How Much Does ASO Cost? Tools, Audits, Agencies

Key takeaways

ASO is five jobs: keyword research and metadata, creative, testing, localization and reporting. Every line on a quote is one of them.
Published prices: tools from $15 a month, audits $2,000 to $7,500, freelancers $1,500 to $4,000 a month, mid-market agencies $5,000 to $15,000 a month.
Apple's keyword field is 100 characters. On Google Play the title is 30, the short description 80 and the full description 4,000.
The words and the screenshots need no visitors and no code, so you can do them yourself first. Only tests need traffic.
Buy an audit before a retainer, and pay monthly only when extra countries or ongoing tests are the bottleneck.
No agency can guarantee a ranking. Walk away from anyone who sells reviews or installs.

What the video covers

0:00 Why is nobody finding my app?
1:05 What am I actually paying for?
2:27 How much does it cost?
3:57 What can I do myself this weekend?
7:23 When is it worth paying someone?
9:13 How do I make sure I don't get burned?
10:49 What's the one thing to remember?

What is ASO, and what are you actually paying for?

App store optimization, or ASO, is the work of making your store page easy to find and easy to say yes to. Every line on an ASO quote is one of five jobs: keyword research and metadata (the words), creative (the icon and screenshots), testing (showing two versions to see which wins), localization (repeating the work in another country or language) and reporting. Apple says its search results are based on text relevance, meaning matches for your title, subtitle, keywords and primary category, plus user behavior such as downloads, ratings and reviews. Google Play search reads your title, description, category and images, plus ratings, reviews and engagement. So the words get you found, and the screenshots and ratings decide whether a visit becomes a download. Anything else on a quote, such as a kickoff workshop or a dashboard, is packaging around those five jobs.

Think of your app as a shop on a busy street. The sign is the words, and the window is the picture. People find the shop because of the sign and walk in because of the window.

The limits are small, which is why this is a writing job and not a coding job. Apple's keyword field holds 100 characters, with terms separated by commas and no spaces, and Apple says not to repeat words already in your name, subtitle or category. It also tells you to skip plurals of words you already used, generic terms like "app" or "game", and filler words. On Google Play the title is 30 characters or fewer, the short description 80 and the full description 4,000.

One more detail that quotes rarely mention: Apple says improper use of keywords is "a common reason for App Store rejections", and that promotional text does not affect search ranking. A provider who stuffs words into the wrong box is spending your money and your approval record.

How much does ASO cost: tools, audits, freelancers and agencies?

Published ranges put ASO software at about $15 to $249 a month, a one-time audit at $2,000 to $7,500, boutique consultants and freelancers at $1,500 to $4,000 a month, mid-market agencies at $5,000 to $15,000 a month, and enterprise firms at $15,000 to $50,000 or more. These come from companies that sell ASO, so read them as asking prices, not market averages. Admiral Media's own pricing page says "Few agencies publish their prices", so any single number you see is a data point, not a rate card. Freelancers and agencies outside the US and Europe can charge less. The useful way to read the table is by what you get: a tool gives you data, an audit gives you a one-time list of fixes, and a retainer gives you ongoing work every month. A tool does not do the work for you.

What you buy	Published range	What you get
ASO software, small plan	$15 a month (MobileAction Lite, 100 keywords); $79 a month (AppTweak Essential, 500 keywords)	Data on which words you rank for and what rivals use. No work done.
ASO software, larger plan	$249 a month (AppTweak Grow); $239 a month (MobileAction Pro)	1,500 keywords tracked.
One-time audit	$2,000 to $7,500	Someone reviews the whole store page once and lists fixes.
Keyword research project	$1,500 to $5,000	A researched keyword set and where to place it.
Creative package, one locale	$3,000 to $12,000	Icon and screenshot design for one language.
Boutique consultant or freelancer	$1,500 to $4,000 a month	Ongoing work from one person.
Mid-market agency	$5,000 to $15,000 a month	A team, regular testing, reporting.
Enterprise firm	$15,000 to $50,000 a month and beyond	Large programs across many markets.

Prices move with scope. Phiture says retainers "can range from a few thousand to tens of thousands per month" depending on scope, the number of markets and how much creative work is involved. That is why a second country can change a quote more than anything else.

Read the contract terms as closely as the price. Admiral's page says its retainers have a six-month initial term, and that 50% of an audit fee is credited to a retainer signed within 30 days. Those are one agency's terms, but they show what to ask any provider: how long you are committed, and whether the audit money counts toward the next step.

What can you do yourself for free in one weekend?

You can do the words, the screenshots and the first tests yourself, because none of it needs code. The only tools you need are the dashboards Apple and Google already give you: App Store Connect and Play Console. Apple's App Analytics lets you monitor impressions, conversion rate and downloads, and filter conversion rate to see how many people downloaded from App Store search. A paid keyword tool is optional and starts around $15 a month. The plan is simple. On Saturday you find your words and write them into the boxes. On Sunday you fix the first screenshots and the icon. Then you set up the built-in tests and wait for visitors. The weekend version covers keyword research, metadata and creative, which is the part of most quotes that does not need an expert's ongoing time.

Find your words (2 hours). Type what your app does into the App Store and Play Store search bars. The suggestions that drop down are real searches. Write down 20 to 30 and check how the top five rivals use them in titles and subtitles. This is a standard ASO method, not an Apple statement.
Pick 5 to 8 that fit. A phrase you can win beats a popular phrase you cannot. Apple tells developers to consider "the trade-off between ranking well for less common terms versus ranking lower for popular terms".
Write the iPhone boxes. Name and subtitle carry your main phrases in plain words. The 100-character keyword field holds the rest, comma separated, with no repeats.
Write the Android boxes. Use the 30-character title, the 80-character short description and the 4,000-character description. Use the phrases naturally and do not repeat them for the sake of it.
Fix the window. Apple says the first one to three screenshots appear in search results when there is no app preview, so they must show the app doing something. You can add up to 10 screenshots and up to three previews of 30 seconds each.
Set up the tests. Play Console's store listing experiments test up to two variants against your current listing. Apple's product page optimization tests up to three treatments of the icon, screenshots and previews.

Change one thing at a time and look at the numbers a few weeks later. If your page gets almost no visitors yet, do steps 1 to 5 anyway. The words and the window do not need traffic. Only the tests do.

When is it worth paying for ASO?

ASO is worth paying for in three situations, and each one is a job a weekend cannot do: more countries, ongoing testing and custom product pages. Every new language means doing the words, the window and the tests again, which is why extra markets move quotes so much. Testing needs real visitors, and then someone has to run a test every month, read the result and choose the next idea. Apple reports test results as an estimated lift in conversion rate with confidence algorithms, so a page with few visitors cannot give a confident answer. And custom product pages let you publish up to 70 extra versions of your page, each with its own screenshots and keywords, so a different page can show for a different search. The order we suggest is the weekend version first, then an audit for a second pair of eyes, then a retainer only when one of the three is holding you back.

Custom product pages deserve a closer look because they are a paid-ASO job that a founder rarely does alone. Apple lets you publish up to 70 additional versions of your product page and assign keywords so a custom page can appear in search results for those keywords instead of the default page. Apple's guidance is that the keywords must match the intent of the page and that each keyword combination is unique to a single page. That is real design and research work, and it is a fair thing to pay for once your default page is solid.

The bad reason to sign a retainer is fear. If your page gets a few visitors a week, no provider can run a meaningful test on it. You would be paying someone to wait for data.

How do you avoid getting burned when you hire an ASO agency?

Walk away from three things, and ask five questions before you sign. The first red flag is a guaranteed ranking. Phiture, itself an ASO agency, states plainly that "No agency can guarantee a specific ranking position". That makes sense, because Apple says user behavior such as downloads, ratings and reviews feeds its results, and no provider controls what real people do. The second is anyone offering reviews or installs. Phiture lists incentivized reviews, keyword stuffing and fake installs as black-hat tactics, and the FTC's rule bans compensation or incentives conditioned on writing reviews. The third is keyword stuffing, which Apple names as a common reason for rejection. If a provider avoids all three, ask: what will you do in the first 30 days, how often do you run tests, do you have a case study in my category, will the store accounts stay in my name, and what will you report beyond impressions.

Some detail on each. The FTC announced its final rule banning fake reviews on 14 August 2024, and says it "prohibits businesses from providing compensation or other incentives conditioned on the writing of consumer reviews". A cheap review package is a legal and platform risk, not a growth tactic.

Four of the five questions map to Phiture's own checklist (first 30 days, testing, case studies, reporting), which also asks how an agency handles localization for markets where your app has low awareness, and how it connects ASO to paid acquisition. Our extra two are ownership and reporting. Store accounts stay in your name, so you keep the app and its history if you leave. And reports should show product page views and downloads, because impressions alone only tell you the page was shown, not that it worked.

A good provider answers all of this without a fuss. If they dodge one, that is your answer.

What we see across 300+ apps

We have been building and marketing apps since 2015, with 300+ apps shipped and 52M+ installs behind them. The pattern we keep meeting is simple. A store page gets written once, by the developer, in launch week, and nobody touches it again. The title is the app's brand name, the subtitle is a slogan, and the first screenshot shows a login screen.

That is why we check the store page before we spend on ads. Ads send people to the same page, so a weak page loses more of them. For founders who built with AI tools, this is the part the AI did not do: the words and pictures on the listing. Our view matches the order above. Do the free work first, get an audit if you want a second opinion, and pay monthly only for what a weekend cannot do.

You can check where your listing stands today with our free ASO score tool, or read how the pricing models compare in our guide to ASO agency pricing.

Frequently asked questions

How much does ASO cost per month?

Published ranges run from about $15 a month for a keyword tool to $1,500 to $4,000 for a freelancer, $5,000 to $15,000 for a mid-market agency and $15,000 or more for enterprise firms. These come from ASO companies, so treat them as asking prices. Scope, mainly the number of countries, drives most of the difference.

Is an ASO audit worth it?

Yes, if you want a second opinion before committing monthly. Published audit prices run from $2,000 to $7,500. An audit gives you one list of fixes to apply yourself or hand to someone. Ask whether the fee is credited toward a retainer if you continue.

Can I do ASO myself?

Yes. The words, the icon and screenshots, and the first tests need no code. You need App Store Connect and Play Console, which are free, and about a weekend. A paid keyword tool is optional. Paying becomes sensible when you need more countries or ongoing testing.

Do I need an ASO tool?

Not at the start. Tools show which words you rank for and what rivals use, and plans begin around $15 a month. But a tool gives data, not the work. Use one if someone will check it weekly, otherwise the free dashboards from Apple and Google are enough.

Can an ASO agency guarantee a number one ranking?

No. Phiture, an ASO agency, says no agency can guarantee a specific ranking position. Apple lists downloads, ratings and reviews as inputs, and no provider controls what real users do. Treat any ranking guarantee as a reason to walk away.

Does ASO work if my app has few visitors?

The words and screenshots do, because they are what visitors will see. Tests do not, because they need enough visitors to give a confident answer. Fix the page first, then test once traffic arrives.

Want us to look at your store page before you pay anyone?

Book a call and we will tell you what to fix first, and whether you need paid help at all.

Book a strategy call

Sources

Search, Apple Developer
How Google Play search works (Google Play Help), Google
Store listing character limits (Play Console Help), Google
Store listing experiments (Play Console Help), Google
Custom product pages, Apple Developer
Overview of product page optimization, App Store Connect Help, Apple
Creating your product page, Apple Developer
App store optimization cost, by Olivia Doboaca, AppFollow, updated 2026
AppTweak pricing, AppTweak, checked October 2026
MobileAction pricing, MobileAction, checked October 2026
How to choose an ASO agency, Phiture, 3 June 2026
FTC announces final rule banning fake reviews and testimonials, U.S. Federal Trade Commission, 14 August 2024
ASO agency pricing, Admiral Media, March 2026

How Much Does App Store Optimization Cost?