App Store keyword competition by category (26 categories)

Each of the 26 categories got six generic English phrases, each searched in six storefronts (US, GB, DE, JP, FR, BR), so 36 searches per category. The phrase-to-category assignment is the author's choice. The API cannot filter by category, so the top 10 for a phrase can include apps from other genres.

The bottom rows are partly an artifact of the phrases. The Developer Tools median of 5 ratings and the Medical median of 29 are low, and the data does not show why; one possibility is that these phrases return niche apps that few people rate. Treat them as "this phrase set had almost no established competition", not as a verdict on all developer or medical keywords.

Kids is the clearest case. There is no Kids filter in the API, and for the six Kids phrases the top-10 apps had primary genres of Education (47.7%), Games (14.9%) and Entertainment (12.9%). Its row therefore describes a mix of genres. More generally, in the US only 68.6% of top-10 apps for a category's phrases had that category as primary genre, so no row is a pure category.

All six storefronts used English phrases, including DE, JP, FR and BR. The numbers describe English-language demand in those countries, not local-language demand. Storefront differences within the same basket are shown on the country comparison page.

Categories at the top of the table combine large median rating counts with high volume, so entering them with generic phrases means competing with established apps. Categories at the bottom are a mix of real openings and small-sample noise. Choose terms by checking your own keyword's top 10 rather than by category: the guide to choosing keywords you can rank for shows how. Your primary category choice is a separate decision from keyword competition, and this data does not say that changing category changes ranking. Volume and difficulty here are LocalASO estimates from rating counts, not Apple search counts.

Six phrases per category and storefront on one day is a small sample; treat gaps of a few points as noise. Requests used limit=25, which understates volume by up to about 2 points. See the methodology page.

LocalASO shows volume and difficulty per keyword and per storefront, so you can compare your own phrases rather than whole categories. A Mac app with a one-time $29 price; it needs a license key to run. See pricing.