LocalASOComparison
Keyword Tool (keywordtool.io) App Store alternative: from autocomplete ideas to ranked keywords
Keyword Tool generates App Store keyword ideas from Apple's autocomplete, and an alternative such as LocalASO takes a keyword list and tells you where your app ranks and how hard the keyword is in each country. As of November 2026 they answer different questions, so many developers use both.
If you landed here looking for a replacement because the free output is not enough, the missing layer is validation: autocomplete tells you what people start typing, not whether you can rank.
Updated
Two kinds of keyword tool
| Question | Autocomplete suggestion tool | Rank and estimate tool |
|---|---|---|
| What are people typing? | Yes, that is its job | Some ideas, mostly from your listing and competitors |
| Where does my app rank today? | No | Yes, per keyword and country |
| How crowded is the keyword? | Not in the free output | Difficulty score |
| How often is it searched? | Third-party volume in Keyword Tool Pro | Estimate from rating counts of ranking apps |
| Which country? | Check the tool's country selector | 52 storefronts, each in the local language |
Keyword Tool's own page says it uses Apple App Store autocomplete, and that volume appears only in Pro and comes from third-party data because Apple does not share search volume.
What Keyword Tool costs and includes
According to its App Store page as of November 2026:
- The suggestions are free to copy or export.
- Paid Pro plans add search volume, and every Pro plan includes the Keyword Tool API and an MCP server.
- The exact Pro price and the country list were not extracted from the page, so check them on the vendor's site.
What LocalASO adds
LocalASO is a $29 one-time Mac app for the Apple App Store. It does not generate suggestions from autocomplete; its ideas come from your own listing, your competitors' listings and your own AI. What it adds is the check:
- Rank. The position of your app for each keyword in each storefront.
- Volume. A 0-100 score: a rank-weighted mean of log10(1 + rating count) over the top 10 results, scaled to 0-100, plus up to 5 points for the number of results.
- Difficulty. A 0-100 score built from the median and mean log rating counts of the top 10 and the share with at least 50,000 ratings.
- A verdict. Swap, Dead, Hard, Push or Maybe, based on those three numbers.
These are estimates, not Apple search counts. The search volume guide describes what they can and cannot support, and the difficulty glossary entry explains the score.
A workflow that uses both
- Seed ten phrases from your product and collect autocomplete suggestions for each in a suggestion tool.
- Add the plausible ones to a ranking tool and check them in your top three countries.
- Keep keywords with solid volume and difficulty below 80, drop the ones with no results, and fit the winners into the field with the free keyword field packer.
Where each is the better choice
Keyword Tool is the better choice if you want a quick list of phrase ideas without installing anything, if you work on Windows or Linux, or if you want an API or MCP server from a cloud service and accept a paid Pro plan.
LocalASO is the better choice if you want to know whether your own app can rank for those phrases, in many countries, without a subscription, and with the results stored on your Mac. It is limited to Apple's App Store and to Macs with macOS 14 or later.
For tools with MCP servers, see the MCP comparison. For other free starting points, see free ASO tools. To try the workflow, download LocalASO and add your app.
Questions
- Is Keyword Tool's App Store tool free?
- The keyword suggestions are free to use and export, according to its page as of November 2026. Search volume is in paid Pro plans, which also include an API and an MCP server.
- Where does Keyword Tool get its keywords?
- From Apple App Store autocomplete. Its volume figures, in Pro only, use third-party data because Apple does not share search volume, according to the vendor.
- Do I need both Keyword Tool and LocalASO?
- They do different jobs. Keyword Tool produces ideas from what people type. LocalASO checks where your app ranks for a keyword in each country and how contested it is.
Sources
- keywordtool.io/app-store (checked November 1, 2026)
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