App Store keyword difficulty checker

Enter a keyword and a storefront, and we'll score how hard it is from the ratings and names of the top 10 apps in that search, with the arithmetic shown. No signup.

The search a user types into the App Store, 2 to 60 characters.

App Store only. Google Play search results don't show rating counts, so this formula can't be built there.

Difficulty

Enter a keyword and check; the score and the numbers behind it show up here.

How the score is calculated

  • We send your keyword to Apple's public App Store search in the storefront you pick, in that storefront's language, and look at the top 10 results.
  • Wall, 70 points: the rating count of the most-rated app in the top 10, on a log scale. 100 or fewer is 0, 1,000 is 18, 10,000 is 35, 100,000 is 53, 1 million or more is 70. Not the median: the top 10 is often filled with apps that have no ratings.
  • Title, 30 points: how many of the top 10 apps have the keyword in their name, 3 points each. It shows that competitors target the keyword on purpose.
  • 70 and above is very hard, 53–69 hard, 35–52 medium, below that easy. With no title matches the boundaries fall where the strongest app reaches 10,000, 100,000 and 1 million ratings. If the top 10 isn't full, there is no score. In the dashboard the same formula runs every day for all your keywords.

The keyword is used only for the measurement, and the result is cached for 6 hours. Your IP address is not stored: a one-way hash is kept for the daily allowance and deleted within 2 days.

Difficulty alone isn't a decision. The dashboard compares your own rating count with this wall and shows every day where you rank and the weakest app above you.

Common questions

What is the keyword difficulty score based on?

Two measured numbers: the rating count of the most-rated app among the top 10 for that search (70 points) and how many of them have the keyword in their name (30 points). Apple Search Ads popularity is not used.

Why doesn't the score include search volume?

Difficulty and demand are different questions. Folded into one number, "hard but heavily searched" and "easy but nobody searches it" look the same. The demand signal is shown next to the score instead.

Does it work for Google Play keywords?

No. Google Play search results don't show rating counts, so the wall can't be calculated. The tool measures the App Store only.

How many times a day can I use it?

20 checks a day without signing up, shared with the rank checker. If the same keyword and storefront are asked again within 6 hours, we answer from the earlier measurement and it doesn't use up a check.