ASO services, ASO software or doing it yourself: what each does and costs

What ASO work consists of#

Strip away the vocabulary and ASO is the work the stores let you do on a listing, plus reading what followed. Every offer, from an agency or a tool, is some mix of these jobs.

Two parts stay with you whoever you hire: knowing what your app does better than its rivals, and deciding what to change. An agency or a tool can speed up the rest.

Agency, software or doing it yourself#

The options mix. You might write your own copy, pay a tool to read and track, and hire a designer for screenshots once a year.

What it costs in time and money#

Agency and tool prices vary too much, and change too often, for one figure to be honest, so this guide quotes no agency's or other tool's price. For tools, see our comparisons of ASO tools for both stores and free ASO tools; where our comparison pages quote a tool's price, they give the date it was read. What holds for every offer is where the money and the time go.

• Agency or consultant: you pay for hours, whatever the numbers do afterwards. Your own time goes into briefing them, reviewing drafts and managing their access. A fixed-price audit costs less to try than a retainer, and shows you how they think.
• Software: you pay a subscription. Your time goes into setup, reading what it shows, and making the changes, because a tool that drafts still needs you to approve and ship.
• Doing it yourself: you pay in hours, and in what you don't do with them.

A worked example, with invented round numbers. An owner with one app on both stores spends an hour a week reading reports and one four-hour evening a month writing and shipping a change: about eight hours a month. If an hour of that owner's time is worth $50 to them, doing it alone costs about $400 a month in time. Set an agency's fee or a tool's price against the hours it would save you, not against zero.

Some time costs are the stores' and fall the same on every option. Apple says App Review typically handles at least 50% of submissions in under 24 hours and 90% in under 48 hours. On Google Play, certain apps may be subject to extended reviews of up to 7 days, or longer in exceptional cases. A product page optimization test can run for up to 90 days. And a before-and-after read needs whole weeks on each side of the day a change went live. Nobody, hired or not, gets a clear answer in days.

Store access: what to give, and how little#

An agency or tool that reads your reports or edits your listing needs access to your store accounts. Both stores grant it in pieces. Give the narrowest access that does the job, for the apps in scope, and remove it when the work ends. Never share your own Apple Account or Google Account.

In App Store Connect, roles decide what a person can do, and Apple's help pages name the roles each task needs. Editing app information, managing screenshots and previews and creating a new version are open to the Account Holder, Admin, App Manager and Marketing roles. The analytics dashboard is open to Account Holder, Admin, Finance and Sales. Customer Support analyzes and responds to customer reviews.

Apple's user guide says App Manager, Developer, Marketing, Sales and Customer Support users can be limited to chosen apps. Admin and Finance users, and anyone given access to reports, can view all app information and can't be limited. So for an agency that edits your listing, Marketing limited to your app is the narrowest fit on Apple's pages; add Sales, still limited to the app, if they read your analytics. With Marketing they can prepare the version, custom product pages and tests; you or an App Manager submit it.

Software usually connects through an App Store Connect API key. Only the Account Holder can request API access for the account in the first place. Keys come in two kinds, and a team key carries a role and reaches every app in the account:

An individual key has the access and roles of the user it belongs to, so it is tied to that user's apps, and it can't reach sales and finance reports. A team key's access level can't be edited once it is generated: to change it, revoke the key and generate a new one. One wrinkle for analytics: to read App Store Connect analytics in bulk, the Analytics Reports API needs an Admin key to request a report type the first time. After that, keys with the Sales and Reports or Finance role can download the reports. So if a tool asks for an Admin team key, ask whether it needs one only for that first request.

In Play Console, an owner or admin invites users with account permissions, which apply to all apps, or app permissions, which apply only to the app you select. Manage store presence lets a user edit store listing details, including text and graphics, and run store listing experiments. The same permission also lets them edit pricing, in-app products, distribution settings including content ratings, and promotions, so there is no listing-only permission on Play. Reply to reviews is a separate permission; without it a user can read reviews but not answer them.

To publish updates, Google says to decide with your account owner which of its publishing permissions a user needs, such as Release to production. Leaving those out keeps app releases with you. Google doesn't say which permission sends listing changes for review, and Manage store presence can turn managed publishing on or off. Agree in writing who sends changes for review.

Play Console lets you put an end date on access, and it matters:

App Store Connect's steps for adding a user set no end date, so put one in your calendar and delete the users when the work stops; Apple notes that full removal can take up to 10 minutes. For software on Play, Google says that in most cases a service account should be used: a Google Cloud identity you invite in Play Console like a person, with only the permissions you tick.

Expect a tool that reads your analytics by API to see every app in the account, on both stores. Apple's team keys reach every app. On Play, bulk reports need the View app information permission set to Global, and the account-level permission that includes them, View app information and download bulk reports, gives read-only access to all apps. For Apple, ask for a Sales team key: asked at WWDC26 about the least access for a third-party tool, Apple said the Sales role has the lowest level of access for read-only, analytics-style needs.

What the stores let software do#

Both stores have official APIs, so no tool needs your password. The App Store Connect API can manage App Store information, create versions and submit them, read customer reviews and manage responses, and download sales and financial reports. Apple warns that changes made through it affect your production data, which means a tool with write access edits your real listing.

The Google Play Developer API creates and modifies store listings, including localized text and graphics, and the Reply to Reviews API lets a tool read and answer reviews of the production app, though it returns only reviews with comments, created or modified within the last week. Play's statistics reports sit in a private Cloud Storage bucket that software can read with a service account; Google posts them within 3 to 7 days.

NoteOne trap on Play: changes made through the API sit in an "edit" until it is committed, and Google warns that a change made in Play Console while an edit is in progress discards the edit. If a tool or an agency is preparing a listing change, agree who touches Play Console that day.

Questions to ask any agency or tool#

1. Which store data do you read? Expect sources by name: App Store Connect analytics, Play Console reports, the public store pages, Apple Ads. Search counts and exact download figures for other apps are estimates: neither store publishes them.
2. What access do you need, at what level, for which apps, and until when? Expect a named role or permission, not "admin". On the App Store, remember that a team API key reaches every app.
3. Does anything reach the store without my approval? Who presses publish, and can a change be put back?
4. What will you claim as a result, and how will you measure it? A sound answer names the number, such as App Store search downloads, the weeks compared and the report it comes from.
5. Do you run a store test or a before-and-after read? A store test splits visitors at random between versions. A before-and-after read compares weeks before a change with weeks after it, and says what followed, not why.
6. If you report ranks, from which list, storefront, language and device? See what a search rank measures.
7. How many changes go live at once? Several changes in one week can't be read apart.
8. Who owns the copy, the images and the test results when we stop?

NoteWalk away from anyone who promises a rank, a top-chart place or a number of downloads. Apple and Google publish only the outline of how search works, and no outsider controls the weights.

How to choose#

• If you have one or two apps, a few languages and a couple of hours a week, do it yourself. Free counters help: title, keyword field and the metadata checker. How to do ASO sets out a weekly routine.
• If you will do the work but want the reading and tracking done for you, pay for software that reads your own store reports, and check that it labels its estimates as estimates.
• If you have budget and no time, or need screenshots designed, many languages translated well, or help around a launch, an agency or consultant is the better choice. Start with a fixed-price audit before signing a retainer.
• If you already pay an agency, keep your own read of the store reports, so you can check what they report against what the stores measured.
• Whatever you choose, keep a change log: what changed, the day it went live, and what followed.

Where RocketASO fits#

RocketASO is software, not an agency. It reads your App Store and Google Play reports, names the fix estimated to be worth most this week, and compares installs before and after it. It starts you with a draft of the copy or the keyword field, and nothing reaches the store until you approve it. Each read is a before-and-after read, not a controlled test.

RocketASO's connected plans: Solo is $19 a month for one app on both stores, one seat. Indie is $39 per connected app a month, with its App Store and Google Play versions counted once. Studio is $199 a month. Studio covers up to 10 connected apps. Yearly plans cost ten months' price: two months free. Yearly plans start with a 7-day free trial that needs a card; Paddle charges the full year on day 8 unless you cancel before then. Details are on the pricing page, and the free ASO audit checks any public listing without signing up.