Is a free ASO tool enough for an indie developer?

Usually yes to start. The core loop — find keywords, score them for difficulty and opportunity, write metadata, watch rankings — needs no subscription: every ASOApp tool works in full on its free plan, which caps how much you do at once rather than which tools you get. Paid platforms become worth it when you need stored historical data, Android coverage, paid-ads intelligence, or colleagues working in the same account.

What do paid ASO platforms offer that ASOApp does not?

Android and Google Play, Apple Search Ads and ad-creative intelligence, years of stored ranking history you did not have to collect yourself, team seats and shared reporting, API access, scheduled exports, and contracted support. ASOApp has none of these and does not plan to.

How much do paid ASO tools cost?

Entry tiers are typically in the tens of euros or dollars per month, rising into the hundreds for larger keyword and app allowances, with enterprise pricing quoted on request. Vendors change plans often, so check the pricing page of any tool you are considering rather than relying on a figure quoted elsewhere.

Can I use a free tool and a paid one together?

Yes, and it is a common setup: a free or low-cost iOS tool for day-to-day keyword exploration and metadata drafting, a paid platform during a funded growth push when you need history, Android or ad data.

ASOApp vs Paid ASO Platforms: Which Should You Use?

We build ASOApp, so this is an informed but interested comparison. The short version: ASOApp is an iOS-only toolkit for developers optimizing their own apps — every tool works in full on a free plan, with one small optional subscription (PRO, €9 a month) that raises the free plan's allowances. The established paid platforms are broader products built for teams with a budget. They are not really competing for the same buyer, and this page is about working out which one you are.

Quick verdict

A paid ASO platform is the right call if you manage apps on both iOS and Android, you buy Apple Search Ads, you need years of historical ranking data, colleagues need their own logins, or you need a vendor with a support contract.

ASOApp is the right call if you are one developer — or two or three — shipping your own iOS apps, you want keyword difficulty and metadata help today without a purchase decision, and you can live without Android, ads data and team features. If you outgrow the free plan's allowances, PRO lifts them for €9 a month rather than moving you onto a different product.

The structural trade

	ASOApp	Paid ASO platforms
Price	Most tools need no account or card at all; free plan keeps every tool in full, with allowances rather than locked features. A new account starts a seven-day PRO trial (card required, cancel any time); PRO is €9/month or €99/year	Subscription, tiered by keyword and app allowances
Commitment to evaluate	None — nothing to sign up for or cancel	Typically a time-limited trial, often card-required
Platforms	iOS only, deliberately	Usually iOS and Android, often paid search too
Ranking history	Only what you have tracked yourself, from the day you start	Years of stored history available on day one
Country coverage	25 App Store storefronts	Commonly 100+ countries
Where your data lives	In your browser, with a synced copy in your free account	On the vendor's servers, tied to a paid account
Team support	Single user, one free account	Seats, roles, shared reports
Support	Email, best effort, one person	Contracted support, account management on higher tiers

What a paid platform adds

Worth stating plainly, because it is the whole basis for deciding:

Android. Entirely absent, and not planned. The scoring, the metadata rules and the 100-character keyword field are all iOS-specific.
Paid-media intelligence. No Apple Search Ads management, no ad-creative data. If you buy installs, that gap alone may justify a subscription.
Team workflow. No seats, no sharing, no scheduled exports, no API.
Breadth of country coverage. 25 storefronts versus the 100+ the large platforms index.
A support contract. One person answers the email.

What ASOApp is enough for

No cost and no commitment. You can evaluate it on your own keywords in about a minute, and there is no trial to forget to cancel.
Generous allowances, not locked features. The free plan tracks one app with 25 keywords, keeps three saved competitors and three audits, and combines two Discovery filters at a time. Every tool itself works in full — keyword research, suggestions, the metadata builder, the top charts and the keyword check are not capped at all. PRO (€9/month) lifts the allowances rather than unlocking anything, so nothing you can see is a feature you cannot use.
Data locality. Your tracked apps and keyword lists stay in your browser; the free account holds a copy so a cleared cache does not cost you the work, and you can delete the account and its copy at any time.
No credential exposure. ASOApp never connects to App Store Connect, so there is no integration to authorize or revoke.
Focus. Every screen assumes iOS and assumes you are the developer. No tool is hidden behind the paid plan — PRO raises how much of them you use, and every control it raises stays visible and labelled while you are on the free plan.

How to decide, concretely

Do you buy app install ads? If yes, you want a platform with paid-search intelligence. This is the clearest single dividing line.
Do you need Android? If yes, ASOApp is out — it is iOS-only by design.
Do you need to prove what a keyword did months ago? If yes, you need stored history, which a free tool starting today cannot give you.
Does more than one person need access? If yes, you need seats.
None of the above? You are the indie case. Start free, and only pay when you can name the specific thing the free tool cannot do.

That last point is the honest one. Many indie developers who buy an ASO subscription early never use the features they are paying for. Run your real keywords through a free tool first, ship a metadata change, and find out whether your bottleneck is data or time.

The caveat that applies to every ASO tool

Apple publishes no App Store search volume — not in App Store Connect, not through any public API. Every difficulty score, traffic figure and "estimated searches per day" in every ASO tool, ours included, is a model built on public signals.

They are useful for ranking keywords against each other. They are not measurements, and two tools will disagree. Judge any tool by whether its relative ordering matches what you observe in your own rankings, not by which one shows the biggest numbers. Ours are documented in full so you can see exactly what they are made of.

Track your own app — free to start

See where your app ranks for keywords like this, across countries and over time. A new account starts a 7-day PRO trial — cancel before it ends and you pay nothing.

Add a single app — or paste a developer link to track all of their apps at once.