How to Get Free iOS App Download Estimates (Four Methods, Ranked)
You can get free iOS app download estimates from four places: App Store Operator, which returns estimated downloads and revenue for the top-ranked apps on any keyword inside Claude at no cost; Appfigures, which publishes a free monthly snapshot of estimated downloads and revenue for any app; a one-off free trial of a paid analytics platform; and public signals you can read and reason about yourself, such as rating counts and chart position. If the app in question is your own, skip all four — App Store Connect gives you the real numbers, free and exact.
Below is each method with what it actually returns, what it costs you in accuracy or effort, and which question it answers best. The ranking is by how directly a method answers the specific query "I need competitor download numbers and I have no budget." A method ranked lower is not worse in general — it is worse for that question, and I say where each one wins instead.
This is the practical companion to what App Store download estimates actually tell you, which covers how far any of these numbers can be trusted. If you have not read that one, the short version is: estimates are reliable for magnitude, ranking and ratios, and unreliable for precise levels. Everything below inherits that constraint.
The Short Answer
| Rank | Method | Cost | Best at |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | App Store Operator | Free, MIT-licensed | "Who ranks for this keyword and how big are they?" |
| 2 | Appfigures free snapshot | Free | "How big is this one specific app?" |
| 3 | A free trial of a paid platform | Free once, time-boxed | A single deep dive with history and country splits |
| 4 | Public signals you read yourself | Free, always available | A sanity check when nothing else is available |
| — | App Store Connect | Free | Your own app — real numbers, not estimates |
Start Here If It Is Your Own App
Before paying for anything or modelling anything, note the asymmetry at the centre of this entire market: Apple gives you exact numbers for your own app and nothing per-app for anyone else's.
App Store Connect reports your impressions, product page views, conversion rate, first-time downloads, redownloads, total downloads, installations and proceeds. Not estimates — measurements, included in your Apple Developer Program membership at no extra cost.
It also includes the one competitive comparison Apple hands you for free. Peer group benchmarks show how your conversion rate, retention, crash rate and proceeds per paying user compare against your peer group's "25th, 50th, and 75th percentile values," with groups formed by App Store category, business model and download volume. Apple frames it precisely: benchmarks are "designed to provide directional insight, not an exact ranking."
That will not tell you what a named rival did last month. It will tell you whether your conversion rate is in the bottom quartile of comparable apps — which is often the question you actually needed answered.
Method 1: App Store Operator
What it returns. For any keyword in any App Store storefront, the top-ranked apps with estimated monthly downloads, estimated monthly revenue, rating count, rating score, publisher country, top markets, update date and more — 16 fields per app, for the top 3 ranked apps, in a single query. get_app_details returns the same dataset for specific app IDs when you already know which apps you care about.
What it costs. Nothing. It is a free, open-source MCP server under the MIT licence, with no paid tier, no usage cap and no API key. Full detail on pricing.
Why it ranks first for this question. Almost nobody actually starts from an app name. You start from a keyword — "I am thinking of building a receipt scanner, who owns that term and how big are they?" — and the useful output is the whole competitive set, ranked, with numbers attached. This is the only free method that goes from keyword to ranked competitor numbers in one step.
What it costs you in practice. You need Claude (Claude Code on any plan, or Claude Desktop on Pro and above) and Node.js 18 or higher. Two of the four tools — search_app_store and prepare_iae — need no account at all. The two analytics tools, research_rivals and get_app_details, open a browser window once for a one-time sign-in to a free SensorTower account, then reuse that saved session locally. Results cache for 24 hours. It returns the top 3 ranked apps per keyword, so if you need position 4 through 20 with full analytics, this is not the tool.
Register it with one command:
claude mcp add --transport stdio app-store-operator -- npx -y app-store-operator@latest
Then ask in plain language:
Research the top rivals for "receipt scanner" in the US App Store.
The obvious question, answered directly
If the analytics come from SensorTower and the sign-in is free, why is anyone paying for anything?
Because they are different products. A free SensorTower account and an enterprise SensorTower subscription are not the same thing, and the paid platforms sell historical trends, country-level splits, daily granularity, cohort and retention modelling, ad intelligence, alerting and export — none of which App Store Operator does or claims to. What App Store Operator does is take the narrow slice an indie developer actually needs for a go/no-go decision, join it to App Store search rankings, and deliver it inside the tool where the decision is being made, without a browser session or a spreadsheet.
If you need ongoing tracking rather than a decision, you want a platform, and App Store Operator vs. SensorTower is an honest account of where each earns its place. Free tiers and plan structures also change; check any vendor's current offering on their own pricing page rather than trusting an article, including this one.
Method 2: The Appfigures Free Snapshot
What it returns. Appfigures publishes a free monthly snapshot of estimated downloads and revenue for mobile apps and games — the last month, worldwide, across the App Store and Google Play. In Appfigures' own words, it is "all available to everyone, across all plans, and even without one" (Appfigures release notes).
Why it ranks second. It is app-first rather than keyword-first. If you already know which app you want a number for — a named competitor, an app someone mentioned — this is the fastest free route to a figure, and it covers apps far below the top 3 for any keyword.
What it costs you in accuracy. The free snapshot is coarse by design: one month, worldwide only. No country split, no daily series, no history. Appfigures also documents real coverage gaps in its estimates generally — apps below a minimum download threshold get no daily estimates, iOS downloads are modelled "on iPhones and not on iPads," and paid apps are not estimated at all.
One critical detail before you compare it to anything. Appfigures states its revenue estimates are already net of the platform fee: "Revenue estimates are after Apple's and Google 30% (or 15% for subscriptions) fee, so they aren't what the customer spent but rather what the developer earned." Most other tools report gross consumer spend. Putting an Appfigures revenue figure next to another vendor's without adjusting introduces a roughly 30% error in a direction you will not notice. This trap is covered in more depth in what App Store download estimates actually tell you.
Method 3: A Free Trial of a Paid Platform
What it returns. Everything — history, country breakdowns, daily granularity, category rankings, keyword tracking — for a fixed window.
Why it ranks third. It is the deepest free data available, and it is also non-repeatable. You get one shot per vendor, so it is worth almost nothing if you spend it browsing and a great deal if you spend it executing a prepared plan.
How to actually use one. Do not start the trial until you have the list. Write down, in advance: the ten to fifteen keywords you care about, the specific competitor apps, the exact questions ("what is the revenue-per-download ratio in this category?", "is the leader growing or flat over 12 months?"), and where you will paste the output. Then start the trial and work the list. A prepared trial day produces more usable competitive intelligence than a month of unfocused access.
What it costs you. A credit card in most cases, a calendar reminder to cancel, and the fact that you can only do it once per vendor. Verify what any given trial includes on the vendor's own page before you commit the day — trial scope changes and is frequently narrower than the marketing page implies.
Method 4: Public Signals You Read Yourself
What it returns. No download number at all — a set of observable facts you reason from. Rating count, rating score, category chart position, how recently the app was updated, how many localisations it ships, whether it runs ads, whether it has a website and a support team.
Why it ranks last, and why it still matters. It is the only method with no dependency on anyone's model or product, it is available for every app in every storefront, and it is how you sanity-check the other three. When an estimate and the public signals disagree loudly — an app showing 80,000 monthly downloads with 40 lifetime ratings — one of them is wrong, and knowing to look is the skill.
The ceiling, stated honestly. The standard move is to convert ratings into downloads using an assumed conversion rate — the "1–5% of users leave a rating" figure that appears throughout ASO writing. Apple publishes no download-to-rating ratio. That number is not an Apple statistic; it is a community assumption of unknown provenance that varies enormously by category, by whether the app prompts for ratings, and by how good the app is. Use rating counts as an ordering signal — this app is much bigger than that one — and do not convert them into a download figure and then treat that figure as data.
What you can read reliably from public signals:
| Signal | What it tells you | What it does not tell you |
|---|---|---|
| Rating count | Rough relative size, and how long the app has been accumulating | Downloads |
| Rating score | Whether the incumbent is vulnerable | Anything about volume |
| Chart position | That the app is at least mid-sized in its category | How far ahead of position 20 it is |
| Update recency | Whether the publisher is still investing | Current performance |
| Localisation count | Whether there is a real team behind it | Revenue |
What No Free Method Gives You
Being clear about the ceiling is more useful than another workaround.
Per-app truth. Apple reports per-app downloads and revenue only to that app's own developer. Every public figure about someone else's app — free or expensive — is modelled from observable signals. Paying more buys better modelling and more granularity, not access.
Small differences. No free method distinguishes 41,000 downloads from 46,000, and neither does a paid one. The halve-and-double test is the right filter: if halving and doubling the estimate does not change your decision, the number is good enough; if it does, you need a different question rather than a better tool.
Reliable history. Free methods are overwhelmingly point-in-time. Trend over 12 months is the clearest thing paid platforms sell.
Paid-app downloads. Appfigures states it does not estimate downloads for paid apps at all. Coverage gaps like this are vendor-specific and documented — read the documentation of whichever source you rely on rather than assuming full coverage.
The Practical Sequence
For a developer deciding whether to enter a category, with no budget:
- Frame the question as a keyword, not an app. "Can I compete for X?" is answerable; "how big is app Y?" usually is not the real question.
- Pull the ranked competitive set for that keyword with App Store Operator, and compute revenue per download for each app — the ratio survives estimate error far better than either number alone.
- Spot-check one named competitor against the Appfigures free snapshot. Agreement within an order of magnitude is confirmation; wild disagreement is a signal to distrust both.
- Read the public signals on the top three apps — ratings, score, update recency — to judge whether those positions are defended or merely occupied.
- Apply halve-and-double. If the decision holds at both ends, stop researching and go build.
Run it end to end:
claude mcp add --transport stdio app-store-operator -- npx -y app-store-operator@latest
Research the top rivals for "receipt scanner" in the US App Store, then compute estimated revenue per download for each and tell me whether their positions look defended.
The 60-second competitor research guide covers the query patterns worth learning, the competition analysis framework turns the output into an enter-or-avoid call, and the alternatives page compares this against the paid platforms feature by feature.
Frequently Asked Questions
How can I see another app's download numbers for free?
You cannot see the real numbers — Apple reports per-app downloads only to that app's own developer — but you can get free estimates. App Store Operator returns estimated downloads and revenue for the top-ranked apps on any keyword at no cost, Appfigures publishes a free monthly snapshot of estimated downloads and revenue for individual apps, most paid platforms offer a one-time free trial, and public signals such as rating counts give you a rough ordering.
Are free app download estimates accurate?
They carry the same limitation as paid ones: they are modelled, not measured. Treat any estimate as reliable for magnitude, ranking and ratios, and unreliable for precise levels. A useful filter is to halve the number and double it — if your decision holds at both ends, the estimate is good enough for that decision.
Does Apple publish download numbers for individual apps?
No. Apple provides per-app download and revenue reporting only to that app's developer, inside App Store Connect. It publishes store-wide aggregates in its annual App Store Transparency Report, but nothing per app for third parties. That gap is the reason the entire estimates industry exists.
What is the best free alternative to a paid ASO platform?
It depends on the question. For "who ranks for this keyword and how big are they," App Store Operator answers it in one query at no cost. For "how big is this one specific app," the Appfigures free monthly snapshot is faster. For historical trends and country-level splits, no free option is adequate and a free trial of a paid platform is the honest answer.
Can I estimate downloads from an app's rating count?
Only as an ordering signal. Apple publishes no download-to-rating ratio, so the commonly cited "1–5% of users leave a rating" figure is a community assumption rather than an Apple statistic, and it varies widely by category and by whether the app prompts for ratings. Use rating counts to tell a much larger app from a much smaller one, not to derive a download figure.
Do free download estimates show gross revenue or developer earnings?
It depends on the vendor and you must check. Apple separates Sales — the total billed to customers — from Proceeds, the customer price minus taxes and Apple's commission. Appfigures documents that its revenue estimates are already net of the platform fee; other tools conventionally report gross consumer spend. Comparing one against the other introduces roughly a 30% error.
Is App Store Operator really free?
Yes. It is MIT-licensed and open source, with no paid tier, no subscription and no usage cap. Two of its four tools need no account at all; the two analytics tools require a one-time browser sign-in to a free SensorTower account, after which the session is reused locally.
Free Is Enough for the Decision You Are Making
The reason free estimates work for indie developers is not that they are as good as paid ones. It is that the decision in front of you — enter this category or find a better one — is a magnitude question, and magnitude is the one thing estimates do well.
Paid platforms earn their price when you are tracking a portfolio over time, defending a position, or reporting to someone. If you are deciding what to build next, the free path answers it.
claude mcp add --transport stdio app-store-operator -- npx -y app-store-operator@latest
Then read what App Store download estimates actually tell you before you act on any number you get back, and how to price an iOS app for what the revenue-per-download ratio means once you have it.
Run your first competitive research in 60 seconds.
App Store Operator connects Claude to App Store and SensorTower data — no browser, no API keys, no manual copy-paste.
View setup guide →