App Idea Validator: Market Check, Lean Canvas & Legal

Validate a mobile app idea in a few minutes, with real App Store and Google Play data instead of guesses. Describe your idea in a sentence. The Actor finds your competitors, reads their numbers and their critical reviews, and gives you a clear verdict: Build, Reposition or Skip, plus a one-page Lean Canvas and a legal & store-policy check so you know what to build and what to avoid.

What you get

• A verdict with three scores (0–10) for Demand, Competition and Revenue, each with a one-line reason.
• Quick-filter warnings for common deal-breakers: a page of look-alike apps, a strong free option, a feature the OS already has, store-policy or legal risk.
• Market numbers per store: competitors, strong competitors, newcomers that still gained traction, ratings on the leader, average rating, share of stale apps, share of paid apps or in-app purchases.
• A competitor table: rating, ratings count, installs, price, last update and a direct competitor flag, with links.
• Gaps from competitor reviews: what users hate or miss, with real quotes linked to the source.
• A one-page Lean Canvas: customer, problem, value proposition, 3 core features, channels and revenue (with the number of paying users needed for $1,000/month).
• A legal & store-policy check: risks that apply to your idea (App Store and Google Play rules, GDPR, CCPA, COPPA, health claims, trademarks), ranked High / Medium / Low, each with a fix.
• Next moves: sharper angles, a pricing suggestion, next steps and store keywords to target.

Everything is saved as a clean HTML report, a dataset of competitors (CSV, Excel, JSON) and a JSON verdict for automations and AI agents.

Who it is for

• Indie developers and app studios choosing what to build next.
• Product managers sanity-checking a feature or a spin-off app.
• ASO and growth people sizing up a category before they enter it.
• AI agents: call it through the Apify API or the Apify MCP server to score ideas automatically.

How to use it

1. Write your idea in Your app idea. One to three sentences: what it does, for whom, how it makes money.
2. Optionally add store search keywords. If you leave them empty, the AI picks three.
3. Choose the stores and the country, then click Start.
4. Open the Validation report in the Output tab.

Example input

{
  "idea": "A habit tracker for people with ADHD that uses tiny 2-minute habits and a pet that grows when you keep a streak. Free with a $4.99/month premium plan.",
  "stores": ["app_store", "google_play"],
  "country": "us"
}

Example verdict (OUTPUT record, shortened)

{
  "ideaName": "ADHD Habit Pet",
  "verdict": {
    "verdict": "reposition",
    "average": 6.3,
    "scores": {
      "demand": {"score": 9, "reason": "Top apps have 48k–400k ratings and 10M+ installs."},
      "competition": {"score": 4, "reason": "A near-identical pet-based app already has huge traction."},
      "revenue": {"score": 6, "reason": "Subscriptions are normal, but the leader's free tier is generous."}
    },
    "quickFilter": [{"flag": "Leader already does habit + pet", "severity": "high"}]
  }
}

Example competitor row

{
  "name": "Habit Tracker - Loop",
  "storeLabel": "Google Play",
  "isDirectCompetitor": true,
  "rating": 4.7,
  "ratingsCount": 95000,
  "installs": 5000000,
  "price": 0,
  "lastUpdated": "2025-03-06",
  "daysSinceUpdate": 600,
  "url": "https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=..."
}

How the score works

1. The Actor searches each store for your keywords and merges the results.
2. AI marks the direct competitors, meaning apps that do the same core job for the same user.
3. Market numbers are computed from the store data with fixed rules, not by the AI. They include a data-based competition hint.
4. Critical reviews (1–3 stars) from the biggest competitors are read to find gaps.
5. AI scores Demand, Competition and Revenue. The Competition score can move at most 2 points away from the data-based hint.
6. A last AI step writes the Lean Canvas and the legal & store-policy check, using the verdict and the review gaps.
7. The average is compared with the pass bar (7.5 by default):
   • at or above the bar: Build
   • up to 1.5 points below: Reposition
   • lower: Skip

The scores are a structured second opinion built on public store numbers. They are not a revenue forecast. The legal check is a starting list of things to look at, not legal advice.

Pricing

Pay per event. You pay only for results:

Event	When it is charged
Idea report	Once per finished validation report
Competitor app	Per competitor row saved to the dataset

A typical run with default settings costs about $0.40. The report is always saved first, so a tight spending limit only trims the competitor rows. If the run fails before the report, you are not charged for one.

Input options

Field	Default	What it does
Your app idea	–	Required. One to three sentences.
Store search keywords	AI picks 3	Up to 5 keywords.
Stores	both	App Store and/or Google Play.
Country	us	Store country.
Store language	en	Google Play language and keyword language.
Report language	English	Language of the verdict text.
Pass bar	7.5	Average score needed for Build.
Apps per keyword	10	Search results read per keyword and store.
Competitors to read reviews from	4 per store	0 skips reviews.
Reviews per competitor	40	Recent reviews per competitor.
Max reviews sent to the AI	150	Critical reviews go first.

Data sources and limits

• App Store: Apple's public iTunes Search API and customer-reviews feed. Apple does not publish install counts, so App Store demand is judged from ratings counts.
• Google Play: public store pages, read with the open-source google-play-scraper library. If Google changes its pages, Google Play can fail for a while. The run then continues with the App Store and notes the error in the summary.
• Only public data is read. No login, no personal data beyond what reviewers chose to publish.
• Search results depend on the country. Run the Actor again with another country to compare markets.

FAQ

Is a "Skip" verdict bad news? No, it can save you a week of building. Read the quick-filter flags and the Sharper angles list. A narrower niche often scores much better.

Can I use my own keywords? Yes. Add up to five. Use the words real users type in the store, not your brand name.

Can I run it for many ideas? Yes. Call the Actor from the API, a schedule or an AI agent once per idea, then compare the average field.

Something looks wrong? Open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab. Include the run link.