeast Asian voice and live apps, with host agencies, payment channels and Gulf operating experience. For you, it points to the small European Arab audience.
Who it's not for: solo indie devs and small teams with no live-streaming operations experience. The hard part isn't the code (voice-room apps have ready-made source code and audio/video SDKs). It's recruiting and paying hosts, tuning gift economics, local Gulf operations, content moderation and payment compliance. Dozens of same-template newcomers launched alongside LigaChat, and most will stall at its scale.
How to do it: if you must, don't build yet another Arabic voice room and head-to-head into Saudi Arabia. Target a narrower audience, such as Gulf and Levantine Arabs living in Europe, or one country or dialect. First check whether iOS can stay on the social Top Grossing charts in the Netherlands, Germany and France, then decide whether to spend more.
How to acquire users: on the supply side, follow industry practice and recruit paid hosts and regional managers in Nigeria, the Philippines and Egypt. On the demand side, rely on Arabic category keywords in store titles and small paid campaigns in Gulf and European Arabic-speaking markets. Don't expect organic TikTok traffic. LigaChat and its peers don't have it either.
When to move: no rush. This category has always been here and always crowded. The thing to watch is the European storefront thresholds. Once the peers all move to European stores, there's no point.
Signs you've read it wrong: (1) LigaChat reached the top 50 of the Saudi social Top Grossing chart before early 2027, or hit 100k installs. That would mean small teams still have room here, so raise the grade. (2) The reverse: if LigaChat and peers like Nubee and AsalStar mostly drop off the charts or get pulled within three months, the chart spots were short-lived cold-start subsidies, and even the 'learning' part should be discounted.
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Data and sources: Google Play store page (installs, ratings, review text, developer info, 11-06); Google Play Saudi and App Store regional social Top Grossing charts (10-28 to 11-06); install curves before October are third-party estimates; iTunes public API; TikTok, X, web search (11-06). Anything marked 'inference' or 'unverified' is inference.
Research notes: competitor table, acquisition evidence, full research report
- Competitors
Name Where Launched Scale How it differs from this one SUGO: Voice Chat Party Android 2021-06 81.1M installs, #9 on Saudi Play social Top Grossing Veteran leader with a mature host ecosystem. LigaChat has the same features at thousands of times the scale Chamet / Poppo Live Android 2019-11 / 2022-05 78.4M / 47.9M installs, #2 / #3 on Saudi social Top Grossing Live video plus one-on-one calls, deeper monetization. LigaChat only does voice rooms زافالايف(com.waig.nalo) Android 2025-12 430k installs, #7 on Saudi social Top Grossing Also a new Arabic voice-room app, reached the top 10 in under a year. LigaChat never reached that scale Yalla iOS 2016 Listed company, leader in Middle East voice-room apps Local brand and operations, which LigaChat lacks YoHo / 4Fun lite / Sawa / Haza Android 2018–2023 700k–27M installs, #15–#121 on Saudi social Top Grossing Veteran Arabic Gulf voice-room app with deeper localization Hawk-Voice Group Chat Rooms(صقر شات) Android 2026-04 59k installs, #104 on Saudi social Top Grossing The recall card says it's the same entity. Checking shows it isn't (Play developer Hada Equipment Rental, iOS seller Shenzhen HiChat). It's a same-template competitor Nubee / AsalStar / Bishar Chat / NovoLive / HiJoy Android 2026-06 to 08 12k–35k installs, #82–#177 on Saudi social Top Grossing Same batch, same scale, same template. No meaningful difference - Where users come from
- Verified Host / regional manager recruitment (Africa and the Philippines, paid): top pinned review by Mercy Edeh 10-11: 'As the African Manager...we received our salaries...paying the African region'; official 10-29 reply calls her Africa Region Manager; Aina Aina 08-20: 'online earning'
- Inferred review prompting / internal rating: star histogram: 1-star 40, 2-star 0, 3-star 20, 4-star 0, 5-star 81,5; over 5 days 25,1-star +3; only 4 written reviews
- Inference Paid acquisition (Meta / Google, Gulf): the ad library doesn't track this app. Growth comes in bursts of small volume, not like large-scale spending
- Verified Store search ASO: iOS title 'Liga Chat: Audio Rooms Party', some storefronts 'LigaChat - غرفة دردشة', with category keywords stuffed in
- Verified iOS Top Grossing exposure across storefronts: #33 in Qatar, 77–167 in the Netherlands, plus social Top Grossing charts in the UAE, Jordan, Oman, Norway, Romania, France, Austria and Nigeria (appstore library 10-28 to 11-06)
- Inference Content / creators / media: TikHub 0 videos, x-radar 0 posts, web search only turns up aggregator sites
Why LigaChat (ligavoice.com) got onto the charts
Channel: Google Play (also an iOS app with the same name) | Research date: 2026-11-06 | Data: googleplay / appstore libraries (agent-im server), Google Play store page, iTunes lookup, Brave / Jina search, TikHub, x-radar
Bottom line
LigaChat never really 'broke out'. It's a standard Middle East Arabic voice-room app from a little-known Guangzhou company (Guangzhou Huiwang Science & Technology Development Co., Ltd.). Its features are off-the-shelf: voice rooms, gifts, nobility tiers, wealth rankings. It reached the Saudi social Top Grossing chart for two reasons. The chart's threshold is low (#176), and voice-room monetization depends on a few big Gulf 'whales' sending gifts. It also followed industry practice by recruiting paid hosts and regional managers in Nigeria and the Philippines (direct evidence in the store reviews). By 11-06 it had 13,777 installs worldwide, no content buzz, no media coverage, and no paid acquisition that we can trace. It's one of several hundred small apps in this category that are still alive.
1. How to read the data
Install curve (googleplay library app_day_ext; the 7–October figures are AppstoreSpy estimates, so don't trust single days):
| Period | Total installs | Average daily new installs (approx.) |
|---|---|---|
| 07-09 launch → 07-28 | 646 | 40 |
| August | 815 → about 3,500 | 50–100 (08-17 on a single day: 422) |
| September | 3,792 → 5,662 | 35–100 |
| 09-30 → 10-13 | 5,662 → 8,951 | 185–285 (first acceleration) |
| 10-14 → 10-29 | 9,152 → 11,706 | 1–611, in bursts |
| 10-30 → 11-05 | 12,409 → 13,777 | About 200 |
- The recall note says 'new installs in the last 6 days are about twice the earlier daily average.' Over a longer window that doesn't hold: early October averaged 185–285 a day, and the last week is about 200, essentially flat. The real inflection point was late September into early October.
- Ratings: 142 ratings (11-06), 4 written reviews. The histogram is odd: 1-star 40, 2-star 0, 3-star 20, 4-star 0, 5-star 81 (10-31 was 37/0/18/0/56). In 5 days, 5-star ratings rose by 25, while 1-star rose by only 3. 2-star and 4-star have stayed at 0, which doesn't look like a natural rating distribution. The store page shows a 4.2 rating. Our guess is that staff and hosts are rating it, but this is unverified.
- Charts: on Play, the app only appeared on the Saudi social Top Grossing chart: 10-31 at #200, 11-05 at #200, 11-06 at #176 (googleplay library chart_rank). It never made the Top Free chart.
- iOS app with the same name (id6789467671,2026-07-20, seller Guangzhou Huiwang, v1.4.2): ratings are 0 in every storefront. But starting 10-28, it intermittently appeared on social Top Grossing charts (appstore library chart_rank, genre 6005): best #33 in Qatar (10-30), 77–167 in the Netherlands (on the chart almost every day), 121–187 in the UAE, 91–133 in Jordan, 135 in Oman, 111–156 in Norway, 127–172 in Romania, 121 in France, 197 in Austria, and 142–183 in Nigeria. A 0 rating reaching the grossing chart means downloads are few and revenue is concentrated in a handful of large spenders. The European storefronts (Netherlands, Norway, France, Austria) also show up on the chart, which suggests Arabic speakers living in Europe are paying (inference).
2. Competitors: one of the most crowded categories
In the top 200 of the Saudi Play social Top Grossing chart (11-06), most entries are voice-room and video-chat apps. 36 of them were launched in the last 2026 years, and 13 have fewer than 50k installs (the best of them ranks #21). LigaChat is #176, one of the smallest on the chart (googleplay library).
| Competitors | Platform | Launched | Scale | How LigaChat differs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SUGO(IndiaMasterApp) | Android | 2021-06 | 81.1M installs, #9 in the Saudi social Top Grossing chart | Veteran leader with a mature host and agency ecosystem. LigaChat has the same features at 6,000 times the scale |
| Chamet / Poppo Live | Android | 2019 / 2022 | 78.4M / 47.9M installs, #2 / #3 on Saudi social Top Grossing | Live video plus one-on-one calls, deeper monetization. LigaChat only does voice rooms |
| زافالايف(com.waig.nalo) | Android | 2025-12 | 430k installs, #7 on Saudi social Top Grossing | Also a new Arabic voice-room app, reached the top 10 in under a year. It shows new apps in this category can climb fast. LigaChat didn't |
| YoHo / 4Fun lite / Sawa / Haza / Honey Jar | Android | 2018–2023 | 700k–27M | Veteran Arabic and Gulf voice-chat app, deeper Gulf localization (Sawa leans into "خليجية") |
| Yalla(Yalla Group) | iOS / Android | 2016 | Listed company, leader in Middle East voice-room apps | Neither the brand nor the local operation behind LigaChat can match it |
| Hawk-Voice Group Chat Rooms(صقر شات) | Android / iOS | 2026-04(Play) | 59k installs, #104 on Saudi social Top Grossing | The recall card says it's the same entity as LigaChat. We checked, and it isn't: the Play developer is Hada Equipment Rental, LLC, and the iOS seller is Shenzhen HiChat Technology |
| Nubee / AsalStar / Bishar Chat / NovoLive / HiJoy | Android | 2026-06 to 08 | 12k–35k installs, #82–#177 on Saudi social Top Grossing | Same batch, same scale, same template as LigaChat. LigaChat and these look indistinguishable |
3. Growth tactics: where users come from
- Host / regional manager recruiting (confirmed): A pinned review on the Play store page is from Mercy Edeh (10-11): "As the African Manager, I encourage people to join and work with us. Today, we received our salaries, and I sincerely thank the management for paying the African region". The official 10-29 replied: "our Africa Region Manager. Ensuring timely partner payouts...". Aina Aina (08-20) wrote "Very good application for online earning", and Jerwin Dalina (08-21), a Filipino name, left a long five-star review. This suggests that, like its peers, it recruits paid hosts and agents in Nigeria and the Philippines to build its supply side, and those people also rate the app. (Source: play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ligavoice.com, read via Jina)
- Rating solicitation (inferred): The jump to 2 and 4 five-star ratings, each a sudden rise of 0,5, lines up with the review above. Unverified.
- Paid acquisition (unconfirmed): The metaads, tiktokads, and googleads libraries show no tracked campaigns for this app. Voice-chat apps often run Meta / Google UAC into the Gulf, but LigaChat's growth comes in small bursts, not the pattern of large-scale paid buying.
- Content / creators / press (none): TikHub searches for "LigaChat" / "ليجا شات" / "Liga chat" return 0 videos. x-radar shows 90 posts in the last 0 days. Brave and Jina only surface the store pages and aggregator sites like AppBrain, Softonic, and FileHippo.
- Store search (weak): The iOS title is "Liga Chat: Audio Rooms Party", and some storefronts use "LigaChat - غرفة دردشة" (Arabic for "chat room"), stuffing in category keywords. The Play title is just the brand name.
- Portfolio / sock puppets (none found): Play developer ligavoice has only these 1 apps, and iOS developer id6789467673 has only these 1. The recall card says "same entity also owns Hawk-Voice and Vex", but there's no evidence for that.
4. Why it has the traction it does
- The category has money: Voice rooms in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf are a mature business built on "big spenders buying gifts". A new app with a handful of paying users can crack the Saudi social Top Grossing chart at #200.
- The chart bar is low: 13 apps on the same chart have fewer than 50k installs. The iOS version also charted #33 in Qatar and #77 in the Netherlands on 0 ratings, which shows how concentrated the spending is.
- Standard playbook: Recruit hosts in Africa and the Philippines, pay them on time, and have them bring in users and leave ratings. The evidence is in the store reviews.
- Expansion to iOS and more countries: The iOS app has rotated through social Top Grossing charts in 10 storefronts, so its revenue is spread across more markets than the Play version.
5. Differentiation
No. The listed features (voice rooms, gift effects, noble badges, charm / wealth / room leaderboards, private messages) are the standard template for Middle Eastern voice apps. The website is a single landing page with a +86 phone number and says it is "governed by Hong Kong law". It has its current traction because of the category and execution (host recruiting, on-time payouts, a low chart bar), not because the product is different.
6. How visible it is
Almost nobody knows about it. No press coverage, 0 posts on X, 0 TikTok videos, and no public revenue figures. The category it sits in is heavily discussed, though, and crowded with Chinese teams going global.
7. What others can borrow
- Gulf voice-chat apps can reach the top-grossing charts with very few installs. The iOS version's 0 rating still charts in Qatar and the Netherlands, which suggests it relies on a small number of large payers, not broad user acquisition.
- The social Top Grossing charts in a few European storefronts (Netherlands, Norway, France, Austria) have low entry barriers, and Arabic-speaking users there may be an overlooked paying segment (inferred).
- The supply side is built from low-cost regions: recruit hosts, set up "regional managers", and pay on time. Paying on time is itself a form of word of mouth.
8. Still unclear
- No revenue figures, only chart positions.
- Whether it runs Meta / Google ads into the Gulf. The ad libraries don't track it.
- Whether the abnormal rating histogram comes from review solicitation.
- Whether Guangzhou Huiwang is backed by a larger voice-chat team (no business registration found for this company).
- Play only charts in one Saudi storefront. This may be because we only track 30 storefronts, and we don't cover Play in places like Qatar, Kuwait, or Jordan.