Question 1

What is Chartclimb?

Accepted Answer

You describe an app idea in plain English. We work out what somebody would type into App Store search to find a thing like that, look up who currently shows up for those phrases, and tell you which of them you could realistically place in. It is a viability check, not a rank tracker. The question it answers is "is there room here" — before you spend six months building. Everything we show comes from Apple: the public search results, the public charts, the public listing data, and search volume from an Apple Search Ads account. We have no private access to anybody's App Store Connect, and nothing here is a prediction.

Question 2

What does a report actually tell me?

Accepted Answer

For each search phrase your idea maps to, a report shows the apps currently in the top ten, how many ratings each of them has, how many of them also sit on a chart, and roughly how many results Apple returns in total. Above that sits the opening: the single search we think you have the best case for, with the reason it was picked. If nothing in the report is winnable, it says that instead of inventing something encouraging. What a report never contains is a download figure, a revenue figure, or a score out of ten. Those are modelled numbers, and we have nothing to check a model against.

Question 3

What should I type in the box?

Accepted Answer

A sentence is plenty. "An app that tracks how much water my dog drinks" works better than a product name or a pitch, because we are trying to guess what a shopper types — and a shopper does not know your product name. The one thing worth being specific about is the subject. "A better habit app" gives us almost nothing to look up; "a habit tracker for people who work night shifts" gives us several real phrases. If nothing searchable can be pulled out of what you wrote, we say so rather than guessing, and you can rephrase and try again without it costing you a report.

Question 4

Can I see one before signing up?

Accepted Answer

The example report is a genuine run against real data, not a mockup. Every search, every incumbent app and every rating count on it is the same thing you would get from your own run. It exists because asking somebody to create an account to find out what they are creating an account for is a bad trade. Read it first, then decide.

Question 5

How long does a report take?

Accepted Answer

A run works out the phrases, looks up who ranks for them, checks search volume with Apple, measures the category, and writes the summary. Each of those ticks over on screen the moment its own work is done. Refreshing mid-run is safe and costs you nothing. The work happens exactly once per report however many times the page asks for it, so a second tab or a browser retry lands on the same finished report. If a phrase in your report is one we have never looked up before, we go and fetch it immediately afterwards — so a search showing no results at first may have them a minute later.

Question 6

What is “the opening”?

Accepted Answer

Out of every phrase in your report, the opening is the single one where the gap between what it takes to place and what you would be up against is smallest. It is picked on one of two grounds, and the report always says which. Either Apple reports real search volume for it and the competition is beatable, or no phrase in your report has a volume figure at all and this is simply the least defended of them. Some reports have no opening. When every search you described is locked up by established apps, we say so rather than promoting the least bad option into an opportunity.

Question 7

Why does my opening say “competition”, not demand?

Accepted Answer

Those are two different claims and we keep them apart deliberately. “Demand” means Apple reports people actually searching that phrase, and the opening is a real way in. “Competition” means Apple reports no volume for any phrase on your report, so all we can honestly say is which one has the weakest apps sitting in it. A competition-based pick is not evidence that anybody is looking for your app. It is the least defended door in a building we cannot confirm has visitors. The usual reason a whole report comes back this way is that the phrases are very specific. Apple only reports volume above a floor, and a genuinely narrow niche often sits under it.

Question 8

Why does a search show no apps at all?

Accepted Answer

This is the single most important thing to read correctly on a report. A search with nothing under it has not been checked — it does not mean Apple returns nothing, and it absolutely does not mean the phrase is wide open. We look phrases up on a rolling schedule, and anything new to us joins the front of that queue the moment your report names it. Reload in a minute or two and it will usually have filled in. Absence is only meaningful when we know we looked, so we mark those two states separately rather than showing you an empty table and letting you draw the flattering conclusion.

Question 9

What does “we haven’t checked this yet” mean?

Accepted Answer

Every phrase we look up is shared across everyone using the site, and we refresh them on a rolling schedule through the day rather than all at once. A phrase nobody has ever asked about is one we have simply never had a reason to fetch. Naming it in a report is that reason. It jumps the queue immediately, and in most cases the answer lands within a minute or two of your report finishing. You do not have to do anything, and there is nothing you can run yourself. Reload the page and it fills in.

Question 10

Why isn’t the phrase I typed in my report?

Accepted Answer

The phrases in a report are a guess at what somebody looking for your app would type into App Store search. That is usually not the words you used to describe it, and it is almost never your product name. A phrase gets dropped when it is too long to be a real query, when it is mostly filler words, or when it names something rather than describing it. Tracking those would tell you nothing you could act on. If the subject of your idea is missing entirely rather than just the wording, that is worth telling us — rephrasing more concretely usually fixes it, and if it does not, we want to know.

Question 11

What is the “our suggestion” label?

Accepted Answer

Alongside the phrases from your own idea, a report sometimes includes a broader neighbouring one so you can see what the wider shelf looks like. Those carry the suggestion label. They are context only. We will never name one as your opening or tell you what it would take to win it, because you did not ask about it and a broad phrase is almost always held by something enormous. Read them as “here is the neighbourhood”, not “here is your target”.

Question 12

Can I re-run a report?

Accepted Answer

A report is a record of what was true when it ran, so we never overwrite one. Submitting the same idea again produces a separate report and counts against your allowance like any other. Reloading a report you already have costs nothing and never counts. If a phrase in it was still being looked up, a reload is exactly how you pick up the results. The underlying search results move slowly — usually over weeks, not days — so re-running the same idea the next morning will rarely tell you anything new.

Question 13

Do my reports stay up after I run out?

Accepted Answer

Nothing is taken away when your allowance is spent. Reports you already have keep working, keep their URLs, and stay tied to your account. Report URLs are unguessable and are not indexed by search engines, so one is private unless you share the link — and shareable if you want it to be.

Question 14

Where do your numbers come from?

Accepted Answer

Search positions come from Apple's public Search API — the same results the App Store shows anyone searching that phrase. Chart positions come from Apple's public chart feeds. App names, categories and rating counts come from Apple's public lookup service. Search volume is the one figure that is not public. It comes from an Apple Search Ads account, which is where Apple reports how much a phrase is searched to advertisers. We have no access to anybody's App Store Connect, no download data, no revenue data, and no way to see the keyword field you set on your own listing. Anything on this site that looks like private data would be us guessing, which is why there isn't any.

Question 15

What does a position mean — is it a rank?

Accepted Answer

A position is an ordinal in the results Apple returns for a search, out of roughly 190 to 200 results in total, on the day we looked. In the top 25 that ordering is stable enough day to day to be worth calling a rank. Below that it moves around for reasons that have nothing to do with the apps involved, so a position of 140 and a position of 160 are not meaningfully different and we do not present them as if they were. An app that does not appear at all is outside those ~190 results — not absent from the App Store, and not necessarily far away. It is simply past where we can see.

Question 16

What does a rating count tell me?

Accepted Answer

Rating counts are the best public proxy for how long an app has been accumulating users. An incumbent with 400,000 ratings has years of momentum behind it; one with 300 does not. That is the entire claim. A high rating count is not quality, not revenue, and not a download figure — plenty of enormous apps are mediocre and plenty of small ones are excellent. We show the count and never the average score. An average across a handful of ratings is noise, and presenting one as a judgement of somebody's app would be inventing a verdict we have no basis for.

Question 17

What does search demand mean, and why is it a band?

Accepted Answer

Apple reports how heavily a phrase is searched on a 1 to 100 index, through Apple Search Ads. On a public page we show which band that falls into — Low, Moderate, High, Very high — and on your own report, signed in, we show the figure itself. The reason for the split is that this is advertiser data read through one Apple Ads account, not public data. Republishing the raw index on pages built to be indexed would be the most visible possible way to breach the terms it comes under, and every serious tool in this space keeps it behind a login for the same reason. A phrase can also come back as "<35 (indeterminate)" — Apple stopped reporting a score below that at all in October 2025, so this is an answer rather than a gap: Apple looked and the real figure is somewhere underneath its floor, not necessarily zero. That is not the same as low, and it is not the same as us not having checked.

Question 18

Why don’t you show download or revenue estimates?

Accepted Answer

Every tool that publishes a download or revenue figure for an app you do not own is running a model over public signals. Nobody outside Apple can check those models, including the people who build them. We built one too, to see how far it got. It orders apps plausibly and its magnitudes are unvalidated, so it stays off every page a visitor can reach — and a test in our build fails if one of those figures ever appears on one. This is not a roadmap item. A number nobody can check is worse than no number, because it gets treated as a fact and planned against.

Question 19

Why isn’t there a difficulty score?

Accepted Answer

A single number from 0 to 100 telling you how hard a phrase is to rank for is the standard feature in this category, and it is usually not measured against anything. Ours was. We set a threshold for how well it had to predict real outcomes before it could ship, tested it twice, and it came in below that threshold both times. So it is computed, stored, and rendered nowhere. What you get instead is the working: how heavy the top ten actually are, how many of them also chart, and where that sits against every other phrase we track. That is a comparison you can check, rather than a score you have to trust.

Question 20

How fresh is the data?

Accepted Answer

Chart positions are collected once a day, listing details an hour later, and search volume once a day. Search results are the largest job and run on a rolling schedule through the day, so any individual phrase is refreshed periodically rather than every morning. Every table carries the date it was captured, and pages say so where it matters — a search result set is labelled with the day we looked, not the day you are reading. A phrase named in a report jumps that rolling queue, which is why a search that was empty when your report finished often fills in shortly afterwards.

Question 21

What is a category, and why does it matter?

Accepted Answer

Apple files every app into one primary category, and each category has its own charts. We track free, paid and top-grossing charts across all of them. Categories differ enormously in how much they move. In some, the top hundred turns over constantly and a new app can appear within weeks; in others, the same apps have held position for years. A report tells you which kind yours is. This is why the same idea can be a reasonable bet in one category and hopeless in another — it is often the single biggest factor and the one people account for least.

Question 22

Why do I need an account for a free report?

Accepted Answer

Because 3-reports-ever has to be counted against something, and the only alternative is your IP address — which a VPN resets and an office shares between everyone in the building. An account is the honest version. It also means your reports are yours: they stay tied to the account rather than to a browser you might clear tomorrow. You can read a complete example report with no account at all, so nothing about what you are signing up for has to be taken on faith.

Question 23

How does signing in work? There’s no password.

Accepted Answer

Enter your email address and we send you a six-digit code. Type it in and you are signed in — you stay on the same page and keep whatever you had typed. The code is good for ten minutes and for five attempts. A code rather than a link you go away and click, because a link lands you in your mail client and back on a fresh page with whatever you had typed gone. Staying put is the whole point. There is no password because a password on a research tool is one more thing to leak and one more thing to reset. We store only a hash of each code and each session, never anything reusable.

Question 24

How many reports do I get?

Accepted Answer

A free account gets 3 reports, ever — not 3 a month. That is enough to research a real idea and the two obvious alternatives, which is the point at which you know whether this is worth paying for. After that there are two ways to carry on. A pack is 10 more reports for $9, bought once, and they do not expire. Pro is 150 reports a month, counted against your billing period, with a ceiling of 20 in any 24 hours. Reading a report you already have never counts. Only starting a new one does. Pending and running reports reserve an allowance or purchased credit. Completed reports consume it; a failed report releases it. This is not a refund of a pack purchase. Every account is limited to 20 new report attempts in a rolling 24 hours, including failed attempts and purchased-credit reports. Hitting this limit does not spend a credit.

Question 25

What happens to my reports when I run out?

Accepted Answer

Nothing. Every report you have already run stays at its URL and stays readable. The allowance is on running new ones. If you have hit the daily attempt ceiling rather than your report allowance, the page says so and tells you when the next slot frees up. Your remaining reports and purchased credits are unchanged. The monthly allowance comes back all at once on your billing date rather than trickling back a report at a time. Your account page shows the date.

Question 26

What does Pro cost, and how do I buy it?

Accepted Answer

Pro is $19 a month for 150 reports a month, up to 20 in any one day, and the whole list on every category and search-term page. Sign in first, then use the upgrade button on the pricing page. Payment goes through Stripe, so your card details never reach us. The allowance resets on your billing date rather than trickling back a slot at a time, so the day you are charged is the day you have a full month of reports again. You can cancel whenever you like, and you keep Pro until the end of the month you have already paid for.

Question 27

What is a report pack, and should I buy one instead of Pro?

Accepted Answer

A pack is 10 reports for $9, paid once. There is no subscription, nothing renews, and the reports do not expire — they sit on your account until you use them. Buy a pack if you are weighing up an idea or two and then getting on with building. Take Pro if you are working on this every month: it is far cheaper per report, and it opens the whole list on every category and search-term page, which a pack does not. Packs and Pro are not exclusive. If you are on Pro and buy a pack, the pack waits until your monthly allowance is spent — your own allowance is always used first, so buying one early never costs you anything. You can buy another pack whenever you run out. There is no limit on how many.

Question 28

How do I cancel Pro?

Accepted Answer

Open your account page and use Manage billing. That takes you to Stripe, where you can cancel, change your card, or download any invoice. Cancelling does not cut you off on the spot. You keep Pro until the end of the month you have already paid for, and your account page shows that date until it passes. Nothing you have already made goes away. Every report you have run stays at its URL and stays readable on the free tier, exactly as it was — the allowance only ever applied to running new ones. We do not do automatic refunds for a month already started, but if something went wrong, reply to any email from us and we will sort it out.

Question 29

Why is Pro capped at all?

Accepted Answer

Because an uncapped plan is one leaked session away from an unbounded bill, and the honest way to price that risk is a ceiling rather than a higher price for everyone. 150 a month is five a day sustained, which is more than anyone researching their own ideas gets through. The separate 20-a-day ceiling exists for the same reason at a shorter timescale: 150 reports in one afternoon is a script, not a customer. Every report costs us real money to run — model calls and a slice of Apple Search Ads quota — which is why it is metered at all rather than unlimited.

Question 30

Why can I only see the top ten apps on a category or search-term page?

Accepted Answer

Every category page and every search-term page shows its top 10 apps to everybody, signed in or not. That part is not going behind anything — those pages are how most people find this site in the first place. Seeing the whole list, with how far each app moved, is what uses an unlock. Signed out you get one, ever. A free account gets 10 a day, and Pro has no cap. A page you have already opened stays open for the rest of the day, so re-sorting it or coming back to it later does not use a second unlock. Unlike a report, showing you the whole list costs us almost nothing — the data is already stored and nothing is worked out on the spot. The cap is there so Pro has something to offer, not to cover a bill, and that is worth saying plainly rather than dressing up as a cost.

Question 31

What is a watch?

Accepted Answer

You can put a watch on any iOS app — yours or a competitor's — and we will mail you when its chart position moves materially. Setting one sends a confirmation email first, and nothing is sent until you click it. That is deliberate: without it, anybody could sign your address up for mail you never asked for. Watches are about chart position only. They do not report search results, and they never carry a download or revenue figure.

Question 32

How do you decide a move is worth an email?

Accepted Answer

Most chart movement is noise. An app drifting a few places on a quiet Tuesday is the normal behaviour of the charts, not news, and mailing about it teaches you to ignore us. So a move has to be large enough to clear a threshold we set by measuring how the charts actually behave — not by picking a round number — and each app has a cooldown afterwards so a genuinely volatile one cannot mail you every day. Entering or leaving a chart, and crossing a major position milestone, are treated as events in their own right.

Question 33

How do I stop the emails?

Accepted Answer

At the bottom of every email there are two links: stop watching this one app, or stop all mail from us. Both work in one click and neither asks you to sign in first. Your mail client's own unsubscribe button works too — we support the standard one-click header, so Gmail and Apple Mail can do it without opening anything. Unsubscribing from everything is remembered permanently. We will not mail that address again even if somebody later tries to add a watch on it.

Questions, answered.

Getting started

Reports

The data

Account and pricing

Watches and email