The cheapest way to track App Store keyword rankings (an honest comparison)

RankBlob research · Prices verified from vendor pages, October 2026 · We make one of the products below; the concessions are real

Start with the fact the whole market is priced to obscure: rank data is free. Apple publishes its search index through a public API that returns apps in ranking order. Nobody selling you rank tracking is selling data — they're selling automation, history, research estimates and breadth. So the honest question isn't "who has the best ranks?" (everyone's ranks come from the same index) but "what does each rung of the price ladder actually buy, and which rungs are priced for a different customer than you?" Here is the ladder, cheapest first, including where each option beats the one this site sells.

Rung 0: Do it yourself — $0, plus your time

The public iTunes Search API needs no key and no account. A search request returns up to 200 results in Apple's order; your app's position in that list is its rank. A script that checks 10 keywords is an afternoon's work, and for a one-off check it's genuinely all you need — this is not a straw man, it's what our own free checker runs on. What DIY doesn't give you: history (you have to store snapshots yourself, forever, on a schedule you maintain), alerts, other storefronts without extra work, and a report you'd send anyone. Most devs who start here stop checking within a month, because the checking was never the point — the remembering to check was.

Rung 0.5: asc — a superb free CLI that does not do this job

asc is a free, MIT-licensed command-line tool for the App Store Connect API — TestFlight, builds, releases, signing, metadata sync, Apple Ads — with pre-built skills that let coding agents run it. If you ship iOS apps, it's worth installing regardless of anything else on this page. But it belongs in this comparison only to be ruled out honestly: App Store Connect contains no search-rank data, so asc cannot tell you where your app ranks for a keyword, for your apps or anyone else's. It sets your metadata; it cannot verify what the metadata did. Free is only cheap if the tool answers the question.

Rung 1: Astro — $108/yr, and the research king

Astro is the indie incumbent: a Mac app (macOS 14+) at $108/yr billed annually — no monthly option, no free tier — with unlimited apps and keywords, daily rank updates and history graphs. Its real crown is research: keyword popularity drawn from Apple Search Ads data and difficulty scores, so it helps you choose keywords before you ever rank for them. Concession, plainly: for keyword research, Astro is better than RankBlob and it isn't close — we don't offer popularity data at all. The costs are structural: it's annual-only money up front ($108 before you've learned whether you'll still care in month three), it lives on one Mac, and the research database covers 60+ storefronts rather than the full index. If you do ASO in deliberate campaigns — research, change, measure — and you live on a Mac, Astro is a fair price for the best tool in its class.

Rung 2: The suites — Appfigures from $44.99/mo

Appfigures is an analytics platform (downloads, revenue, subscriptions, ad intel) with ASO layered on. Its pricing makes the market's structure visible: the Connect tier at $9.99/mo includes zero tracked keywords. Rank tracking starts at Monitor, $44.99/mo for 100 keywords — $539.88 a year. App Radar (by SplitMetrics) prices the same way: a suite first, keyword tracking as a paid-tier feature. None of this is a scam; suites earn their money from teams who use the other 90% of the platform. But if your actual job is "watch my 12 keywords," the suite entry price means paying roughly 5× Astro’s yearly price and 18× RankBlob Pro’s planned yearly price for a feature bundled with a platform you'll never open. The suites beat everyone on breadth — market intelligence, review management, ads data — and if you need breadth, this comparison is over and you should buy one.

Rung 3: RankBlob — free to check, $5/mo or $49/yr to be watched

Our position is deliberately narrow. The free tier is the full checker — any app (yours or a competitor's), 5 keywords, US storefront, no account — because the check itself costs us almost nothing to run and we'd rather you verify that before paying anyone. Pro is $5/mo or $49/yr: 3 tracked app/storefront slots with 10 keywords each, a choice of 170+ storefronts, weekly automatic re-checks with rank history, email alerts when a rank moves ±3 or crosses the top 10, and unbranded shareable reports. Honest debits: monitoring is weekly, not daily; there is no keyword research or popularity data (see the Astro concession above); and the tool does exactly one job. Pro is not available to purchase yet. A full year paid monthly will cost $36; the $30 annual plan saves $6. Community profiles and participation will remain free.

What the money actually buys

So what's the cheapest way, honestly?

• You check a few keywords a few times a year: $0. Use a script, or our free checker. Anyone who sells you a subscription for this is selling you a subscription.
• You need to choose keywords, not just check them: Astro, $108/yr. Research data is the one thing on this page that can't be had free, and Astro sells it cheapest.
• You need ranks watched continuously, on any device, without a year up front: RankBlob Pro at $49/yr (or $5 for the months that matter). This is the gap the ladder left open: focused weekly monitoring for a small app portfolio, below the research tool’s yearly price.
• You run a portfolio or a team: a suite, and the price is the price. RankBlob is not built for you and says so.