Free ASO tools, read carefully

01What the free tiers include

02The claim worth being precise about

It would be easy, and wrong, to write "the only free ASO tool". Appfigures and AppFollow both have free tiers with no end date, and AppFollow's comes with unlimited users.

The narrower and true statement is this: two of the tools above have a free tier that tracks keyword rank with no expiry date — AppFollow's and Storelift's. They trade in opposite directions. AppFollow's tracks more keywords (500, against our 25 per storefront) and keeps seven days of history; Storelift's keeps thirty days, which is what a trend needs.

If a page tells you it is the only free anything, check the sentence for the qualifier that makes it true. Here the qualifiers are what separates the two free tiers that remain: keyword count against history depth.

03Tools that run in the browser

Separate from free tiers, several vendors publish calculators that run straight in the browser. They answer a narrow question completely, which is often what you need at 11pm before a submission.

• Keyword rank checker (Storelift) — paste an App Store or Google Play link and a keyword; we ask the store's search in the storefront you pick and report where the app stands today, or that it isn't there. Apple returns up to 200 results; Google Play's public search page shows only the first ~30, so a Play answer stops there. 20 checks a day.
• Keyword difficulty checker (Storelift) — a 0–100 score for one App Store keyword from the highest rating count among the top 10 apps and how many carry the keyword in their name, with the arithmetic and the autocomplete demand signal shown. Shares the rank checker's 20 checks a day.
• Keyword field packer (Storelift) — packs the invisible 100-character iOS field: strips words already in your title and subtitle, splits phrases, packs them comma-separated. Runs in the browser; nothing is sent to a server.
• Store campaign link builder (Storelift) — builds Apple's ct/pt and Play's referrer parameters so installs are attributable instead of landing in one undifferentiated bucket.
• Character counter (Storelift) — live counts for the App Store app name, subtitle, keyword field and promotional text and Google Play's app name and short description, with words repeated across the indexed fields flagged.
• Keyword combination generator (Storelift) — two- and three-word phrases from a keyword list, optionally in every word order. Candidates, not demand.
• Brand term filter (Storelift) — pulls the brand and competitor names you enter, and duplicates, out of a keyword list.
• Storefront language checker (Storelift) — which App Store storefronts read a language, which languages a country indexes, and how many of the 175 storefronts your localizations cover. Runs in the browser.
• Sonar publishes four keyless browser tools of its own.

Each of these answers on the page itself. The rank checker answers for today only — seeing the same rank next week, across countries and against competitors, takes a measurement repeated on a schedule, and that takes an account to attach it to.

04What a free tier can and can't answer

One app, twenty-five keywords and two countries are enough to answer three real questions: am I visible under my own name, who stands above me on the terms I care about, and is anyone searching this phrase at all. That is most of the ASO decision for a first app.

It is not enough to answer how does my visibility compare across twelve markets, or which of my eight apps moved this week. Those need more keywords and more countries, and that is what the paid tiers are for — here and everywhere else on this page.

05ASO free trial or free plan: every tool we have read

A trial ends; a free plan does not. The table above covers six tools in depth; this one lists every tool we have read, with what its free option is.

For a first app, a free plan that keeps measuring answers more than a longer trial: a trend needs weeks of daily readings. What those readings contain is described under rank tracking.

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