Apple Cracks Down on Vibe Coding Services in App Store

Apple is reportedly stepping up efforts to crack down on vibe coding services.

As The Information reported Monday (March 30), the tech giant recently removed one such app from its App Store for breaching its rules.

Vibe coding apps, as the report notes, employ artificial intelligence (AI) to let people who have no coding expertise create apps. The app in question is called Anything, though the report said the company had previously blocked updates of vibe coding apps while letting earlier versions stay in the App Store.

The report says that the vibe coding wave has led to an explosion of new apps on platforms like the iPhone. This could be a problem for Apple if this trend deluges the App Store with low-quality apps.

At the same time, these tools could also present competition for Apple’s Xcode developer tool, which has recently launched coding integrations with Anthropic’s Claude and OpenAI’s Codex models, The Information added.

The report also contends that this crackdown could invite regulatory scrutiny amid increased interest in cases of anticompetitive behavior among Big Tech firms.

Anything launched its app last year and has helped launch thousands of apps in turn, Dhruv Amin, co-founder and CEO, told The Information.

“I just think vibe coding is going to be so much bigger than Apple even realizes,” said Amin.

PYMNTS has contacted Apple for comment but has not yet gotten a reply. An Apple spokesperson had previously told The Information that it isn’t targeting vibe coding apps but rather enforcing guidelines keeping apps from changing what they do without Apple’s review.

Writing about the rise of vibe coding earlier this year, PYMNTS argued that the office of the CFO is “on paper,” a perfect fit for this space.

“Finance has always been data-rich and time-poor,” that report said. “Modern organizations generate enormous volumes of financial and operational data across ERP systems, planning tools, data warehouses and point solutions.”

The obstacle has never been access to this data, but the friction that comes with interrogating it. Queries need technical expertise, models require specialized knowledge, and presentations require manual assembly. Each step interjects latency between questions and answers.

“However, vibe coding and conversational AI promise to help collapse much of that friction,” the report added.