Monetization mix
Any App Store app. The cohort is the apps sharing its search result; change the term after picking.
Why not just compare prices
Upfront price is nearly extinct: most search results are entirely free apps, and the money is made inside them. Sampled live, a search for “pdf scanner” returned 20 apps and none of them charged upfront; “weather” returned 22 and none did; “calculator” returned 23 and exactly one did. A price chart of that is a flat line. What separates these apps is whether they sell anything inside, and how much a download ends up being worth.
Pair it with the rating benchmark: reach without ratings and reach without revenue are different problems.
This page is about the monetisation model. For the actual numbers, what each rival charges weekly, monthly, yearly and for lifetime access, read off Apple’s own product pages, see the pricing analysis.
About this tool
How do the apps in your category actually charge?
Upfront price is nearly extinct: measured live, zero of 20 apps for "pdf scanner" and zero of 25 in a Productivity cohort charged anything to download. A page built on price alone would report "100% free" for almost every category and teach you nothing.
What matters is the model — free, freemium, paid, or paid with in-app purchases — plus what an install is worth in revenue. That is what this reports across the 25 apps in your search result.
How it works
- 1Pick an app and a search term. Appstro reads the 25 apps in that search result, your own listing, and download and revenue estimates for each.
- 2Each app is bucketed by whether it charges upfront and whether it sells in-app purchases.
- 3Revenue per install is computed where both figures exist, and shown as a bracket rather than a precise number.
- 4Apps whose IAP status is not an explicit yes or no get their own unknown bucket and are excluded from the share calculation.
What it cannot tell you
- Apple publishes no in-app purchase prices and no subscription tiers, anywhere in its public app data. This page can say how many rivals sell IAP; it must never state or imply what they charge. Anyone claiming to know a competitor’s subscription pricing from public data is guessing.
- Revenue per install is two coarsely-rounded estimates divided by each other — a live top-100 sample returned just 24 distinct download values — and it is revenue before Apple’s commission.
- A whole cohort on one model is a fact about the category, not proof that the model is right for your app.
Questions
Can I see what a competitor charges for their subscription?
Not on this page. Apple’s app data carries no in-app purchase prices or subscription tiers — only whether an app offers in-app purchases at all. The prices an app lists on its product page are read by the pricing analysis tool.
Should my app be free or paid?
This page shows what your category actually does and what an install is worth there. It deliberately does not recommend a price — that depends on your costs and your product, neither of which it can see.
Is revenue per install my revenue?
No. It is one third-party estimate divided by another, worldwide, over a rolling 30 days, before Apple’s cut. Treat it as a way to compare apps against each other, not as anyone’s accounts.
Written up on the blog
Benchmarks & money
Paid tools do this too. RevenueCat alternatives — 8 of them, described the same way and in alphabetical order.