What is the best ASO tool for indie developers?

For keyword research on an indie budget, Astro is the current community favorite — Mac-native, per-country popularity and difficulty scores, and priced for individuals rather than agencies. Pair one research tool with one measurement layer (your funnel from App Store Connect) and you're covered; most indies over-buy research and never measure outcomes.

Are there free ASO tools?

Yes, and they're better than their price: App Store search autocomplete shows what people actually type, Apple Search Ads exposes search popularity scores for any keyword without running ads, and App Store Connect includes peer-group conversion benchmarks. That free stack plus discipline beats an unused subscription.

Do keyword tools tell you if your ASO worked?

Only half of it. Rank trackers show position movement, but rank is the means, not the result — a #6 rank on a keyword nobody types is worth nothing. Whether ASO worked shows up in your funnel: search impressions, installs and purchases from App Store Connect, compared before and after the change.

FunnelHound / Guides / Best ASO tools for indies

Best ASO tools for indie developers, honestly compared

By Emin — indie iOS developer building FunnelHound · Published 14 Aug 2026

The honest answer: you need two tools, not six — one to research keywords, one to measure whether your changes worked. Most indies over-buy the first job and skip the second entirely. Full disclosure up front: FunnelHound is mine, and it only does the second job — judge accordingly.

ASO is three jobs, and no tool does all of them well

Research: which keywords have demand you can win — popularity vs difficulty, per country.
Tracking: where you rank on the keywords you chose, over time.
Measurement: whether any of it turned into impressions, installs and money.

Tool marketing blurs these on purpose. Sort every tool into its real job and the buying decision gets simple.

Research & tracking: the paid options

Astro — the current indie favorite, and what I use for FunnelHound itself. Mac-native, per-country popularity and difficulty scores, rank tracking, and an MCP server so you can drive keyword research from Claude or another AI agent. Priced for one developer, not a team.
Appfigures — the all-rounder: analytics plus a strong keyword inspector. Its underrated trick is competitor intelligence — seeing how many languages a rival localized explains rank gaps that keyword scores can't. Good indie entry tiers.
AppTweak, Sensor Tower — the agency tier. Deeper market data, download estimates for any app, team features. Excellent, and priced like it. If you're one person with three apps, this is a company car you don't need yet.
AppFollow — strongest at review management and replies at scale. If reviews aren't your bottleneck, it isn't your tool.

The free stack Apple already gave you

Before paying anyone: App Store autocomplete is real search demand, typed by real thumbs — start every keyword list there. Apple Search Ads shows a search popularity score for any keyword without spending a cent on ads. And App Store Connect ships peer-group benchmarks — your conversion rate against your category's percentiles (covered in the benchmarks guide). This stack plus the discipline in the measurement guide outperforms an expensive subscription you check twice a year.

The elephant: rank is not the result

Here's the gap nobody's dashboard advertises. A rank tracker can report you climbed from #40 to #12 — and that keyword can still be worth nothing, because rank says nothing about whether anyone types the phrase or taps your icon when they see it. The result lives in your funnel: search impressions → installs → purchases. That's the scoreboard the research tools don't show, because it comes from your App Store Connect data, not their crawlers.

Where FunnelHound fits — and where it doesn't

FunnelHound is not a keyword tool. It won't suggest a single keyword. It pulls your funnel from App Store Connect and puts it on your iPhone: impressions, tap-through, installs, purchases, deletions — with a milestone marked on the day you shipped a change, so "did it work?" gets a number instead of a feeling. Research with Astro or the free stack, ship, then let the funnel judge. Two tools. That's the whole setup.

The measurement half of your ASO stack

FunnelHound shows what your keyword changes actually did — impressions, installs, purchases, straight from App Store Connect.

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Data notes: tool positioning reflects public feature sets and indie community consensus as of August 2026 — pricing tiers change often, so none are quoted; check current pricing before buying. FunnelHound is the author's product; every claim about competitors' strengths is meant sincerely, several are tools we use.