How often do apps go on sale in the App Store?

Does the App Store regularly run generous discounts similar to Steam or am I just spoiled by random weekly -75% discounts?

In particular, are discounts on the App Store common enough to be worth waiting for, or should I just buy apps mostly at full price instead of waiting half a year for a 20% discount?

The discounts available from time to time are always determined by the software developer. Apple does not set the price of apps, nor the regularity of discounts offered by developers. (Apple's own apps excluded of course!)

In other words, one software publisher may offer a discounted price for a week each month, while another may never offer a discount. And, because of the sheer volume of developers, there's no way to identify any meaningful pattern.

However, there are a number of services that allow you to add apps to a wish list and then notify you when those apps are discounted. I have listed two below purely as examples:

• AppShopper
• AppZapp

These services also usually give users a historical breakdown of the price charged for an app over its history, so you could use that to get a sense of how often a particular developer is inclined to discount their app(s).

Now, what Apple does discount is their gift cards - electronic and in stores. People often load up on $100 cards for $79 which is more than 20% off and even Wallet was offering $20 off for people using their devices to add value to their accounts. If you know you will spend over time and don’t mind carrying a balance, you can save that way even when developers don’t run sales. It also means other purchases (e.g. music, movies, subscriptions, etc) are purchased at a discount even though Apple, Netflix and others may not offer such discounts directly.