Free vs Paid ASO Tools: What Each Tier Covers

Free plans cover one to five apps and 20 to 200 keywords, usually in one country; paid tools are for many apps, countries, competitors and history. This site makes Wow Keywords, a paid one-time desktop license, and also offers a free keyword checker.

What you can do with free ASO tools

Manual work covers more than most people expect. Type a phrase into App Store search, read the autosuggest list, open the top results and compare their names and subtitles. That gives you candidate keywords and a picture of who you compete with, in any country, for nothing.

The free keyword checker adds numbers to that: Volume and Difficulty for a keyword in several countries, plus the top apps behind each result. Free plans from Asodesk, ASOMobile, ASOWeb and ASO Corgi add rank tracking for a small keyword set.

A free plan cannot hold a large keyword set, many countries or a long history. ASOWeb and ASO Corgi stop at one app in one storefront, and ASOMobile at 20 keywords.

Free plan or free trial

A trial is temporary access to a paid plan, and Asodesk is the one to read closely: it starts with a 7-day trial, and its free plan only becomes available once the trial ends, so you may need to delete data to fit the limits.

What paid ASO tools add

Paid plans raise every ceiling at once: keywords, apps, teammates and competitors. They also add competitor keyword research, longer history, reports and, on subscription suites, Google Play alongside the App Store.

A few published steps show the scale:

• MobileAction ASO Lite, $15/month: 100 keywords, 5 apps, 3 months of history.
• ASOMobile ASO Indie, $59/month: 500 keywords, 5 apps, 50 competitors.
• ASOMobile ASO Pro, $119/month: 1,500 keywords, 10 apps, 3 users, 150 competitors.

Appfigures follows the same pattern: its Optimize plan, $149.99/month, lists 500 keywords, while the free Starter plan centers on app analytics.

Where a one-time desktop license fits

Wow Keywords is a desktop app for Mac, with a Windows beta. It tracks public App Store and Google Play apps and competitors in 52 countries, with phrases localized for each market. Volume and Difficulty are 0 to 100 estimates, not monthly search counts.

It also runs AI-assisted listing audits and metadata drafts using AI providers you have installed, and exposes its workflows through MCP. There is no cloud account. One license covers two computers with updates, so the cost does not repeat monthly.

It fits a developer whose free plan has run out of keywords or countries and who wants App Store research without a subscription. The one-time license costs $89 to $149; see pricing.

How to choose between free and paid

Count what you have to track: apps, keywords and countries. One app in one or two countries fits a free plan or the keyword checker. Move to paid when you outgrow those limits, need competitor tracking, or localize into many markets.

Then decide how you want to pay: a subscription repeats every month or year, a one-time license does not. If tracking ranks is the main job, see the App Store rank tracker. For the research workflow itself, read ASO for indie developers. For a low-cost routine, see ASO on a budget.