ASO competitor tracking without Sensor Tower or data.ai
Similar apps, reviews, and storefronts as JSON from Play and the App Store. A feed, not a rank-tracking suite.
ASO competitor tracking, here, is similar-apps lists, reviews, and country storefronts from googleplay.fetcher.sh and appstore.fetcher.sh. We are a data feed, not Sensor Tower or data.ai. Those vendors are named as the category we are not, not as a takedown.
Web SEO and local SEO are different jobs. Google Search rankings are a SERP object. Keyword-rank time series, share-of-voice charts, and estimated download numbers are what the dashboards sell. We return lists and review text you can schedule yourself.
Access notes explain Play vs Apple. This note is the job on top: watch the neighborhood.
Similar apps as the competitor graph
Fetch similar apps on both stores. Read reviews as qualitative signal. Switch country to see another storefront.
Play …/apps/{appId}/similar and App Store …/apps/{appId}/similar, with a Bearer key or x402.
Reviews as research is the qualitative sibling. Storefronts by country is the geo sibling.
A weekly cron that stores similar-app ids and diffs the set will catch a new lookalike faster than a human who opens the store when they remember. It will not tell you your keyword rank for “habit tracker” in the US. If you need that chart, you are in dashboard land.
Do both stores. An Android-only similar graph is a different planet from the iOS one, even when the brand name matches. Do not average them.
What this feed will not replace
Sensor Tower and data.ai earn their keep on estimates, history, and UI. If your CMO wants a slide with download bars, buy the slide. If your indie team wants to know who showed up in similar apps this week and what reviewers just complained about, a feed is enough.
We also will not rank you. We will not tell Google Play’s algorithm to like you. We will not write your screenshot copy. Fetch similar, fetch reviews, fetch the other storefront. The rest is a person.
Web SEO people will try to reuse their rank-tracking mental model. App storefronts are not blue links. site: on google.fetcher.sh does not answer “who is similar on iOS.” Keep the jobs labeled.
A case: watching a competitor without a rank dashboard
An indie team cannot pay Sensor Tower this year. They can store two app ids (Play and iOS), fetch similar weekly, and diff the lists. They read new reviews on both stores. They repeat the search in de because a competitor launched there.
That is enough to notice a new lookalike in the similar-apps graph. It is not a keyword-rank time series. Fetch similar on both stores before you trust a single chart.
When the lookalike appears, they pull its reviews and its data-safety (Play) the same week, not a month later when a user tweets. The feed is the alert. The humans still decide whether to change the listing.
A case: a localization lead who only watched the US
They thought they knew the competitors. Japan’s similar-apps list had a local app that does not exist on the US store. Germany had a different one. The US-only dashboard they were quoting in meetings was not wrong about the US. It was silent about the other storefronts.
They add country=jp and country=de searches to the same job. Storefronts is the parameter note. This case is why the parameter is not optional if you ship those countries.
Similar-apps diffs need a stored snapshot. A weekly JSON blob in object storage is enough. Fancy dashboards are optional. What is not optional is doing both Play and iOS: an Android lookalike that never appears on the App Store is still a competitor for half the install base.
We will not estimate their downloads. If a slide needs a bar chart of installs, that bar comes from a vendor that sells estimates, or from their own Console/Connect. This feed is neighbors and sentences.
A weekly ASO job that is still not Sensor Tower: similar on Play, similar on iOS, optional jp/de searches, diff ids, read new reviews on anything that appeared. No download bars. No keyword ranks. If the CMO needs bars, buy bars. If the indie team needs neighbors, stay here.
Web SEO remains google.fetcher.sh. Local pack remains Maps and Yelp. Do not reuse those trackers’ vocabulary on storefronts.
Dashboards vs a feed
Sensor Tower and data.ai are dashboards. We return lists and review text. Web SEO and local listings are other jobs. Docs on both app hosts; pay per GET. If the question was “restaurant reviews,” you wandered into the wrong vertical.