Merchant Life
53
Quality Score
Solid
✍️ Bumetric analysis
“
Merchant Life is an Android app from Uesugi Games in the Simulation category, currently rated 3.7★ across 1,386 ratings. Initial signal reads as mixed reviews: supporters praise core features while critics cite stability and value gaps.
Quality Score is 53: Solid (established niche player). For a Simulation app, that means established niche player. The full BU Investment Matrix below scores 8 dimensions including monetisation, growth, and operational risk.
Track changes month-over-month in the Performance section below: live snapshot history and revenue forecast included.
💰 Monthly revenue · now vs forecast
● Right now
$5.0K
per month
→
12-mo forecast
$5.2K – $10.8K
per month
→
24-mo forecast
$6.4K – $19.2K
per month
MID tier
💡 Grow this revenue
Free AI audit of this app’s store listing
- Title & subtitle keyword fit
- Description hook & conversion structure
- Screenshots, ratings, reviews strategy
Typical impact: +2-5× organic installs
📊 Performance Tracking LIVE
1 snapshots on record
Rating
3.7
Reviews
1,386 reviews
Forecast Revenue / mo
$5.0K
Snapshots tracked
1
since May 2026
ONE-TIME · BUILD
💰 Estimated build cost
$220K
↳ What it cost to build · not monthly revenue
Likely range $165K – $295K
$25K · MVP floor
$100K · indie scale
$500K+ · studio build
📈
Pays back in ~3.7y at current MRR
Synthetic estimate. Inputs: category complexity, file size, screen count, monetization layer, platform reach, age × team-size proxy. Calibrated against 2024-2026 indie-agency rate surveys. Full math + source list on /methodology.
Where the money goes
| 🧱 MVP baseline (design + 1-store ship) | +$28K |
| 📱 5 unique screens × $4.5K | +$22K |
| 💎 In-app purchase plumbing | +$9K |
| ⚙ Simulation complexity ×2.00 | +$59K |
| 🌐 Cross-platform reach (iOS + Android) | +$65K |
| ⚙ 5.8y maintenance × ~1-person team | +$34K |
Total estimate
$220K
ONE-TIME · EXIT VALUE
💵 Estimated acquisition value
$150K
↳ What it would sell for · not monthly revenue
Marketplace range $100K – $175K · 28× MRR multiple
💸
~0.7× build cost (under-water)
Synthetic estimate. Multiple band derived from iap / freemium model + age, rating quality, category demand, and user-base maturity. Calibrated against 2024-2026 indie-app-marketplace closed-deal medians. Full math + comparable deal list on /methodology.
How the multiple was built
| 💎 IAP / freemium model base | 28× MRR |
| 📅 5.8y proven track record | +20% |
| ⭐ ★ rating 3.5-4.0 (mixed) | -8% |
| 🏷 Simulation category multiple | -10% |
Final multiple
28× MRR
👥 Estimated audience size
135K
Lifetime downloads (US-equivalent)
Monthly active
15K
Daily active
4.6K
Synthetic estimate from ratings × category benchmarks. Calibrated against 2024-2026 mobile-attribution retention + DAU/MAU reports. Numbers are US-storefront-equivalent — true global audience can be 5-10× larger for international apps. Full math + source list on /methodology.
How we sized it
| 📲 Simulation engagement | ~140 installs / rating |
| 📅 5.8y of rating accumulation | -29% |
| 🔁 Simulation D30 retention | 15% |
| 📍 DAU / MAU stickiness | 0.30 |
DAU / MAU
30% sticky
🛠 Estimated tech stack
🤖
Native Android (Kotlin)
Medium confidence · 55%
Also possible
Flutter
Heuristic guess from app bundle size, category, store description signals, and release-date stack era. Bumetric does not disassemble binaries — for binary-level certainty you would need an SDK intelligence tool or the manifest itself. Reasoning chain on the right. Full ruleset on /methodology.
Signals we read
| 🏷 Category context | Simulation |
| 📦 Tiny game bundle | → Native 2D engine |
💀 Maintenance status
At risk
50%
Last shipped 2026-02-18 · 243 days ago
0 · Active
50 · At risk
100 · Abandoned
Heuristic risk score from time-since-last-update + ratings velocity proxy + Editor's Choice / curated featuring signals. Calibrated against 2024-2025 app-store ranking decay reports. Not a guarantee — a quiet app with a healthy codebase looks the same as an abandoned one until something breaks. Full math on /methodology.
Risk signals
| 📅 8 months since last update | Concerning gap |
Verdict
At risk
🔬
How we forecast this revenue
MEDIUM CONFIDENCEBaseline
$5.0K/mo · ML-estimated from 234 triggers
Growth rate
+4.0% MoM · MID tier baseline (compound monthly)
6 months
$4.7K – $7.9K
12 months
$5.2K – $10.8K
24 months
$6.4K – $19.2K
Compound growth at +4.0% MoM (tier baseline for MID). Range widens with horizon — typical noise band ±25% at 6mo.. Ranges widen with horizon — distant futures carry more uncertainty.
📊
BU Investment Matrix
Below median · 51/100MID TIERunderperforming peersGrowth Velocity
5.0
Founder Strength
3.9
Product Quality
6.6
Revenue Strength
3.7
Monetization Maturity
5.0
Defensibility
7.5
Market Position
0.0
Operational Safety
9.0
- 💰 Revenue: Modest — $3K - $7K/mo · MID tier · medium confidence, trajectory unclear.
- ⭐ Quality: 3.69★ across 1,386 reviews — solid.
- 📍 Market: Not yet charting in any of the 9 monitored markets.
- 📈 Growth: last update 240d ago — slow cadence.
- ⚠️ Risk: Low — no material risk signals detected.
🎯 For competitors: Mixed picture. Worth competing if you have a clear UX or pricing edge — otherwise crowded segment.
💵 For acquirers: Estimated asking range 18-32× monthly = $90K-$160K.
Composite of 8 dimensions computed deterministically from public signals — no LLM, every score traces back to a measurable input. Default weights shown; "compete" / "acquire" / "invest" lenses re-weight without re-fetching.
Range:
💰 Forecast Revenue / mo
MODELRevenue forecast computed from BU's 234 trigger model on each snapshot. Calibrated against ground-truth from 58 verified-revenue apps.
🔬Forecast Breakdown — Why This Estimate?Top 4 of 4 triggers
Our ML model uses 200+ signals from public data. These are the most influential for this app:
| Low install base (1,386 ratings)METRIC | +$1,500 | |
| slowREVIEW | −$1,200 | |
| Established app (5y old)METRIC | +$800 | |
| Ad-supported / freemiumMETRIC | +$600 |
METRIC = structural app data · REVIEW = mined from user reviews · ✓ VERIFIED = Stripe-verified anchor (TrustMRR)
📈 Reviews Growth
LIVECumulative review count from first BU snapshot. Each point = a tracked update.
⭐ Rating Trend
LIVEAverage rating evolution. Updates with each new review batch.
Profile & Insights
Everything we know — and don't — about this app and its company.
Identification
- App name
- Merchant Life
- Developer
- Uesugi Games
- Bundle ID
- com.YukihiroUesugi.MerchantLife
- App Store URL
- Open in App Store
- Category
- Simulation
- Content rating
- Not found
- Languages
- Not found
Company
- Website
- uesugi-games.com
- Tagline
- Not found
- Description
- Not found
- Founded
- Not found
- HQ / Address
- Not found
- Employees
- Not found
- Logo
- Not found
Revenue
- Reported revenue signal / mo
- Not found
- AI revenue estimate / mo
- Not found
- AI annual estimate
- Not found
- Model estimate / mo
- $5.0K/mo
- Top-grossing rank
- Not found
- All-time revenue
- Not found
- Pricing
- $4.99 per item
Founder
Founder data not yet collected for this app.
Funding
Funding data not yet collected for this app.
Press & Links
Press & Links data not yet collected for this app.
Contacts & Socials
Contacts & Socials data not yet collected for this app.
Profile is built from iTunes Lookup + developer site scrape + ML revenue model. Empty fields show "Not found" — additional sources (Crunchbase, X, IndieHackers, Acquire.com) coming.
📝 About this app
You've been summoned to another world.
What was waiting for you there was a harsh merchant life ...
Let's travel with the spirits to various towns and bring back energy to the world!!
Hope you don't meet the thief...
Let's sell the items you got side by side on the display stand!
If you need an item to sell, ask the adventurer from the Adventurer's Guild.
Various products and high-paying requests are waiting for you in the Merchant Guild!
If you buy an alchemy pot for sale in the Merchant Guild, you can spend HP and materials to synthesize new items.… View full description on the official store →
What was waiting for you there was a harsh merchant life ...
Let's travel with the spirits to various towns and bring back energy to the world!!
Hope you don't meet the thief...
Let's sell the items you got side by side on the display stand!
If you need an item to sell, ask the adventurer from the Adventurer's Guild.
Various products and high-paying requests are waiting for you in the Merchant Guild!
If you buy an alchemy pot for sale in the Merchant Guild, you can spend HP and materials to synthesize new items.… View full description on the official store →
App Specs
🔐 Own this app? Claim & verify MRR →🔖 v1.51🔄 updated 8mo ago📂 Simulation💰 Free📺 Ad-supported💎 IAP $4.99 per item🚀 Launched 2021 (5y old)
🔔
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📝 Description
95
BU Score · Transcendent
Full revenue analysis
Read the article-style breakdown for Merchant Life: category rank, percentile, growth signal, comparable apps, and how the forecast is calibrated against verified-MRR anchors in this niche.
More by Uesugi Games
View all →📦 Portfolio summaryINDIE studio
5apps·$10K/mocombined
✓ Diversified — top app contributes 48%; risk spread across portfolio
About this analysis
Why medium confidence: 1,386 ratings · no founder-verified revenue (model estimate only).
❓ Frequently Asked Questions
10 answers · auto-generated from this app's public dataHow much does Merchant Life make per month?▴
Based on our ML-calibrated revenue forecast, Merchant Life earns approximately $5.0K/mo. This is a US-storefront-equivalent estimate; global revenue can be several times larger for internationally-distributed apps. See the methodology page for the full formula and confidence bands.
Is Merchant Life profitable?▴
With estimated build cost $220K and monthly revenue $5.0K, Merchant Life looks slow ROI — payback period is around 3.7 years at the current run-rate. Profitability also depends on paid-acquisition spend and refund rate which the public model doesn't see.
How many users does Merchant Life have?▴
Estimated audience: ~135K lifetime downloads, ~15K monthly active users, and ~4K daily active users. Derived from ratings count × category installs-per-rating × age decay. US-storefront-equivalent — global audience can be 5-10× larger for internationally-distributed apps.
What apps are like Merchant Life?▴
Browse the full Simulation category catalog to find similar apps with revenue, build cost, audience and tech stack data. Each /p/{slug} page also shows a Compare side-by-side widget with three peer apps from the same niche.
What is Merchant Life built with?▴
Our heuristic places Merchant Life on the Native Android (Kotlin) stack (Medium confidence, 55%). Signals: app bundle size, category context, store-description markers, release-date era. We don't disassemble binaries. Alternative possibilities: Flutter.
Is Merchant Life still actively maintained?▴
Maintenance status: At risk (50% abandonment risk). Last shipped version was 8 months ago. The risk score combines time-since-last-update with Editor's Choice / curated featuring + user-base maturity adjustments.
How much would Merchant Life sell for?▴
Estimated acquisition value: $150K (marketplace range $100K – $175K). Calculated as 28× monthly revenue using the standard multiple for the detected monetization model + adjustments for age, rating quality and category demand. Calibrated against 2024-2026 Flippa / Acquire.com / MicroAcquire closed-deal medians.
When was Merchant Life last updated?▴
Merchant Life last shipped a new version on 2026-02-18 — 8 months ago. This is the date Apple / Google last accepted a new build, not a content-only push.
Who makes Merchant Life?▴
Merchant Life is published by Uesugi Games on the Google Play Store. See the full publisher portfolio (other apps by the same developer) via the More by developer block on the product page above.
What is Merchant Life's BU Score?▴
Merchant Life has a BU Score of 53/100 (Solid). The score combines App Store rating, ratings count, monetization model and revenue signals calibrated against founder-verified MRR anchors. See the BU Score formula.