What ASO tools actually do
Every App Store Optimization tool is built on the same small set of public inputs: Apple’s autocomplete, the contents of search result pages, app metadata, and — where the tool has access — the popularity score inside Apple Search Ads. Nobody has a private feed from Apple.
What differs is the modelling and the packaging. One tool turns those inputs into a popularity estimate, another into a difficulty score, another into competitor alerts. All of them are interpreting the same evidence, which is why the same keyword gets different numbers in every tool.
This is not a criticism. It does mean the useful question is not “which tool has the best data” — none of them have privileged data — but “which tool turns the same evidence into the decision I need to make”.
The three categories
| Category | Answers | Right for |
|---|---|---|
| Keyword research | What should I target, and can I win it? | Pre-launch and around each metadata revision. The highest-leverage stage and the one most often skipped. |
| Rank tracking | Did the change I shipped move anything? | Continuously after launch. Cheap to run, only valuable once it has history behind it. |
| Growth platforms | How is the whole portfolio performing? | Teams managing several apps, ad spend, review workflows and reporting to someone else. |
Most confusion in this market comes from buying the third when you needed the first. A platform sold on breadth will have a keyword module, but breadth is not the same as depth on the question that decides your launch.
Questions to ask before you pay
- Where does each number come from? If the tool cannot tell you what a popularity or difficulty figure was derived from, you cannot judge when to distrust it. Apple publishes no search volume, so every such number is an estimate — the tool should say so.
- Does it distinguish a well-supported keyword from a guess? This is the question that separates tools. A phrase Apple autocompletes with 190 relevant results, and a phrase with nothing behind it, should not render identically.
- Does it answer whether a new app can rank? Difficulty describes the result page. A new app with no ratings needs to know whether there is a seam in it — soft slots, an undefended phrase, a page that actually moves. These are different measurements.
- Does it work per storefront, properly? Translating a US keyword list is not localization. Each market has its own autocomplete, its own competition and its own phrasing.
- How much manual work is left afterwards? Many tools export a list and leave you to read it. If you are still going to spend three weeks in a spreadsheet, the subscription has not bought you the thing you needed.
- Can you get your data out? Research you cannot export is research you rent.
- What happens to your keywords? Your research is a plan you have not shipped yet. Worth knowing whether it is pooled with other accounts.
On pricing comparisons. Prices in this category change frequently and many vendors quote rather than publish. Any article listing exact monthly figures — including this one, if it did — is out of date the month after it is written. Check the vendor’s own pricing page, and be specific about which tier includes the thing you actually need.
What an indie developer needs versus what enterprise teams are sold
The tools that dominate this market are built for companies with a mobile marketing function: ad spend to manage, several apps, colleagues to report to, and a budget that treats a few hundred a month as noise. Their feature sets reflect that, and so does their pricing.
A solo developer or small team launching one app has a different shape of problem:
- Usage is bursty. Intense research for two weeks around a launch, then light checking for months.
- The decision is binary and early. Which handful of phrases go in the metadata, before there is any data of your own to learn from.
- There is no existing traction to leverage. Rankings will be decided by keyword choice, not by scale.
- Nobody needs a report. Dashboards, seats and exports for stakeholders are cost, not value.
If that is your situation, judge tools on how well they answer the pre-launch question, and treat everything else as something you are paying for and will not use.
What you can do without paying anything
Genuinely a lot, and it is worth doing once regardless of what you buy afterwards, because it makes every number a tool shows you legible:
- Apple autocomplete — type partial phrases into the store search bar and record every suggestion. Free, localized, and the strongest demand signal available.
- Read the result pages — search each candidate and note who ranks, their rating counts, and whether anyone carries the phrase in their title.
- Apple Search Ads popularity — a real Apple number, free with an ad account, no spend required to look.
- Track your own positions — search your target phrases on a schedule and write down where you land.
The limits show up fast: consistency across hundreds of phrases, coverage across countries, and history over time. Those are the three things a tool should be buying you. The keyword research guide walks through the manual method in full.
Where GetRevuu fits
We built this because the pre-launch question — which phrases can this app realistically win — was the one that mattered most and was answered least well by what we could afford.
So GetRevuu is deliberately narrow:
- It answers the new-app question directly, alongside difficulty rather than instead of it, by reading how soft the current top ten is, who defends the phrase in a title, how old the incumbents are and how much the page moves.
- It shows the evidence behind every number, with a confidence score, and says plainly when there is not enough evidence to support a reading at all.
- It sequences keywords by when you can win them, not just by how attractive they are.
- It works per storefront across ten markets, with each market researched in its own language rather than translated.
- It is not an ad platform, a review manager or a reporting suite. If you need those, you need a different kind of product.
It is free while we work out what it should be. If the pre-launch question is the one you have, see what it does or how the workflow runs.