iOS App Update Tracker — Version & Changelog Monitor | $1/1K | No Key

Competitor intelligence teams, ASO managers, and app review sites use this actor to get notified the moment a competitor ships a new iOS version — before it hits the charts.

$1.00 per 1,000 app snapshots. Change-detection events billed additionally when a version update is detected.

Worked example:

• 100 apps tracked daily = 100 snapshots/day → $0.10/day (~$3/month)
• 500 apps tracked weekly = 500 snapshots/week → $0.50/week (~$2/month)
• 1,000 apps (one-time batch metadata pull) = 1,000 snapshots → $1.00

Snapshot iOS app version, changelog, ratings and metadata from the Apple iTunes lookup API (itunes.apple.com/lookup). Fully public — no API key, no authentication.

Use with scheduled runs to detect when a competitor (or your own app) releases a new version. Each run produces a snapshot; compare datasets to see what changed.

Best practice: schedule this actor to run daily via Apify Scheduler. The release_notes field tells you exactly what changed before users do. Set up a webhook to Slack or email when version changes. Use with n8n or Zapier to auto-post to Slack when a competitor updates.

Sample output

{
  "app_id": "284882215",
  "name": "Facebook",
  "version": "473.0",
  "release_date": "2026-05-28T00:00:00Z",
  "release_notes": "Bug fixes and performance improvements.",
  "rating": 2.3,
  "rating_count": 8200000,
  "developer": "Meta Platforms, Inc.",
  "parse_confidence": 1.0
}

---

Features

• Version string + release date for the current version
• Changelog / release notes (what changed in this update)
• Ratings (overall + current version), rating count
• Price, file size, genres, content rating, minimum OS version
• Developer name, bundle ID, artwork URL
• Multi-app batch: pass up to hundreds of IDs in one run
• Country code selector — compare same app across App Stores
• parse_confidence + warnings in every record — drift detection built in
• Pay Per Result (PPE) — you only pay for actual snapshots returned

Input

Field	Type	Required	Description
appIds	list	Yes	App Store IDs (e.g. 284882215) or App Store URLs
country	string	No	Country code, default us. Examples: gb, de, jp

App ID formats accepted:

• Plain numeric: 284882215
• App Store URL: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/facebook/id284882215

Output schema

Field	Type	Notes
app_id	str	Numeric App Store ID
name	str	App name
version	str	Current version string
release_date	ISO str	currentVersionReleaseDate
release_notes	str|null	Changelog text for current version
first_release_date	ISO str	Original release date
price	float	0.0 for free
currency	str	ISO 4217 (e.g. USD)
rating	float|null	Average user rating
rating_count	int|null	Total ratings
rating_current_version	float|null	Rating for current version only
developer	str	Developer name
primary_genre	str|null	Primary App Store category
genres	list	All genres
description	str|null	Long app description
content_rating	str|null	Age rating (e.g. 12+)
minimum_os_version	str|null	Min iOS version
file_size_bytes	int|null	Download size in bytes
store_url	str	App Store URL
artwork_url	str|null	512×512 icon URL
country	str	Queried country code
bundle_id	str|null	Bundle identifier
scraped_at	ISO str	Run timestamp
parse_confidence	float	0.0–1.0 parse quality score
warnings	list	Machine-readable quality flags

FAQ

Do I need an API key? No. This actor uses Apple's public iTunes lookup API — no auth, no proxy.

What formats can I export? JSON, CSV, Excel, or JSONL — from the Apify dataset UI or REST API.

How do I get alerted when an app updates? Use Apify Scheduler (daily) + a webhook to Slack or email. Pipe results to n8n or Zapier to compare version across runs and fire alerts on change.

What if an app ID is not found? The actor logs a warning and skips that ID. Apps not available in the selected country storefront will be marked as not_found_in_country in the run summary.

---

Use cases

• Competitor monitoring — schedule daily runs to catch version bumps and read changelogs before users do
• Release tracking — track your own app's release history across countries
• App metadata auditing — collect pricing, rating and genre data at scale
• App Store research — batch-lookup hundreds of apps for market research

vs. alternatives

Feature	This actor	AppFollow	Sensor Tower	AppTweak
Batch 100s of apps	✅	✅	✅	✅
Changelog / release notes	✅	✅	✅	partial
Per-country tracking	✅	partial	✅	partial
Pay-per-use (no subscription)	✅	❌	❌	❌
Cost	$1/1K	$99+/mo	$99+/mo	$99+/mo

(Verify competitor prices at publish time — adjust table accordingly.)

parse_confidence — every record carries a 0.0–1.0 data quality score. Score < 0.5 → check the warnings field.

Use with AI agents (MCP)

All actors in this suite are available via the Apify MCP server. Connect to Claude, GPT-4o, or n8n to let AI agents pull live App Store data on demand — market research, competitor monitoring, and ASO tracking automated end-to-end.

MCP config: https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=bovi/app-update-tracker

Also in this suite

• Apple App Store Scraper — full metadata + reviews
• Google Play Store Scraper — Android ecosystem
• ASO Keyword Rank Tracker — ranking intelligence
• App Store Charts Scraper — market surveillance

Technical notes

• Endpoint: https://itunes.apple.com/lookup?id={ids}&country={cc}&entity=software
• Batching: up to 100 IDs per request (API supports 200; conservative for safety)
• Rate limits: handled with exponential backoff
• Stack: Python 3.13 + curl_cffi + Apify SDK

Integrations

Built for competitor-intelligence and ASO teams detecting the moment a rival iOS app ships a new version — the JSON/dataset output drops into the tools you already run, no glue code:

• n8n / Make / Zapier — trigger a run or pipe every new dataset item into 500+ apps (Google Sheets, Airtable, Slack, HubSpot, your database) with no code: n8n, Make, Zapier.
• Webhooks — fire your own endpoint the moment a run finishes, to push results straight into your pipeline (docs).
• MCP server — expose this actor as a tool to Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client so an AI agent can pull this data mid-conversation (guide).
• API & SDKs — fetch the dataset as JSON, CSV, or Excel through the Apify REST API or the Python / JS SDKs.

See all Apify integrations.