Language coverage
Any App Store app. The cohort is the apps sharing its search result; change the term after picking.
What the spread actually looks like
Measured live on one US search result for “habit tracker”, the 23 apps returned declared: 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 5, 7, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10, 15, 19, 22, 28, 28 and 40 languages. Eight of them ship a single language and one ships forty. Which end of that a result is competing at is not visible from any product page.
Note what this measures: the languages compiled into the app itself, which is a different fact from whether the App Store listing is translated. For that, use the localization audit.
Sampled across 2,110 apps from 47 live search results, Apple returned a language list for all but one. The one is reported as missing data, never as an app with no languages.
About this tool
How many languages does your app declare?
Every App Store listing declares the languages its binary supports. This counts yours, compares it against the apps in your search result, and names the specific languages the cohort has that you do not.
It is the binary side of localization. The listing side — whether each storefront shows translated copy — is a separate question the localization audit answers.
How it works
- 1Pick an app and a search term. Appstro reads the apps in that search result, and your own listing.
- 2Language codes are counted once each, because the field repeats: Chinese appears twice for apps shipping both scripts, in 21 of 26 rows for one search term. A naive length count overstates those apps by one.
- 3The cohort’s languages are pooled and compared against yours to produce the gap list.
- 4A code Appstro has no reliable name for is shown as the code itself, marked as such, rather than with an invented language name.
What it cannot tell you
- This measures the languages the app itself declares, not a localized App Store listing. An app can declare twenty languages and still show an English listing in every storefront.
- An empty list means unknown, not zero. Sampled across 2,110 apps, exactly one returned an empty array.
- The field cannot say which Chinese script it means, which is why that code links to no metadata generator.
Questions
Is declaring more languages better?
Only if the app is genuinely usable in them. Declaring a language you have not translated sets an expectation the app does not meet, and users rate accordingly.
How is this different from the localization audit?
This reads what the binary declares. The audit reads what each storefront actually displays. They disagree more often than you would expect, which is why both exist.
Where do these language codes come from?
Apple returns them on the listing as ISO codes. This page counts the distinct ones and names them where a reliable name exists.
Written up on the blog
Localization & reach
Paid tools do this too. App localization tools, compared — 5 of them, described the same way and in alphabetical order.