Apple Search Ads keyword tool
Pick any iOS app for a scored target list, grouped into the four campaigns an ASA account uses.
Search volume against live organic rank, across 175+ App Store storefronts. No signup.
What no tool can show you
Apple publishes no bids, spend or keyword data for Apple Search Ads. Its one public record is the EU ad repository, which lists which ads ran in EU storefronts and nothing about what they cost; everywhere else ASA slots render only inside the App Store app itself. Any tool claiming to show a rival’s exact bids is guessing. What is public: how often a term is searched, and where every app ranks organically for it. Those two facts decide whether a keyword is worth paying for — so that is what this tool scores.
The four Apple Search Ads campaigns
Every keyword the scan finds is sorted into one of these, each with its own cost and match type.
Brand campaign
Your own name and its variants. Cheapest terms in any account — run defensively so a rival cannot buy the slot above your listing.
Match type: Exact match
Competitor campaign
Rival app names users search by brand. Higher cost-per-tap and lower conversion, so cap the budget and watch it separately.
Match type: Exact match
Category campaign
Generic terms describing what the app does. The volume sits here — and so does the competition.
Match type: Exact + broad
Discovery campaign
Everything else. Run broad match with Search Match on to let Apple find terms this scan cannot see, then graduate winners into the campaigns above.
Match type: Broad + Search Match
How the bid score works
Traffic weighted by how far the app sits from the top organic slot. No dollar figures, ever.
Traffic (0-100)
Apple orders search autocomplete by how often each suggestion is searched, so a term’s position in that list is the best free signal of relative popularity. No paid search-volume feed is involved, and no number here is presented as an absolute install count.
Organic rank
The app’s live position in the top 50 App Store search results for that term, in the storefront you picked.
Bid score
Traffic weighted by how far the app sits from the top organic slot. This weighting exists because an ASA ad renders above organic result #1: a term you already own at #1 mostly cannibalises free installs, while a term you do not rank for at all is only reachable by paying. Unranked-but-searched terms score highest.
Competition
A relative 0-100 read of how entrenched that term’s top 10 is. Apple publishes no cost-per-tap, but ad price tracks how many well-funded advertisers want a term, and a top 10 held by multi-million-rating incumbents is the public tell that they are bidding. It ranks terms against each other; it is never a currency figure. Terms scoring high on bid score but low on competition are marked best value — real intent, no deep pockets in the way.
Negative keywords
Terms you do not rank for where the results are dominated by another genre entirely. Broad match and Search Match will find these on their own, so the scan lists them to exclude before they spend budget.
Brand defense
The scan also checks whether rivals sit at or above your app on its own name. Organic #1 does not protect that search, because the ad slot is above it.
About this tool
Pick any iOS app and get a scored Apple Search Ads target list — search popularity against live organic rank, grouped into the four campaigns a real ASA account is built from. Free, no signup, across 175+ App Store storefronts.
Apple Search Ads FAQ
Can you see a competitor’s Apple Search Ads?
Partly, and only in the EU. Under Article 39 of the EU Digital Services Act, Apple publishes an ad repository (adrepository.apple.com) listing ads that ran in EU storefronts, with their creatives, placements and dates — Appstro’s Apple Ads library reads it. It discloses no bids, spend, taps or conversions, and nothing about the other storefronts, so no tool can show what a rival pays or which keywords it buys. What is knowable publicly is which keywords are searched and where each app ranks organically for them — which is what this tool scores.
How is the bid score calculated?
Bid score = search popularity x organic gap. Popularity is a relative 0-100 reading taken from Apple’s own autocomplete ordering, since Apple ranks suggestions by how often they are searched. The gap weighting matters because an Apple Search Ads slot renders above organic result #1: buying a term you already own at #1 mostly cannibalises installs you get for free, while a term you do not rank for at all can only be reached by paying. So unranked terms score highest and #1 terms score lowest.
Why are the keywords split into four campaigns?
Because that is how a working Apple Search Ads account is structured. Brand, competitor, category and discovery terms want different budgets, match types and bids — brand terms are cheap and convert well, competitor terms cost more and convert worse, discovery needs broad match with Search Match enabled. Mixing them into one campaign makes the report unreadable and hides which type of spend is actually working.
Should I bid on my own app name?
Usually yes, at a small budget. Ranking #1 organically for your own name does not protect you: an ad slot appears above the organic results, so a competitor can buy their way in front of people specifically searching for you. Brand keywords are typically the cheapest terms in an account because your relevance score on them is high, which makes a defensive brand campaign inexpensive insurance rather than a real cost centre.
Does this show cost-per-tap or ad spend?
No. Real impression, tap, install and cost-per-tap figures exist only inside your own Apple Search Ads account, behind an advertiser login — nothing public shows them for you or anyone else. This tool deliberately shows no dollar figures rather than inventing estimates. Use it to build the target keyword list, then take that list into ads.apple.com where the real numbers live.
Is it free?
Yes. No signup, no search cap, and it works for any app on the App Store across 175+ storefronts — the country selector re-runs the whole scan against that storefront’s live search results, since keyword volume and organic rankings differ heavily by market.