# Fledly vs Sensor Tower By Mika Heinonen (Indie iOS developer and maker of Fledly). Published 2026-10-28, updated 2026-10-28. Canonical: https://fledly.app/compare/fledly-vs-sensor-tower/ > Sensor Tower is the market-intelligence standard, sold by custom quote. Fledly is a self-serve tool for indie iOS developers that finds young apps already earning on the Top Grossing charts and scores app ideas, from $0. What each one is good for. **Key takeaways** - **Choose Sensor Tower** if you need market-wide download and revenue estimates across iOS and Google Play, years of history, ad intelligence and audience data, and your company can buy an annual contract. - **Choose Fledly** if you are an indie iOS developer who wants to find **proven app ideas** and the **young apps already earning** on the Top Grossing charts, with rough revenue ranges, for **$0 to $24 a month**. - **Price:** Sensor Tower publishes no prices; plans are quoted by sales. One buyer-data source reports a median contract around **$75,000 a year**. Fledly is free to start, Pro is $9 a month. - **Accuracy:** Sensor Tower models downloads and revenue from large data sets. Fledly estimates revenue from chart rank with a published formula and a **factor-of-three range**. Use Fledly to compare and shortlist, not to value a company. *Disclosure: we make Fledly. Sensor Tower information is from its public website and third-party pricing data, checked on October 28, 2026.* ## At a glance | | Sensor Tower | Fledly | |:--|:--|:--| | **Built for** | Publishers, investors, agencies and brands | Indie and small-team iOS developers | | **How you buy** | Contact sales, custom annual contract | Self-serve: Free, Pro $9/month, Studio $24/month | | **Public price** | None | Yes | | **Stores** | App Store and Google Play | App Store only | | **Download estimates** | Yes, market-wide | No | | **Revenue estimates** | Yes, market-wide, modelled | Ranges for apps on the Top Grossing charts, from chart rank | | **History** | Many years (Sensor Tower also acquired data.ai in 2024) | Starts October 2026 | | **Ad intelligence** | Yes | No (Fledly flags apps that look ad-driven) | | **App idea scoring** | No | Yes, 0–100 with every part shown | | **Young apps that already earn** | Possible with filters | Core feature, updated daily | | **Keyword tracking** | Yes | Yes, daily, 16 storefronts | | **API and AI assistants** | API for contract customers | Remote MCP server at fledly.app/mcp on every plan; no separate API | ## What Sensor Tower does better Almost everything about market size. Sensor Tower estimates downloads and revenue for nearly every app in both stores, by country and by day, with years of history. It adds ad intelligence (which apps advertise where, with which creatives), audience and usage data, and analyst support. If you're raising money, valuing an acquisition or planning a large launch, those numbers are worth paying for, and nothing indie-priced replaces them. ## What Fledly does differently **It's built for one question: what could a small team build?** Fledly doesn't try to measure the whole market. It looks at the apps that matter for a newcomer: those under 24 months old, not from big publishers, already on the US Top Grossing charts. It groups them into concepts, and scores each concept on proof (estimated revenue), repeat (how many different developers made it work), pull (new ratings per month) and window (how recently the newest one launched), adjusted for buildability and for signs of paid-ad growth. **It shows its working.** Every revenue figure is a range, from a published model: [How much do iPhone apps make at each Top Grossing rank?](/blog/how-much-do-top-grossing-apps-make/). Every idea score is broken into its parts. You can disagree with a number and see exactly why it is what it is. **It's priced for indie developers.** Free to start, $9 a month for Pro. You can stop any time. **It's cheaper to be wrong with.** An idea shortlist from Fledly costs nothing to check further: open the young apps, read their reviews, try their paywalls. See [our current list of proven ideas](/blog/best-app-ideas-indie-ios-2026/) for what that looks like. ## How rough are Fledly's revenue numbers? Rough. Fledly's estimate for an app at overall US Top Grossing rank *r* is $70 million × *r*−0.75 a month, shown from a third to three times that value. Category ranks are mapped to overall ranks by comparing apps that appear on both charts. Deep in a category, that mapping is a guess, and Fledly marks it. That's good enough to tell a $50,000-a-month app from a $2-million-a-month one, and to add up a niche. It isn't good enough to put in a pitch deck. For that, use Sensor Tower or similar panel-based data. ## Which one to pick - **"I need defensible market numbers for investors or a board."** Sensor Tower. - **"I need Google Play, downloads or ad creatives."** Sensor Tower. - **"I'm one developer choosing my next app."** Fledly. - **"I want to see which young apps are earning right now, and roughly how much."** Fledly. ## Frequently asked questions ### Is there a free alternative to Sensor Tower? Not with the same coverage. For indie iOS developers, Fledly's Free plan shows young apps earning on the US Top Grossing charts with revenue ranges and 3 scored app ideas a week. Appfigures has a free plan for your own apps. We list more options in [Sensor Tower alternatives for indie developers](/compare/sensor-tower-alternatives/). ### How much does Sensor Tower cost? Sensor Tower doesn't publish prices. Plans are quoted by its sales team. Vendr's buyer data, as reported in a competitor's pricing review in October 2026, puts the median contract at about $75,000 a year, with a range of roughly $29,500 to $115,000. ### How accurate are Fledly's revenue estimates compared with Sensor Tower? Less precise. Fledly estimates revenue from public chart rank and shows a range from a third to three times its middle estimate. Sensor Tower models revenue from much larger data sets. Use Fledly to compare apps and niches, and Sensor Tower when you need a number you can defend. ### Does Fledly have download estimates? No. Fledly shows revenue ranges from the Top Grossing charts and ratings velocity (new ratings per month) as a proxy for user growth. ## Sources - Sensor Tower website, [sensortower.com](https://sensortower.com/), checked October 28, 2026; [Toolradar's Sensor Tower pricing page](https://toolradar.com/tools/sensortower/pricing) (no public plans, custom quotes). - Vendr contract data as cited in [Sonar's Sensor Tower comparison](https://trysonar.app/alternatives/sensor-tower) (Vendr data updated February 2026), unverified third-party figures. - Garg, R. and Telang, R. (2013), "Inferring App Demand from Publicly Available Data", *MIS Quarterly* 37(4), for the rank–sales power law behind Fledly's model.