Fledly blog
App Store research for people who ship apps alone.
Original App Store research and practical ASO guides for indie iOS developers: keyword fields, localizations, app idea validation and the young apps that already earn.
Method · October 27, 2026How much do iPhone apps make at each Top Grossing rank?Apple doesn't publish app revenue, but the Top Grossing chart ranks apps by it. Our rank-to-revenue model for the US App Store, a calculator, the honest error bars, and what a category rank means.
Research · October 27, 2026What young subscription apps charge: weekly, monthly and yearly prices from 70 earning iPhone appsThe real prices of 70 young iPhone apps that are on the US Top Grossing charts: typical weekly, monthly and yearly prices, which plans they offer, how big the yearly discount is, and what that means for pricing your own app.
Free tool · October 27, 2026App Store keyword field checkerPaste your iOS app name, subtitle and keyword field. The checker counts characters and bytes, finds repeated words, plurals, spaces and wasted words, and gives you a cleaned-up keyword field to copy.
Idea teardown · October 27, 2026Four of the top 10 grossing Food & Drink apps are meal planners under five months oldTapCook, NeatEat, mise and Potto all launched in mid-2026 and already sit in the US Food & Drink Top Grossing top 10. Their prices, how they grow, what 143 one- and two-star reviews say, and the version a solo developer could build.
Idea teardown · October 27, 2026AI photo-to-video apps: nine young earners, $10–15 a week, and the complaint they all shareNine AI photo-to-video apps under two years old were on Apple's US Photo & Video Top Grossing chart on October 27, 2026. What they earn (roughly), how they price, what 152 one- and two-star reviews say, and what a solo developer would have to do differently.
Guide · October 27, 2026Apple Ads search popularity, explained: what the 1–100 score means for your App Store keywordsApple's search popularity score is the only first-party measure of App Store search demand. What the 1–100 and 1–5 values mean, why most keywords have no score, what we see in 66 weeks of US data, and how to use it to pick keywords.
Guide · October 27, 2026How and when to ask for App Store ratings without annoying peopleApple's system review prompt shows at most three times a year, so timing is everything. When to ask, the SwiftUI and UIKit code, what Apple forbids, and how many ratings young top-grossing apps actually have.
Method · October 27, 2026How to tell if an app buys its growth before you copy itA Top Grossing rank proves an app earns, not that people look for it. Five public checks show whether a successful app grows on real demand or on ad spend you would have to match.
Research · October 27, 202610 kinds of apps that earn well but a solo developer can't copyYoung apps in these ten groups are on the Top Grossing charts right now, and they look like easy targets. The money comes from content rights, network effects, licences or hardware, not from the app. Here is how to spot them.
Research · October 27, 2026357 young iPhone apps already earn on the US Top Grossing charts. Here's what they have in commonWe looked at every non-game app on Apple's US Top Grossing charts on October 26, 2026. One in five launched in the last two years. Their age, size, categories, pricing and the app concepts that repeat.
Guide · October 27, 2026App Store cross-localization: more keyword space in every countryMost App Store countries index more than one localization of your app. Here is which ones, how to use the extra keyword fields safely, and the mistakes that waste them.
Guide · October 27, 2026The App Store keyword field: how the 100 characters actually workA practical guide to the iOS keyword field: what the App Store indexes, the 100-character limit (and when it is bytes), comma rules, word combinations, what not to include, and how to measure a change.
Comparison · October 27, 2026ASO tools for indie iOS developers in 2026: an honest comparisonAstro, Appfigures, AppTweak, Sensor Tower, Sonar, Mobile Action, WowKeywords and Fledly compared on price, platforms and what each is actually best at, for a developer shipping alone.
Method · October 27, 2026How to validate an iOS app idea with App Store data before you write codeA repeatable, evidence-first method for indie iOS developers: look for young apps that already earn, check that more than one developer made it work, measure real user pull, and filter out the traps.What is Fledly?
Fledly is an App Store optimization (ASO) and market-research tool for indie iOS developers. It finds young iPhone apps that already earn on the Top Grossing charts, scores app ideas on public evidence (proven revenue, repeat success by different developers, real user pull, how recently the window opened), and tracks your own keyword rankings with Apple Ads search popularity.
Who writes here
Mika Heinonen, Indie iOS developer and maker of Fledly. Mika ships iPhone apps as a solo developer from Finland and built Fledly to answer two questions that kept coming back: which keywords can a small app win, and which app ideas are already proven by newcomers?