Free App Store Keyword Research: What You Can Do Without Paid Tools

Apple says hints appear once someone types into the search bar and that people use natural language (Apple: App Store search). Type your main word plus each letter of the alphabet, and log every hint in a spreadsheet. Add the words from competitors' names and subtitles and from reviews; see keyword ideas from app reviews.

For each phrase, search and record the top 10 apps and their rating counts. Count how many have over 50,000 ratings. The same idea drives keyword difficulty.

Apple Ads defines search popularity as a relative indicator of a keyword's popularity based on App Store searches, shown as numbers from 1 to 5, with 5 the most popular. It is designed to help advertisers choose keywords. It is coarse, so use it to separate clearly popular phrases from obscure ones, not to rank near neighbors. See the search popularity scale answer.

Apple documents the iTunes Search API, with a term and a country parameter, and states a limit of approximately 20 calls per minute (Apple). A small script can fetch the top results for a phrase list. At 20 calls per minute, 100 phrases in 5 countries (500 calls) takes about 25 minutes. Respect the limit and cache results. This route needs scripting skill.

Use the keyword field checker, packer and character counter to count bytes and find repeats.

As of November 2026, Keyword Tool's App Store page says its keyword suggestion tool is free to use, with paid subscriptions for search volume data. Aurora describes itself as a free ASO tool for Mac with a free tier and says "Free to start". Check each site for current limits.

• Many countries. Checking 30 storefronts by hand repeats the work 30 times.
• History. A spreadsheet only has the days you remembered to check.
• Volume estimates. Without a tool you only have popularity from 1 to 5.

Spend one session on ideas (hints, reviews, competitors), a second on the top 10 for your 20 best phrases in your main country, and a third to place the winners and count bytes. Then repeat the rank search weekly and write the result down with the date. This routine is slow but honest, and it teaches you what the numbers in a paid tool mean. If you later move to a tool, your spreadsheet is the baseline to compare it against.

LocalASO is a $29 one-time purchase with no subscription. The download is free, but the app needs a license key to run. It adds estimated volume and difficulty, daily rank history and 52 storefronts. See pricing and the keyword research docs. For the full manual process, start with the keyword research guide.