ASO Tools Compared: Free and Paid App Store Optimization Tools (2026)

In short: Before you pay for an ASO tool, use the free ones from Apple and Google: App Store Connect Analytics, Apple Ads popularity, product page optimization, custom product pages, Play Console search terms, store listing experiments and custom store listings. Then buy only what they lack. For a solo App Store developer that is usually daily rank tracking with Apple's popularity score, available from about 9 to 15 US dollars a month. Teams that need download estimates, creative research and dozens of markets pay for AppTweak, Appfigures or Sensor Tower. Count how each vendor counts keywords before comparing prices.

We make Searvia, which is one of the tools in this comparison, so read this with that in mind. We have tried to be fair: every competitor price and limit below comes from the vendor's own public pricing or product page, checked on October 24, 2026, and we say where other tools are stronger than ours. Prices change often, so check the vendor's page before you buy.

What an ASO tool actually does

Most ASO tools combine some of these jobs:

Two facts about the data matter more than any feature list. First, neither Apple nor Google publishes search volume. On the App Store the only first-party demand signal is search popularity from Apple Ads, which Apple displays "as numbers from 1 to 5" in its reports; most tools show a 5-to-100 version or their own estimate. Our App Store keyword research guide explains how to read it. Second, any download or revenue figure for an app you don't own is an estimate. Good tools show a range and explain the model; Searvia's method page documents ours.

Start with the free first-party tools

These cost nothing beyond your developer accounts, and they are the only source of your own real numbers.

What they don't give you: your rank for a keyword, rank history, competitors' ranks and changes, or any data for searches that don't already bring you traffic. That gap is what you pay a tool for.

The paid tools compared

Prices are as listed on each vendor's public page on October 24, 2026, in the currency shown there. "Entry price" is the cheapest plan that includes keyword tracking.

Appfigures

Appfigures connects to your developer accounts to report your own sales and downloads, and adds keyword tracking, review replies and estimates for other apps. Keyword tracking starts on the Monitor plan; the Optimize plan updates ranks hourly with 500 keywords. Stronger than Searvia at: sales and download reports from your own connected accounts across stores, hourly ranks from a mid-tier plan, and separate market intelligence plans. See our Appfigures comparison.

AppTweak

A deep ASO platform for both stores in more than 100 countries, priced by the number of apps you follow. Higher plans add organic installs per keyword, keyword and ASO impact analysis, and explorers for creatives, custom product pages and in-app events. Stronger at: depth of analysis for larger teams, creative and CPP research, and enterprise services. See our AppTweak comparison.

MobileAction

ASO plans start low, at 100 keywords, and the company is strong on Apple Ads, with a campaign manager that is free up to 10,000 US dollars of monthly ad spend. Stronger at: full Apple Ads campaign management with automations, and ad intelligence across many networks. Searvia's Apple Ads features are lighter by design: recommendations you approve one by one. See our MobileAction comparison.

Sensor Tower

The market intelligence standard for large publishers: downloads, revenue, active users, retention, ad intelligence and web data. Pricing is customized per customer. Stronger at: usage and retention estimates, both-store estimates and advertising intelligence. It is widely used by large publishers that need audience data, not just rankings. See our Sensor Tower comparison.

AppFollow and ASOdesk

AppFollow is built for support teams handling feedback from many sources beyond the app stores, with automation and helpdesk integrations. ASOdesk sells ASO plans with high keyword limits on upper tiers (5,000 keywords and 30 apps on Guru) and reply-to-reviews add-ons, and covers Huawei and Samsung stores as an add-on. Stronger at: support workflows (AppFollow) and very high keyword volumes and alternative stores (ASOdesk). See the AppFollow and ASOdesk comparisons.

Astro, Ascope and Wow Keywords: the Mac apps

Three low-cost desktop apps focused on App Store keywords. Astro and Ascope take popularity from Apple's ads platform and track unlimited keywords on one plan; Wow Keywords sells a one-time license and keeps its database on your computer. Stronger at: price for unlimited App Store keywords, local data with no account, and in the case of Wow Keywords, no subscription. Weaker at: Google Play (none of the three lists it), team access, and tracking while your Mac is off, depending on the app. See the Astro, Ascope and Wow Keywords comparisons.

AppHitlist

A focused App Store tool for finding apps that earn, with revenue estimates from chart positions, Meta ads, complaint maps and keyword tracking on Pro. Stronger at: a narrow, simple product for idea discovery. See our AppHitlist comparison.

Searvia

Our own tool: daily App Store and Google Play rank tracking with competitors, Apple's official popularity when you connect Apple Ads, metadata writing and publishing to both stores, reviews with replies through the official APIs, revenue ranges for App Store chart apps, and, in the same account, Google rankings, site audits and visibility in AI assistants. Weaker than others at: no usage or retention estimates (Sensor Tower), no Google Play revenue estimates, a lighter Apple Ads feature set than MobileAction, and a younger product with less market history than the established vendors. Plans are on the pricing page.

How to choose

One more rule of thumb: buy for the next twelve months, not the next five years. ASO tools are easy to start with, and the cheapest test of any of them is a free plan or trial run against the keywords you already track, with the first-party tools as the referee.

What to check during a trial

1. Where popularity comes from. Is it Apple's own score, an estimate, or a blend? Is the source labeled on each keyword? Since late September 2025 many long-tail terms sit at Apple's floor value of 5, so a tool that shows a precise number for them is estimating.
2. How deep and how often ranks are checked. Top 50 or top 200? Daily or hourly? Weekly checks miss the effect of a release.
3. How keywords are counted. Per keyword, per keyword per country, or per keyword per store.
4. Which countries and stores. Some tools cover only the App Store, some only countries where Apple Ads runs.
5. Whether it runs without you. Desktop apps may only check ranks when your computer is on; cloud tools run on their servers.
6. Data in and out. Can you import your keyword history and export rankings to CSV? Can you leave without losing your data?
7. API and AI access. If you use AI agents or scripts, check for an API or an MCP server and its limits.
8. Who can use it. Seats, roles and per-device licenses.
9. What access it asks for. If you connect App Store Connect, Play Console or Apple Ads, check which role the key needs. Read-only is enough for reports and popularity; publishing metadata or changing bids needs more, and you should know when a tool writes to your accounts.

Worked example: a solo developer's budget

A hypothetical developer has one iOS habit tracker, tracks 100 keywords in the United States, and plans an Android version next year. Using the public prices above:

All five cover the need today. The choice depends on what comes next: if the Android version is real, a tool that already tracks Google Play saves a migration; if the developer only ever ships on iOS and works on one Mac, a desktop app is the cheapest route. In both cases the developer still uses App Store Connect Analytics for real conversion data, Apple Ads for popularity and product page optimization for screenshot tests, because no paid tool replaces them.

What to expect from estimates

Every tool that shows downloads, revenue or search volume for apps you don't own is modeling them. Apple and Google publish chart positions and, through Apple Ads, a coarse popularity score; they don't publish anyone's downloads. That has three consequences when you compare tools:

• Different tools will disagree, sometimes widely, for the same app. That doesn't mean one is broken; they use different panels, models and calibration data.
• Ranges are more honest than single numbers. A tool that says an app earns "between 40,000 and 120,000 US dollars a month" is telling you how uncertain the estimate is. A tool that says "73,412" is not more accurate, only more confident.
• Relative comparisons hold up better than absolute ones. Estimates are most useful for questions like "which of these five competitors grew fastest this quarter?" or "is this keyword more searched than that one?", not for exact forecasts.

Ask any vendor how its estimates are made and how they are checked against real data. Searvia publishes its App Store revenue model, its ranges and its calibration against developers who share real sales on the method page, and lists apps with revenue verified from connected accounts on verified revenue.

Switching tools without losing history

Rank history is the most valuable thing an ASO tool holds, because it shows what each past change did. Before you commit to a tool, check that you can export it, and before you leave one, export everything: keywords, countries, notes and daily ranks. Most tools offer CSV export; some desktop apps keep data in a local file you can copy. When you import into the new tool, keep the old export as a dated archive, since few tools can import years of daily history. Searvia, for example, imports Astro exports and any CSV with a keyword column and saves the last rank from the file as one history point; the import guide has the details. Run both tools in parallel for two weeks if you can, and compare their ranks on a handful of keywords you can also check by hand on a phone in the same country.

Free checks without any account

If you only need a quick answer, several free web checks exist, ours included. The App Store keyword checker shows popularity, difficulty and the top 10 apps for one search in any of 50 countries, and the App Store and Google Play rank checker finds where an app ranks for a keyword right now. The app name generator checks name ideas against App Store conflicts and domains. For idea research, new winning apps lists recently released App Store apps that reached the grossing charts, with revenue ranges.

How Searvia fits

If your apps are on both stores, or your app has a website that also needs SEO, Searvia covers that in one account, with a free plan to try it and public prices from 12 US dollars a month. If you need deep market intelligence or enterprise Apple Ads automation, one of the tools above is the better choice, and our alternatives pages compare each one with Searvia in detail, using facts from their public pages.