Hi r/SideProject! I'm building AppTrendKit, a web tool for researching iOS apps, competitors and App Store keywords. Before committing to an app idea, I want to know what already exists, whether people appear to spend money in that category, and how they find those apps. Then I want to look at the competitors closely enough to work out what I'd actually do differently. That's the workflow I'm building AppTrendKit around. Here's an example of how I'd use it to research an app idea. What you can do with it now Start with an app or a niche. Look up an app's estimated downloads and app store spend, chart positions, ratings and store listing. Open the publisher's portfolio to see the other apps they ship. This helps you investigate whether you're looking at one app or a broader set of products serving similar users. Research how people search. Compare keywords by country using modeled popularity and organic difficulty scores, then inspect the apps appearing for those searches. You can also compare competitor keyword coverage to find searches worth investigating for your own app Study the product and positioning. Look through store screenshots and available App Store ad examples. An app's numbers can get your attention; its screenshots, features and messaging help you understand what it's offering people. Keep track of what changes. Watchlists and Alerts let you follow apps instead of repeating the same searches whenever you want to check on a competitor. An example: researching a crochet app YarnPal is a crochet app. AppTrendKit currently shows about $1.5M in projected worldwide App Store spend for Sep 16–Oct 15, 2026, based on 19 observed days, with medium confidence. That's estimated consumer spend before Apple's commission, not reported developer revenue or profit. That gives me a reason to investigate the category. The next question is how people find apps in it. In a US keyword comparison I ran: “crochet”: 52 popularity / 56 difficulty. “crochet patterns”: 39 popularity / 45 difficulty. Both are modeled scores from 0–100. Difficulty measures organic competition, not ad cost. The more specific phrase has lower scores on both measures, so there's a tradeoff to investigate. I'd look at the apps ranking for it and whether their offer matches the product I have in mind before choosing it. Next, I'd open the ranked apps and compare their features, screenshots and positioning. a revenue estimate and a keyword score are starting points for research; you still need to work out who your product is for and why they'd choose it. What I'm working on next I'm working on adding more of the research around an app, beyond its App Store listing: Meta ads: examples of creatives and messaging to study alongside the app research. MCP support: a way to bring AppTrendKit research into AI tools that support MCP. Onboarding screens and paywalls: examples of how other apps introduce the product and present their paid plans These additions are still in progress. I want to make it easier to go from finding an interesting app to understanding its product and marketing. I'm also considering a separate Steam games research section, but only if I can validate that developers want it. I'd want to understand what decisions game developers need help with before expanding into it. Access and pricing There's a free tier covering the 300 biggest apps, plus limited additional app and keyword lookups. With a free account, you get five additional app pages and five keyword pages a day; no card is needed. Pro is $26.99/month, or $228/year ($19/month billed yearly), tax included. It opens the full app and keyword coverage, keyword gap and exports. https://www.apptrendkit.com/ One important limit: the current research is for iOS. Download and spend figures are modeled estimates, with confidence labels. They aren't access to competitors' private analytics. If you research apps before building them, what information is hardest to find right now? I'd like to hear which part of that process you'd want me to improve first.   submitted by   /u/Plancheislove [link]   [comments]