Appsium vs Astro: keyword tracker or full ASO workspace?

Astro has earned a loyal following among indie iOS developers for a simple reason: it does keyword research and rank tracking well, it runs natively on your Mac, and it costs about as much as a lunch each month. Appsium is not trying to be a cheaper Astro. It covers the steps that come after you know your keywords: writing the listing, localizing it, designing screenshots, checking App Review rules and pushing it to App Store Connect.

TL;DR: who should pick which

• Pick Astro if you mainly want to find keywords, see their popularity and difficulty, and watch your rankings move day by day across many countries, at a low flat price, on a Mac.
• Pick Appsium if you want help producing the listing itself: AI-written metadata within Apple's limits, localization, screenshots, an icon, Pre-Review Check and App Store Connect sync, in the browser on any computer.
• Use both if you like Astro's tracking and want to spend less time writing and localizing. The two tools barely overlap.

Appsium vs Astro at a glance

Pricing compared

Astro is a single license for one Mac with a 14-day refund window. Appsium's plans are billed monthly or yearly (yearly includes 2 months free), and the credits pay for AI work: about 5 credits for one language of metadata, 10 for a Pre-Review Check, 2 to 8 per screenshot image. On a pure price-per-tracked-keyword basis, Astro is hard to beat; the comparison only makes sense if you also value the production tools.

Where Appsium is different

• From keywords to finished copy. Appsium writes the title, subtitle, keyword field, promo text and description, checks them against Apple's 30-character, 100-byte and 170-character limits, and shows a store preview. See the title and subtitle guide.
• Localization per market. Each language gets its own keyword choices, not a translated English list. Our localization guide explains why that matters.
• Visuals. An AI screenshot generator that uploads images per locale, and a logo generator with 14 styles. Read the screenshot guide.
• Pre-Review Check. Checks the guideline areas behind most rejections, like Sign in with Apple, account deletion and paywall terms.
• App Store Connect push. Pull your live listing and push approved changes back, with keys encrypted by Google Cloud KMS.
• Any computer. It runs in the browser, so it works on Windows, Linux or a borrowed laptop.

Where Astro is stronger

• Daily rank tracking. Astro updates rankings daily and shows history graphs. Appsium does not keep ranking history.
• Unlimited apps and keywords. No caps for one flat price. Appsium caps apps by plan.
• Price. $108 a year is very low for what it does.
• Native and fast. A focused Mac app that many developers enjoy using every day.
• Review tracking. Astro tracks new ratings and reviews across stores.

A worked example

Imagine a solo developer with a sleep-sounds app sold in the US, Germany and Japan. In Astro, they track 150 keywords across the three storefronts and notice that "white noise" sits at #14 in the US while "rain sounds" is climbing. That is the knowing half, and Astro does it cheaply and well.

The doing half is where the hours go. They need a new subtitle that fits 30 characters, a keyword field that uses all 100 bytes without repeating words already in the title, a German version that uses German search terms rather than a literal translation, a Japanese version that respects how Japanese users actually search, and screenshots whose captions match the new positioning. That is the work Appsium is built to speed up: it drafts each field per locale, flags anything over Apple's limits, generates matching screenshots and checks the submission for common rejection reasons. Then the developer goes back to Astro to see whether the change moved the needle.

If you only ever change one or two words a year, Astro alone may be enough. If you update your listing every release or sell in several languages, the production tools tend to pay for themselves in saved time.

How to add Appsium to your Astro workflow

1. Shortlist keywords in AstroPick the terms with good popularity and manageable difficulty for each country you care about.
2. Add your app to AppsiumConnect App Store Connect or paste your App Store link, and let it draft your app brief.
3. Generate metadataWrite the title, subtitle and keyword field with your shortlist, then generate other languages.
4. Refresh visuals and pre-checkUpdate screenshots if your positioning changed and run Pre-Review Check.
5. Push and trackPush to App Store Connect, ship the version and watch rankings in Astro.

Launching soon? Use our ASO launch checklist, or see how Appsium compares with Appfigures and in the full ASO tools roundup.

Frequently asked questions