# App Store Keyword Ranking Scraper (`devilscrapes/app-store-keyword-ranking-scraper`) Actor

Track App Store keyword rankings across countries and device types via Apple's iTunes Search API. Get the exact rank position plus ratings, pricing, and metadata for every app that shows up for your ASO keywords. Pure rank tracking for competitive intel — this Actor never touches App Store reviews.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/devilscrapes/app-store-keyword-ranking-scraper.md
- **Developed by:** [DevilScrapes](https://apify.com/devilscrapes) (community)
- **Categories:** SEO tools
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

Pay per event

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

Actors are web data automations that power AI and operations. They run on the Apify platform to scrape websites, process data, connect APIs, and automate workflows.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.
Actors are written with capital "A".

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.
The best way to integrate Actors is as follows.

- **AI agents and MCP clients** — the [Apify MCP server](https://docs.apify.com/integrations/mcp.md) at `https://mcp.apify.com` (remote, streamable HTTP, OAuth on first use).
- **Agentic workflows and local Actor development** — [Agent Skills](https://apify.com/.well-known/agent-skills/index.json) with the [Apify CLI](https://docs.apify.com/cli/docs.md): `npm install -g apify-cli`, then `apify login`.
- **JavaScript/TypeScript projects** — the official [JS/TS client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md): `npm install apify-client`.
- **Python projects** — the official [Python client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md): `pip install apify-client`.
- **Any other language** — the [REST API](https://docs.apify.com/api/v2.md).

For usage examples, see the [API](#api) section below.

For more details, see Apify documentation as [Markdown index](https://docs.apify.com/llms.txt) and [Markdown full-text](https://docs.apify.com/llms-full.txt).

# README

<div align="center">
  <img src=".actor/icon.svg" width="160" alt="Devil Scrapes mark" />

## App Store Keyword Ranking Scraper

**💰 $3.05 / 1 000 results**  ·  pay only for results  ·  no credit card to try

*We do the dirty work so your dataset stays clean.* 😈

Track App Store keyword rankings across countries and device types via Apple's iTunes Search API. Get the exact rank position plus ratings, pricing, and metadata for every app that shows up for your ASO keywords. Pure rank tracking for competitive intel — this Actor never touches App Store reviews.

</div>

***

### 🎯 What this scrapes

Apple's public <code>itunes.apple.com/search</code> endpoint returns app metadata for any query, but it never tells you where an app actually ranks. This Actor takes your ASO keywords, fans them across every App Store storefront and device type you care about, and writes one row per app with its exact rank position, rating, price, and metadata. No reviews, no review-scraping duplication of the crowded cluster ahead of us — just accurate keyword-rank snapshots for competitive ASO intel.

### 🔥 What we handle for you

- 🛡️ **Browser fingerprint rotation** — `curl-cffi` impersonates real Chrome / Firefox / Safari TLS handshakes so the target sees a browser, not Python.
- 🌐 **Apify Proxy + session rotation** — one impersonation session per browser profile, round-robined, so consecutive requests don't share a fingerprint. Apple's endpoint is public, so this is about pacing and resilience, not evading a wall.
- 🔁 **Retries with exponential backoff** on `403 / 408 / 429 / 503` and network errors — up to 5 attempts, and we honour `Retry-After` when Apple sends one.
- 🧱 **Rate-limit-aware pacing** — when the target pushes back, we slow down instead of getting banned.
- 🧊 **Clean, typed dataset rows** — Pydantic-validated, ISO-8601 timestamps, stable IDs, JSON / CSV / Excel export straight from the Apify Console.
- 💰 **Pay-Per-Event pricing** — you only pay for results that hit your dataset. No data, no charge.

### 💡 Use cases

- **ASO rank tracking** — snapshot where your app ranks for the keywords that actually drive installs.
- **Competitive intel** — watch a rival's rank across the exact same keyword set, run over run.
- **Storefront comparison** — the same keyword often ranks differently in the US vs. Germany vs. Japan; find the gap.
- **Keyword research** — pull full metadata (price, rating, genre) for every top-ranked app on a candidate keyword before committing ASO budget.

### ⚙️ How to use it

1. Click **Try for free** at the top of the page.
2. Fill in the input form — most fields have sensible defaults.
3. Click **Start**. Output streams into the run's dataset.
4. Export from **Storage → Dataset** as JSON, CSV, or Excel — or fetch via the API.

### 📥 Input

| Field | Type | Required | Default | Notes |
|---|---|:--:|---|---|
| `keywords` | `array` | **yes** | \['crm'] | ASO search terms to rank-track. The Actor fans each keyword across every country in <code>countries</code>. |
| `countries` | `array` | no | \['us'] | 2-letter lowercase App Store storefronts to check per keyword (e.g. <code>us</code>, <code>gb</code>, <code>de</code>). |
| `entity` | `string` | no | 'software' | Apple App Store entity type to search within. |
| `limit` | `integer` | no | 50 | Apps fetched per keyword x country pair. Apple caps effective results at 200. |
| `lang` | `string` | no | '' | Optional Apple locale hint, e.g. <code>en\_us</code>. Leave blank to use Apple's default per storefront. |
| `maxRankToKeep` | `integer` | no | 50 | Only emit rows for apps ranked at or above this position. Keeps the dataset lean for deep lookups. |
| `proxyConfiguration` | `object` | no | {'useApifyProxy': True} | Apify Proxy configuration (fleet standard). The iTunes Search API is public and keyless; proxy is wired for consistency… |

#### Example input

```json
{
  "keywords": [
    "crm"
  ],
  "countries": [
    "us"
  ],
  "entity": "software",
  "limit": 5,
  "maxRankToKeep": 5,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true
  }
}
```

### 📤 Output

Every row is one dataset item.

| Field | Type | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| `keyword` | `string` | Input search term (`term`) that produced this row. |
| `country` | `string` | Input App Store storefront (2-letter lowercase) that produced this row. |
| `entity` | `string` | Input Apple entity type searched (software / iPadSoftware / macSoftware). |
| `rank` | `integer` | 1-based rank position of this app within the search results for its (keyword, country, entity) triple. |
| `trackId` | `integer` | Apple's numeric app identifier. |
| `trackName` | `string` | App display name. |
| `bundleId` | `string` | App bundle identifier (e.g. com.hubspot.crmapp). |
| `sellerName` | `string` | Publisher / developer legal name. |
| `primaryGenreName` | `string` | Primary App Store category. |
| `genres` | `array` | All App Store categories/genres for this app. |
| `price` | `number` | Numeric price in the storefront's local currency. |
| `formattedPrice` | `string` | Human-formatted price string (e.g. 'Free', '$4.99'). |
| `averageUserRating` | `number` | Average App Store user rating (0-5). |
| `userRatingCount` | `integer` | Total number of ratings behind averageUserRating. |
| `currentVersionReleaseDate` | `string` | ISO-8601 release date of the current version. |
| `version` | `string` | Current app version string. |
| `contentAdvisoryRating` | `string` | Age/content rating (e.g. '4+'). |
| `artworkUrl512` | `string` | 512px app icon artwork URL. |
| `trackViewUrl` | `string` | Public App Store listing URL for this app. |
| `description` | `string` | App Store listing description text. |
| `releaseNotes` | `string` | 'What's new' text for the current version. |
| `scrapedAt` | `string` | ISO-8601 UTC timestamp of the request that produced this row. |

#### Example output

```json
{
  "keyword": "crm",
  "country": "us",
  "entity": "software",
  "rank": 1,
  "trackId": 883898067,
  "trackName": "HubSpot: CRM & Sales, Marketing",
  "bundleId": "com.hubspot.crmapp",
  "sellerName": "HubSpot, Inc.",
  "primaryGenreName": "Business",
  "genres": [
    "Business",
    "Productivity"
  ],
  "price": 0.0,
  "formattedPrice": "Free",
  "averageUserRating": 4.7,
  "userRatingCount": 12345,
  "currentVersionReleaseDate": "2026-08-15T00:00:00Z",
  "version": "12.3.0",
  "contentAdvisoryRating": "4+",
  "artworkUrl512": "https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/example.png",
  "trackViewUrl": "https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hubspot/id883898067",
  "description": "HubSpot CRM keeps all your...",
  "releaseNotes": "Bug fixes and performance improvements.",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-01T12:00:00Z"
}
```

### 💰 Pricing

Pay-Per-Event — you pay only when these events fire:

| Event | USD | What it is |
|---|---:|---|
| `actor-start` | $0.05 | One-off warm-up charge per run |
| `app-ranked` | $0.003 | PPE event |

Example: 1 000 results at the rates above ≈ **$3.05**. No subscription, no minimum, no card to start — Apify gives every new account $5 of free credit.

### 🚧 Limitations

This Actor reports Apple's iTunes Search API result order as rank — it does not reverse-engineer Apple's live ranking algorithm or explain *why* a rank changed. It is a single-run snapshot: schedule repeat runs yourself for historical trend tracking. Apple App Store only — no Google Play. No review content.

### ❓ FAQ

**Does this scrape App Store reviews?**

No. This Actor is rank-only — trackName, rank, price, rating metadata. Review text and review-level data are explicitly out of scope; see the review-scraper cluster on the Store for that.

**Does rank match what I see in the App Store app?**

It reflects Apple's own iTunes Search API result order, which is the same ordering signal every established ASO tool relies on. It is not guaranteed to be pixel-identical to the on-device App Store app's personalized results.

**Do I need my own Apple Developer account or API key?**

No. The iTunes Search API is public and keyless.

**What happens when a keyword has zero matches?**

The run still succeeds — you just get zero rows for that keyword/country pair, with the status message reporting it as an empty (not failed) pair.

### 💬 Your feedback

Spotted a bug, hit a weird edge case, or need a new field? Open an
issue on the Actor's **Issues** tab on Apify Console — we ship
fixes weekly and we read every report.

***

<div align="center">

Built by **[Devil Scrapes](https://apify.com/DevilScrapes)** 😈 — a small fleet of
opinionated public-data Actors. Honest pricing, real engineering, zero fine print.

</div>

# Actor input Schema

## `keywords` (type: `array`):

ASO search terms to rank-track. The Actor fans each keyword across every country in <code>countries</code>.

## `countries` (type: `array`):

2-letter lowercase App Store storefronts to check per keyword (e.g. <code>us</code>, <code>gb</code>, <code>de</code>).

## `entity` (type: `string`):

Apple App Store entity type to search within.

## `limit` (type: `integer`):

Apps fetched per keyword x country pair. Apple caps effective results at 200.

## `lang` (type: `string`):

Optional Apple locale hint, e.g. <code>en\_us</code>. Leave blank to use Apple's default per storefront.

## `maxRankToKeep` (type: `integer`):

Only emit rows for apps ranked at or above this position. Keeps the dataset lean for deep lookups.

## `proxyConfiguration` (type: `object`):

Apify Proxy configuration (fleet standard). The iTunes Search API is public and keyless; proxy is wired for consistency and to pace requests.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "keywords": [
    "crm"
  ],
  "countries": [
    "us"
  ],
  "entity": "software",
  "limit": 50,
  "lang": "",
  "maxRankToKeep": 50,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true
  }
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `datasetItems` (type: `string`):

All dataset items as JSON.

## `datasetItemsCsv` (type: `string`):

Same data exported to CSV.

## `datasetView` (type: `string`):

Open the run dataset in the Console.

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "keywords": [
        "crm"
    ],
    "countries": [
        "us"
    ],
    "entity": "software",
    "limit": 50,
    "lang": "",
    "maxRankToKeep": 50,
    "proxyConfiguration": {
        "useApifyProxy": true
    }
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("devilscrapes/app-store-keyword-ranking-scraper").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = {
    "keywords": ["crm"],
    "countries": ["us"],
    "entity": "software",
    "limit": 50,
    "lang": "",
    "maxRankToKeep": 50,
    "proxyConfiguration": { "useApifyProxy": True },
}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("devilscrapes/app-store-keyword-ranking-scraper").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "keywords": [
    "crm"
  ],
  "countries": [
    "us"
  ],
  "entity": "software",
  "limit": 50,
  "lang": "",
  "maxRankToKeep": 50,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true
  }
}' |
apify call devilscrapes/app-store-keyword-ranking-scraper --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,devilscrapes/app-store-keyword-ranking-scraper"
        }
    }
}

```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/OwaogsZOTtaaVIHwj/builds/2W9IQIHI9GKIK1Nsh/openapi.json