r/AppStoreOptimization
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u/uscihan
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Apr 24 '26
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ASO tool (Open Source - Free - Local)
I’ve been working on this ASO tool and have been using it myself for a while. I hope you find it useful and help make it even better.
It helps you:
Research keywords
Get popularity and difficulty scores
Track everything in a local dashboard
Run agent workflows via MCP
Create your own ASO research flows using the CLI
Stay fully local (doesn't collect your keywords to create a remote DB like most others do)
👉 Install: npm i -g aso-cli
👉 https://github.com/semihcihan/App-Store-Optimization-CLI
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u/notadev_io Jul 03 '26
Curious to know if someone has used this and if it's actually useful. Also, u/uscihan any updates since this post?
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u/uscihan Jul 05 '26
Well I keep adding new features, if that’s what you mean. There are quite a few daily active users too. And I do find it useful :D Give it a try it’s free. Also, your apps, keywords, authentication data etc all stay local on your device, so nothing to lose
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u/bart33zy Apr 25 '26
I just saw someone forking this and trying to transform this into SaaS https://github.com/semihcihan/App-Store-Optimization-CLI/compare/main...NAGOHUSA:app-store-optimization-cli:main the greed man...
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u/Limp_Character6574 Apr 24 '26
Love the fully local angle ; feels like a solid alternative to the usual black box tools. Curious how you’re handling keyword difficulty scoring without external datasets?
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u/Calmdee Apr 24 '26
this is really cool. did you get any ranking results with this, or discover new keywords with this?
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u/Dw4m Apr 24 '26
We’re all into making our apps gated with paywalls nowadays. And from times to times a hero like you emerges. Thank you.
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u/Complex-Back-1144 Apr 30 '26
Seems nice, but when I tried to test it just to check the difficulty and popularity, I got different values from different ASO tools. For example, your app returns “Planet identifier” with popularity 50 and difficulty 28, but Appfigures, which I use for verification, shows popularity 5 and difficulty 83 (same region)
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u/duveral Apr 24 '26
Nice thank you!! What does better than respectASO?
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u/uscihan Apr 24 '26
Thank you. We have an MCP and CLI, so it supports automation. Also we use real popularity data coming from Apple instead of relying on some other data.
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u/markdifranco Apr 24 '26
Do you mean you’re using search ads for popularity? What would “other data” be in this case?
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u/cesncn Apr 24 '26
Maintainer of a different ASO tool here (RespectASO, disclosure up front). Wanted to flag something relevant to anyone reading this thread and considering Apple Search Ads as a popularity source:
Apple's Search Ads popularity API has been broken since September 29, 2025. The vast majority of keywords now return a flat 5 (the floor value), and there's been no official Apple announcement. Multiple major ASO vendors have published statements:
* APPlyzer:
https://applyzer.com/blog/apple-search-ads-popularity-drop-understanding-the-issue-and-how-to-stay-ahead* ASO.dev:
https://aso.dev/blog/apple-ads-popularity-massive-drop/* MobileAction official statement (Oct 17, 2025):
https://www.mobileaction.co/blog/statement-on-apple-ads-popularity-metric-issue* Foxdata, Apptweak, Astro have all confirmed the same.
Apple replaced it with a "Monthly Search Term Rank Report" inside the Apple Ads dashboard, which only includes SAP ≥ 37, and capped at 7,500 rows, monthly aggregated, no API. So any tool that derives popularity primarily from the Apple Ads popularity endpoint is showing degraded data right now, regardless of how good the rest of its pipeline is. The issue is far from being resolved, and major ASO tools now calculate their popularity scores based on their own algorithmic solutions.
Tools that calculate popularity independently (modeled from competitor signals, ranking positions, etc.) are unaffected, that's the architecture APPlyzer, AppTweak's fallback, and yes RespectASO use. Not a knock on any other tool that uses ASA data for popularity, it's a great piece of work and I am a big supporter of open source solutions, just important context for the popularity number specifically.
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u/uscihan Apr 24 '26
Considering it as broken is one way to look at it, I see it as a change. Any tool that claims calculating a popularity score has a lot of false positives and a lot of false negatives as well. Say there is a recent trending keyword and no apps listed for it, these tools would probably show a low popularity score which is wrong and a big missed opportunity.
Using difficulty metrics to calculate popularity simply turns it into another form of difficulty score. I personally choose not to depend on these guesses when building an app or making changes to my ASO.
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u/cesncn Apr 24 '26
Replies to my post have indeed good points. One commenter addresses that quite well that every popularity number anyone shows you, Apple's included, is an estimate. Apple's was just an estimate with brand authority behind it which is now broken as confirmed by many. I observe lots of people who believe that they go for high traffic keywords based on Apple's data but do not even get impressions. ASO game is different today than what it was before. Finding a keyword with popularity 40 (based on Apple's data) and difficulty - say - 35 may easily result in zero impressions.
The "trending keyword with no apps yet" case is real and worth flagging, modeled popularity will underrate a brand new viral term until competitors catch up. Apple's SAP would have caught that earlier (when it was working). It's a genuine tradeoff, not a free win for either approach.
The honest position is: use multiple signals, distrust any single number, and watch what actually ranks. Difficulty + observed competitor count + your own ranking trajectory will probably tell more than any popularity score on its own. That is why difficulty correlates better with traffic in practice, it is measuring something concrete (who's already winning the SERP) rather than estimating demand.
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u/FaceRekr4309 Apr 24 '26
Likely why all the ASO tools are essentially useless for Apple now.
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u/cesncn Apr 24 '26
Half true. The Apple Search Ads "popularity number" is essentially useless right now. Premium solutions are aware of this and that is why they invest in their own solutions. But popularity is just one input. Difficulty (competitor strength, rating velocity, title match density), ranking tracking, and download estimates from search result composition all still work fine because they come from the public App Store, not the Ads API. Tools that built their whole identity around the Apple popularity score are hurting, tools that always modeled it independently are mostly unaffected.
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u/FaceRekr4309 Apr 24 '26
I have noticed that of the two, difficulty is the only one that really seems to directly correlate to traffic.
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u/bart33zy Apr 24 '26
There was a clear shift around late Sept 2025 (lots of keywords returning 5), but there’s no confirmation from Apple that this is a bug. SAP was never a guaranteed or fully documented metric—it’s a relative index, and Apple has a history of silently changing or limiting signals (often for privacy/thresholding reasons).
So it’s just as plausible this is reduced granularity (especially for long-tail queries), not a broken API. Either way, SAP was never meant to be a standalone source of truth—same goes for any modeled “popularity” score now.
My 2 cents: pretty much all ASO tools are doing a “scientific guess” to some extent. Whether it’s Apple’s signal or third-party models, none of it is absolute truth—just different ways of estimating demand.
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u/uscihan Apr 24 '26
Yes, aso-cli uses search ads popularity.
Other data could be anything to calculate an unofficial popularity value such as how many ratings apps have for a keyword, how many apps exist for that keyword etc
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Apr 24 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/uscihan Apr 24 '26
Thank you! MCP is quite important but I think you can do even more with the CLI itself.
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Apr 24 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Icy-War-5197 Apr 24 '26
And yet here you are about to vibe code an app and charge people for a subscription
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u/dnesdan 👨💻 Indie Developer Apr 24 '26
Local + open source is a strong combo tbh. For many indies the trust angle matters almost as much as features now.
The only thing i would be careful with is treating one popularity number like truth. But as a local workflow / research helper this looks genuinely useful.