The step-by-step guide to mobile app competitor analysis

In the highly competitive mobile app market, constantly monitoring and adapting to your competitors’ moves and strategies is essential to avoid falling behind.

Mobile app competitor analysis is imperative for increasing app visibility, improving user acquisition, and identifying gaps in the market that can be leveraged for growth. By carefully analyzing competing apps, you can refine your marketing strategies, optimize your App Store presence, and enhance user engagement.

Key takeaways

• Mobile app competitor analysis is crucial for ASO, user acquisition, and market positioning.
• Identify direct and indirect competitors to understand your competitive landscape.
• Analyze competitor ASO strategies, UI/UX, user feedback, and monetization models to refine your own approach.
• Look for market gaps: unmet user needs, pricing opportunities, and regional expansion possibilities.
• Continuously monitor and adapt to competitor updates, new features, and marketing campaigns.
• Use ASO tools like AppTweak to monitor metadata changes, competitor rankings, user feedback, and market evolution.
• Avoid common mistakes like blindly copying competitors, misinterpreting data, and ignoring review sentiment.
• Stay proactive by regularly refreshing your competitor analysis to maintain a competitive edge in the rapidly evolving app market.

This guide will walk you through the essential steps of conducting an effective app competitor analysis.

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What is an app store competitive analysis?

An app store competitive analysis is the process of evaluating and monitoring your competitors’ apps on the app stores to gain insights into their strengths, weaknesses, and overall strategies.

This analysis focuses on several key areas, including:

• App store presence – Evaluating how competitors optimize their app store pages, keyword strategies, and creative elements for discoverability and conversion.
• User engagement and retention – Evaluating onboarding flows, push notifications, and loyalty programs.
• Monetization strategies – Analyzing in-app purchases, costs, subscription models, etc.
• Marketing and promotion – Examining marketing campaigns, in-app promotions, and social media presence.
• User feedback and ratings – Understanding customer sentiment through reviews and ratings.

What are the benefits of conducting a mobile app competitor analysis?

Conducting a thorough app competitor analysis will help you:

• Gain ASO insights — Understand how competitors rank or fail to rank on keywords in their titles and descriptions and optimize your metadata accordingly. 
• Identify market gaps — Discover unmet user needs and opportunities for innovation.
• React to competitor moves — Stay proactive and adjust to changes in the market, such as new feature releases or shifts in advertising strategies.
• Promotional practices — Monitor competitors’ in-app promotional strategies and remain competitive.

Essential insights from your app store competitor analysis

Check out these 10 valuable insights you can glean from analyzing your competitors’ ASO.

1. Determine seasonality trends.
2. Decide where next to localize your app or game.
3. Pinpoint competitors’ strengths & weaknesses.
4. Monitor competitor keyword metadata.
5. Analyze competitor UI, UX, and onboarding experiences.
6. Exclude ineffective keywords from your metadata.
7. Identify where competitors acquire their users (paid ads, PR, etc.).
8. Establish an effective metadata update frequency.
9. Track your competitors’ featurings and seasonal promotions.
10. Understand the keywords your competitors bid on in Apple Search Ads.

For a deeper dive, check out our guide on competition monitoring.

The best tools for app store competitor analysis

Choosing the right ASO tool is a crucial step in enhancing your app’s marketing strategy.

Given the wide range of tasks involved in ASO, there are a wide variety of tools available to optimize your presence in the app stores. Here is a list of the best ASO tools:

AppTweak

A powerful ASO marketing & intelligence platform that provides competitor keyword analysis, market trends, and performance tracking to industry leaders.

Apple Search Ads

Offers insights into keyword performance and user acquisition trends on the App Store.

ASOdesk

Provides deep competitor research, keyword tracking, and app visibility insights to small indie developers.

How to conduct a mobile app competitive analysis

Step 1: Identify your App Store competitors

Start by identifying your direct and indirect competitors:

• Direct competitors are apps that offer similar features and target the same audience (e.g., Uber vs. Lyft).
• Indirect competitors are apps that may serve the same purpose as yours but with different approaches (e.g., Uber vs. public transit apps).

Leverage app store rankings, category listings, keyword research, and ASO tools like AppTweak to identify your competitors.

Consider monitoring the “Similar Apps” section of app product pages, alongside collections on the app stores. While the Similar Apps section shows you apps associated with your own, collections contain groups of apps that have been featured in the stores.

You should also consider the Google tags attached to apps and games on the Play Store. Monitoring other apps that use the same tags can give you an idea of with whom you are competing for visibility.

Step 2: Classify your App Store competitors

Once identified, classify your app store competitors into:

• Market leaders: Apps with the highest downloads and engagement in your category.
• Direct rivals: Apps that compete directly with your app and have similar rankings.
• Emerging threats: New apps that are gaining traction and could challenge your position.
• Distant competitors: Apps with lower visibility but potential growth.

Step 3: Analyze competitors’ ASO and app store presence

To maximize app visibility, analyzing competitor app store optimization (ASO) strategies, metadata, and creative assets is essential. By tracking these elements, you can refine your own ASO strategy to improve discoverability and conversion rates.

Monitor competitor keywords and metadata updates

Stay on top of your competitors by identifying the high-performing keywords they use in their app title, subtitle, and description.

Ask questions like:

• What keywords are they ranking for?
• Do they update their app store metadata frequently?
• Are there any keywords they’ve missed that you can use?

If a competitor has a strong ASO presence, studying their strategy can help you refine your own.

Study competitor app store creatives

Analyzing your competitors’ icons, screenshots, and preview videos helps you understand how they attract users and encourage installs. Focus on the first impressions:

• Is their icon simple, recognizable, and aligned with the app’s core function?
• Do the first three screenshots highlight key features or value propositions clearly?
• Are videos dynamic, engaging, and focused on real app usage?

Pay attention to the design style, messaging, and color choices. These elements should align with user expectations in your category and market. To go further, A/B test your own creatives. For example, you can test landscape vs. portrait screenshots, different icon designs, or varied messaging. Only by testing can you know what actually improves your conversion rate.

Track trends over time — if competitors frequently change their creatives, it may signal they’re testing what resonates. Regular creative updates can also boost visibility and conversion, especially during seasonal events or promotions.

Track competitor featurings and promotions

Being featured on the App Store or Google Play can dramatically increase downloads. Monitoring how often and where your competitors get featured gleans some information into their marketing strategy.

Find out if they leverage custom product pages, or in-app events, tools that allow you to highlight your app to a particular audience, or limited-time promotions. These can often help boost visibility and engagement when tied to featurings or in-app events for maximum impact. For instance, finance app Binance achieved a 95,000% increase in installs by localizing custom product pages for key markets, optimizing creatives, and leveraging global featurings. Their strategy focused on user intent and regional relevance, helping them rank #1 for targeted keywords.

Identify competitor bidding strategy with Apple Search Ads

Monitoring competitors’ Apple Search Ads strategy reveals where they focus acquisition efforts and how they adapt over time. Start by tracking which keywords they bid on — are they protecting branded terms, targeting generic queries, or going after competitor names?

How about seasonal trends? Do they increase spend during holidays, sales events, or major app updates? These changes can signal important user acquisition pushes. You can also analyze ad placement patterns. Do they rely on custom product pages to tailor messaging for different search intents? Pairing specific creatives with high-intent keywords often improves conversion rates and lowers cost-per-install.

Finally, study Share of Voice (SOV) over time. This helps you decide when to increase or lower bids based on market changes. Tracking competitor Apple Search Ads strategy gives you a data-backed edge when planning your own ad spend or keyword updates.

Step 4: Discover your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses

To gain a competitive edge, you need to understand what your competitors do well and where they struggle. This is how:

• Analyze their ASO (App Store Optimization) strategy. What keywords are they ranking for? Do they update their app store metadata frequently? Are their screenshots and videos optimized to drive conversions? If a competitor has a strong ASO presence, studying their strategy can help you refine your own.
• One of the best ways to assess those strengths and weaknesses is by analyzing their app store reviews and ratings. Look for recurring positive feedback like features users love the most. These are elements you should consider when updating your own app.
• You also need to pay close attention to negative reviews. Are users frustrated by slow performance, confusing navigation, or a lack of customer support? Identifying these weaknesses presents an opportunity to differentiate your app by addressing those pain points better than your competitors.

Finally, assess their marketing efforts. Are they leveraging social media ads, influencer collaborations, or content marketing?

With these insights, you’ll be able to craft a more compelling value proposition and position your app strategically against the competition.

Step 5: Identify market gaps and monetization strategies

Once you’ve assessed your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, it’s time to uncover market gaps and untapped opportunities:

• Look at unmet user needs: Are customers asking for features that no other competitor currently offers? For example, if multiple users complain about a lack of customization options in competing apps, this could be an opportunity for differentiation.
• Consider pricing and monetization gaps: If most competitors offer high-priced subscription plans, could you introduce a more affordable tier to attract budget-conscious users? Or, if competitors rely heavily on ads, could you provide an ad-free experience as a premium offering?
• Analyze regional opportunities: Some competitors may be strong in certain countries but underperform in others. If you identify a region where demand is high but competition is low, expanding your app’s reach there could give you a competitive advantage.
• Review trends in the industry: Are there emerging technologies, like AI-powered personalization, that competitors haven’t yet leveraged? Being an early adopter of innovative features can help your app stand out in a crowded market.

Leverage localization to reach your audience in different markets.

Step 6: Monitor & adapt

Competitor analysis isn’t a one-time task — it’s an ongoing process that needs to be integrated into your regular strategy.

Here’s how you can monitor your competitor landscape:

• Schedule routine competitor analysis: Set a cadence (e.g., monthly or quarterly) to review your competitor list, reassess their ASO strategies, and identify any new players or shifts in rankings.
• Set alerts for updates: Leverage ASO tools to monitor changes in your competitors’ metadata, rankings, and app versions. In AppTweak, you can set alerts to get notified when a competitor launches an update, changes keywords, or runs a promotion.
• Track key movements: Focus on new feature launches, ASO optimizations (titles, descriptions, visuals), and marketing campaigns such as influencer collaborations, ad pushes, or store featurings.

What should you do after your app store competitor analysis?

 

After you’ve conducted a thorough competitor analysis, the next step is to translate those insights into actionable strategies to improve performance and stay ahead of the competition. 

Improve your ASO strategy

Your competitor analysis should give you valuable insights into how top-performing apps optimize their app store presence. Use this data to refine your own app store optimization (ASO) strategy by:

• Targeting high-performing keywords that competitors rank for.
• Optimizing your app title, subtitle, and description with relevant, high-volume search terms.
• Enhancing your visuals — if a competitor’s app icon or screenshots seem to be driving high conversions, take inspiration and refine your own creatives.
• A/B testing different metadata elements to see what resonates best with your audience.

Enhance UX with competitor feedback

User experience (UX) plays a significant role in app success. Through competitor analysis, you’ll likely have identified common user complaints and praises in app reviews. Use this feedback to enhance your app’s UI and overall user journey.

For instance, if competitors complain about a complicated onboarding process, simplify yours to provide a smoother experience. If users praise a competitor’s intuitive navigation or unique interactive elements, consider incorporating similar improvements in your app.

A well-optimized user experience leads to higher retention rates, better engagement, and increased app store ratings, all of which contribute to long-term success.

Leverage marketing and promotion channels

Your competitor analysis should reveal where your competitors focus their marketing efforts. Are they investing heavily in social media ads, influencer marketing, content marketing, or partnerships?

If you notice a competitor successfully running TikTok or Instagram campaigns, it might be worth testing those platforms for your app. If a competitor is collaborating with influencers or brands in your niche, consider reaching out to similar partners for collaborations. Additionally, look for gaps in their marketing strategy— are they neglecting a platform that could be an opportunity for your app? If a competitor isn’t active on LinkedIn or Reddit, for example, you could establish a strong presence there to capture untapped audiences.

By diversifying and optimizing your marketing strategy, you can increase app awareness and attract new users more efficiently than your competitors.

Monitor competitor reviews and implement user feedback

Continuously monitoring competitor reviews can help you stay ahead of emerging user expectations.

Set up a system to track user feedback on competing apps to identify trends over time. If users consistently request a feature that competitors are ignoring, adding it to your app can be a game-changer. Likewise, if a competitor is receiving negative feedback about bugs or poor customer service, ensure your app excels in those areas.

By acting on user feedback — even if it’s from competitors’ users — can help you position your app as the superior choice and win over dissatisfied customers.

Adapt your monetization model

Monetization is a key component of app success, and competitor analysis provides valuable insights into the pricing strategies that work best in your industry.

If competitors are successfully using a freemium model but users complain about excessive paywalls, you might consider a more balanced approach with free trials or limited premium features. If competitors rely heavily on ads for revenue, explore whether a subscription model or one-time purchases could offer a better user experience while maintaining profitability.

Additionally, keep an eye on pricing updates. If a competitor suddenly lowers their subscription cost or introduces new discounts, consider how this impacts user expectations and whether you should adjust your pricing strategy accordingly.

Check out these 10 mobile app monetization strategies.

Keep up with competitor launches and updates

The mobile app market evolves quickly, and a static strategy won’t keep you ahead for long.

After analyzing your competitors, you will need to keep track of their new feature launches, major updates, and marketing campaigns in order to stay ahead of market evolution and trends.

When a competitor releases a new feature, gauge user reactions—are users excited, or are they complaining about issues? If the response is positive, consider implementing a similar (but improved) feature in your app. If the response is negative, learn from their mistakes and position your app as a better alternative.

Set up a routine for ongoing competitor monitoring, using ASO tools like AppTweak to track changes in competitor rankings, keyword strategies, and marketing tactics. Staying proactive ensures that you maintain a competitive edge and capitalize on emerging opportunities.

Common pitfalls to avoid in mobile app competitor analysis

To ensure your analysis is both accurate and actionable, avoid these common mistakes.

Blindly copying competitors

One of the biggest mistakes in competitor analysis is assuming that everything successful competitors do will work for your app.

Just because a competitor has a certain ASO strategy, monetization model, or marketing approach doesn’t mean it will be equally effective for you. Factors such as target audience, brand positioning, and user expectations all play a role in an app’s success.

Instead of blindly copying competitor strategies, take time to understand why they work and whether they align with your app’s goals. Test new approaches carefully, using A/B testing for ASO updates and performance tracking to ensure they bring positive results.

Looking at some of the top racing games on the market, we see that most games incorporate a video and use landscape creatives. The risk of observing such a trend is thinking that this method is the only one! However, Mario Kart Tour displays its creatives in portrait format. This practice is more relevant because the game is played in portrait mode; landscape creatives would not make much sense in the context.

Ignoring indirect competitors

Many app developers focus only on direct competitors with the same core functionality – while ignoring indirect competitors that may still impact their market position. Indirect competitors can include apps with overlapping features, alternative solutions to the same problem, or even apps that attract the same user demographic.

For example, a fitness tracking app might consider other fitness apps as direct competitors but overlook meditation apps, which could be competing for the same health-conscious audience. By analyzing both direct and indirect competitors, you gain a fuller picture of user preferences and market trends, helping you refine your app’s positioning.

Failing to update your competitor list regularly

The mobile app landscape evolves quickly, with new competitors emerging and existing ones changing their strategies. A competitor that was once a minor player might become a major threat, while established apps might lose relevance due to outdated features or poor user retention.

If you don’t update your competitor research regularly, you risk basing decisions on outdated information. Set a schedule to refresh your competitor list, especially after algorithm updates, major industry changes, or the launch of new apps in your category, to ensure your insights remain relevant.

Overlooking user sentiment in competitor reviews

Competitor app reviews provide a goldmine of user feedback, yet many app developers focus only on ratings and overall scores rather than digging deeper into what users are actually saying. Simply knowing that a competitor has a 4.5-star rating isn’t enough. You need to analyze what aspects of the app users love and what frustrations they have.

Ignoring this qualitative data means missing out on opportunities to enhance your app by addressing common complaints. For example, if users consistently complain about poor customer support in a competing app, you can differentiate your app by providing a superior support experience.

Focusing only on short-term gains

Another mistake is treating competitor analysis as a one-time task rather than an ongoing process. They make quick adjustments based on competitor movements but fail to develop a long-term competitive strategy. This reactive approach can lead to inconsistent branding, rushed feature rollouts, and wasted marketing spend.

Instead, use competitor insights to shape a sustainable growth strategy. Balance short-term improvements, such as adjusting keywords or tweaking your pricing model, with long-term plans, like building unique features, refining your brand identity, and improving user retention.

Not monitoring  marketing strategies

While researching your competitors’ in-app strategies is key, exploring their marketing efforts can provide critical insights into user acquisition trends.

For example, if a competitor is heavily investing in social media ads, influencer marketing, or app store featuring, this indicates where they’re seeing success. If they suddenly shift ad creatives, messaging, or user acquisition platforms, it could be a sign of new industry trends or changes in the app store algorithms.

Conclusion

Conducting a mobile app competitor analysis is essential for staying ahead in the app marketplace. By identifying competitors, analyzing their strategies, and adapting based on insights, you can optimize your app’s visibility, engagement, and monetization. Continuously monitoring competitor movements ensures that you stay agile and capitalize on market opportunities.

By leveraging the right tools and best practices, you can turn competitor insights into a winning growth strategy for your app.

If you’re interested in analyzing your app’s competitors by looking at their in-app events and promo content, start your free trial with AppTweak now.

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FAQ

1. Why is mobile app competitor analysis important for ASO?

Mobile app competitor analysis helps you identify market trends, optimize keywords, improve your app’s visual appeal, and refine monetization strategies, ultimately enhancing app visibility and user acquisition.

2. How can I identify my direct app store competitors?

You can identify direct competitors by looking at apps with similar features and audiences. Leverage rankings, keyword research, or AppTweak’s Similar Apps feature to find both.

3. What tools can I use to analyze my app store competitors?

You can use tools like AppTweak to track competitor keywords, rankings, metadata updates, user reviews, and other app store promotional strategies like in-app events and custom product pages.

4. How often should I conduct a competitor analysis for my app?

You should conduct competitor analysis every 3-6 months or whenever there’s a major update, new competitor launch, or app store algorithm change to stay ahead of market trends.

5. What are the key ASO metrics to track when analyzing competitors?

Key ASO metrics to track include keyword rankings, category rankings, download estimates, conversion rates, user ratings, review sentiment, and metadata updates to understand competitor strategies.

6. How do I use competitor analysis to improve my app’s ranking?

You can improve your app’s ranking by optimizing keywords, screenshots, and descriptions based on competitor insights, identifying gaps and opportunities in their strategies you can take advantage of, and refining your ASO strategy.

7. What mistakes should I avoid when conducting an app competitor analysis?

Common mistakes to avoid include blindly copying competitors, misinterpreting data, ignoring user feedback, neglecting marketing strategies, and failing to monitor updates regularly to ensure a long-term competitive advantage.

8. How can I track changes in my competitors’ ASO strategies over time?

You can track changes by using ASO tools to monitor keyword rankings, metadata updates, and review trends. Using an ASO tool like AppTweak, you can also set up alerts for new app updates.

9. Can I use competitor reviews to improve my own app? If so, how?

You can improve your app by analyzing common complaints and feature requests in competitor reviews and then addressing those issues in your app to attract dissatisfied users.

10. How should I react when a competitor launches a major update or new feature?

You should analyze user reactions, adjust your ASO and marketing strategy, and highlight your app’s unique value — especially if users dislike the update, positioning your app as a better alternative.

Ready to monitor your competitors and unlock your app’s full potential?