// ALTERNATIVE

AppMagic alternative for indie developers

AppMagic covers mobile stores and Steam and is sold through a demo form. AppHitlist covers the App Store only and starts with a free account.

// SUMMARY

The short version, before you read the details

AppMagic is a market-intelligence product for mobile apps, games and Steam. Sensor Tower acquired it on 12 May 2026, and its website lists no public prices. AppHitlist is a narrower choice for indie developers who only need the Apple App Store: daily chart-based revenue estimates, Meta ads and complaint themes, with a free account to start and one paid plan.

Best known for: Mobile and Steam market data
Stores: Mobile stores and Steam
Price list: No public prices

Checked October 2026

// WHO IT FITS

Match the tool to the job, not the job to the tool

Choose AppMagic if

You need more than the App Store. According to its pricing page, AppMagic covers the mobile and Steam markets.
You work on games. It lists manual genre, setting and art-style tags, a LiveOps calendar and Steam analytics.
You want usage metrics next to revenue: DAU/MAU, retention, sessions and a Featuring Score are on its feature list.
You need data by country. Its methodology page says it processes the 74 largest economies.
You want a data API. Its API page mentions 50+ endpoints for filtered datasets and automated reports.

Choose AppHitlist if

Your work is iOS only and you want one narrow tool, not a games and Steam platform.
You want to start with a free account (app profile, rating, price, rank history) instead of a demo call.
You want complaint themes from 1- and 2-star App Store reviews. We found no review-text product in the AppMagic pages we read.
You want Meta ads sorted by days live, so the longest-running creatives of an app come first.
You want the New but winning filter in Discover: apps released in the last six months that already made a revenue chart.

// COMPARISON

AppMagic and AppHitlist, side by side

AppMagic and AppHitlist, side by side
Feature	AppMagic	AppHitlist
01Stores covered	Mobile stores and Steam, according to its pricing page.	Apple App Store only (iOS). No Google Play.
02Price	No public price list. The pricing page asks you to fill out a demo form, with pricing built around your use case (as listed on their site in October 2026).	Free account, then one paid plan with everything. Monthly or yearly, cancel anytime from the account page.
03Free access	Homepage has Try for Free. A notice dated 19 January 2026 says rounded historical revenue and download estimates and ranking history stay free, while deeper tags and the Competitors tab become premium. The notice is still written as an advance notice.	Free account with limited access: app profile, rating, price, rank history. Revenue estimates, ads, complaint themes and keywords are paid.
04Revenue estimates	Net in-app purchase revenue, built from store rankings across countries. It says the average monthly discrepancy is about 10% in most cases, and weaker for apps under about 30K downloads or $30K revenue a month.	Estimates from our own algorithm over Apple's public chart lists, updated daily. They can be wrong. The UI is US-focused today.
05Ads	Ad Intelligence ranks creatives by impression estimates. Its article names Unity, Google, IronSource, AppLovin and Facebook Audience Network, and says Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat were not yet supported.	Meta ad creatives, longest-running first within each app. Meta Ad Library data for EU/UK. Not a spend tracker.
06Reviews	Star ratings and rating counts. No review-text or complaint-theme tool found on the pages we read.	1- and 2-star App Store reviews grouped into complaint themes. Feature requests for your own apps, competitors and watchlist.
07Keywords	Apple Ads keyword overlap, App Store search ranking dashboards, and keyword search in titles and descriptions. No keyword popularity score found.	Keyword popularity and difficulty. Track the keywords of your own apps and see where they rank in App Store search once a day.
08Alerts	Slack or email alerts for metric thresholds, spikes among top apps, new apps matching criteria and new apps from a chosen publisher.	Email when the rank, ads or revenue estimate of a followed app change. Daily or weekly digest.
09Built for	Competitive intelligence for mobile and PC gaming teams. After the acquisition, it says it will support small and medium-sized businesses, including indie developers.	Indie developers and small studios who want App Store market data without an enterprise contract.

// DETAILS

The parts a table cannot show

Who owns AppMagic now

Sensor Tower acquired AppMagic on 12 May 2026. The announcement of 15 May 2026 says AppMagic will be Sensor Tower's SMB market-intelligence offering. AppMagic pages now carry a 2026 Sensor Tower, Inc. copyright.

Its site does not say how plans or prices will change. If you compare AppMagic with Sensor Tower, read both pricing pages again before you decide, because the product now sits inside Sensor Tower.

Estimates are estimates on both sides

AppMagic says its revenue and download figures come from Top Grossing and Top Free rankings across countries, with partner data used to train the model. It publishes a caveat: figures for small apps are weak, and under roughly $10K revenue or 10K downloads a month it calls them hardly reliable. It also says it does not track ad revenue.

AppHitlist works from Apple's public chart lists too, and says plainly that its numbers are estimates that can be wrong. For a small indie app, treat any third-party number as a rough range and check your own App Store Connect figures.

When to use both

A common split: ask AppMagic sales for a demo if you also ship on Google Play or need Steam data. Use AppHitlist for the daily iOS routine, such as checking which new apps entered the grossing chart, what their longest-running Meta ads look like and what users complain about in 1- and 2-star reviews.

// SOURCES AND DATE

Where this comparison comes from

Information about AppMagic comes from its public website (appmagic.rocks), checked October 2026. Features and prices change, so check AppMagic for current details.

Checked: October 2026
Source: appmagic.rocks

// PUT IT TO WORK

Put this to work in AppHitlist

Revenue estimatesCheck what a niche earns before you build. AppHitlist shows monthly revenue and downloads for every app, updated daily, beside its rank history.

Meta ads trackerBrowse the Meta ads of App Store apps, sorted by days live so the long runners come first. Study hooks, formats and calls to action.

Find app ideasStart from apps that already make money. Filter the App Store by genre, rating, price and ads, and spot new winners early, before you build.

// KEEP COMPARING

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// FAQ

Questions people ask before they start

Is AppMagic free?

Partly. The homepage has a Try for Free button next to Request Demo. A notice dated 19 January 2026 says some data stays free: rounded historical worldwide revenue and download estimates for any past month, the first three genre levels and ranking history. It calls deeper tags and the Competitors tab premium. The notice is still written as an advance notice, and AppMagic lists no trial length or premium price. AppHitlist has a limited free account.

Who owns AppMagic?

Sensor Tower acquired AppMagic on 12 May 2026. The announcement of 15 May 2026 says it will be Sensor Tower's SMB market-intelligence offering. AppMagic pages carry a 2026 Sensor Tower, Inc. copyright, and its tool pages give a sensortower.com support address. Its site does not say how its plans or prices will change after the acquisition.

Is there an AppMagic alternative with public pricing for iOS?

AppMagic lists no prices. Its pricing page sends you to a demo form. If you only work on iOS and want to see what you get before you pay, AppHitlist has a free account and one paid plan with everything. It does not cover Google Play or Steam, and its revenue numbers are estimates from Apple's public chart lists.

How accurate are AppMagic's revenue estimates?

AppMagic says the average monthly discrepancy is about 10% in most cases, and that accuracy is weaker for apps under about 30K downloads or $30K revenue a month. Under about $10K revenue or 10K downloads it calls the figures hardly reliable. These are its own statements. AppHitlist estimates can be wrong as well, so use both as rough ranges.

// START

See the data for yourself

A free account shows app profiles, ratings, prices and rank history. Revenue estimates, ads and complaint themes are on the paid plan.