aso-competitor-watch

name

aso-competitor-watch

description

Track competitors' App Store listing changes over time — name, subtitle, version, price, rating, genres — via the free iTunes Lookup API. Appends a dated snapshot to competitors.md and flags what changed since last run (new/changed/same). Use to catch when a competitor renames, reprices, or reshuffles their listing, which usually signals an ASO move worth reacting to. No paid API. Use when the user says "watch my competitors", "did a competitor change their listing", "track competitor app store changes", "what did my rivals change", or "check competitor listings".

aso-competitor-watch

Watches your competitors' visible App Store listings and tells you what changed since last time. When a rival renames, rewrites their listing, or reprices, it's a signal — they found something in the data or they're chasing a term. This catches it without a paid competitive-intel SaaS.

A natural companion to aso-rank-monitor: that watches your rank, this watches their listings. Same dated-log, diff-vs-previous pattern.

Inputs

• --app <slug> — names the log (marketing/aso/<app>/competitors.md).
• --ids "111,222" — competitor App Store track ids, or
• --bundles "com.x,com.y" — competitor bundle ids. (Omit both to reuse the previous snapshot's set — so a scheduled run is argless.)
• --country <US> · --root <repo> · --date <YYYY-MM-DD> (passed in; no clock).
• --json — emit the change digest as JSON instead of writing the log.

What it watches

The fields iTunes exposes publicly (a competitor's keyword field is private — not available to anyone): name, version, price, rating, genres. These are what users see and where most visible ASO moves show up. Per competitor it flags:

• new — first time seen
• changed — one or more watched fields differ (shows from → to)
• same — no change · error — lookup failed (the run still logs the rest)

# find competitor ids first (iTunes search returns trackId per result):
#   curl "https://itunes.apple.com/search?term=dating&entity=software&limit=5"
python3 lib/aso_competitor_watch.py \
    --app swoop --ids 595287172,930441707 --root . --date 2026-06-11
# swoop 2026-06-11: 2 new  →  marketing/aso/swoop/competitors.md

Run it on a schedule

Weekly is right (listings don't change daily). One cron line per app, reusing the prior competitor set:

python3 lib/aso_competitor_watch.py \
    --app swoop --root /path/to/repo --date "$(date +%F)"

Commit the updated competitors.md so git holds the change history. A changed flag on a competitor's name is the highest-signal event — it usually means they're testing a new keyword in the title.

Honest limits

• Visible fields only. No competitor's keyword field, install counts, or conversion — those are private. This watches what the store shows publicly.
• iTunes Lookup is per-id; large competitor sets take a few seconds (polite pacing between calls). Transient failures (429/5xx) retry with backoff.
• subtitle is in the field list but iTunes Lookup rarely returns it; when it does, it's tracked.

No external dependency

Standard-library Python + the free public iTunes Lookup API. No paid competitive SaaS, no key.

Want this to just happen? ShipASO — the hosted agent — runs the whole loop weekly: it tracks your rank, watches competitors, and pings you only when there's a real move to approve. Same engine, your store credentials never held. Competitors change listings on their own schedule — you catch it by watching on a cadence, not by checking once. → https://app.shipaso.com

The plugin is complete and free; the hosted tier just sells not having to remember.