Can users share paid Android apps?

I am an iPhone user and only have an Android phone for testing. I launched a couple of paid apps to the Play Store a couple months ago. I check app sales nightly and when looking at the Installed Audience section of my Play account, the numbers are higher than the actual sales I’ve been getting. So this gets me wondering. Can users share paid Android apps?

I know this can be done on iOS, but it’s not overly easy. Since I don’t use Android, I don’t fully understand how the Play Store works with things like this.

If users can share paid apps, how are you handling this to prevent unauthorized use, or at least minimizing this from happening?

Perhaps some users have multiple devices? They may also be using Google Play Family Library, to share your app with other family members. This is called Family Sharing on iOS.

I have few Android TVs at home. All them share the same account like myFamilyTVs@… If I do recall correctly, what I buy to one of those TVs, downloads and run, or I can see a show, on another one. That’s a “same guy using the app in several of his devices”. Maybe you are seeing things like that.

Good to know. I was assuming the same thing that maybe it’s just a “same user, multiple devices” thing, but was also worried that Google might’ve made it easy for users to share paid apps with other users.

I found this help article after posting here

  • Users can share:
    • Apps available at no charge
    • App updates
  • Users can’t share:
    • Paid apps
    • Books
    • Movies
    • Age-inappropriate apps
    • Corp apps

Sounds like Google is doing its part to prevent sharing paid apps like Apple

Thanks for the responses!