Most ASO advice is opinion. This is measurement. We pulled every public scorecard generated by our free ASO Score checker — 123 live apps, 94 on Google Play and 29 on the App Store — and looked at what real listings actually get right and wrong in mid-2026.
Three numbers summarize the whole dataset. The median overall score is 74 out of 100. The best app in the sample scored 81 — not a single listing earned an A+. And 94% of apps grade D on localization, making it the most-failed check in the entire scoring model by a huge margin.
How we got this data
Every number in this article comes from scorecards created with AppDrift's public ASO Score tool between May and July 2026. The tool reads an app's live store listing — title, description, language coverage, and (on Google Play) extracted keywords — and grades each component from F to A+, then combines them into an overall 0–100 score. Nothing here is survey data or self-reported; it's what the stores were actually serving at scoring time.
Two honest caveats before the findings. First, the sample is self-selected: most of these apps were scored by their own developers, which likely skews the sample toward teams that already care about ASO. The real-world average is probably worse than what you'll read below. Second, Apple doesn't expose subtitles or the keyword field through public listing data, so we excluded subtitle findings entirely and keyword-field findings for iOS — we'd rather drop a stat than publish one we can't stand behind.
What do real ASO scores look like in 2026?
Scores cluster tightly. Nearly six in ten apps land in the 70s, and the entire sample fits between 40 and 81:
By letter grade: 7 apps earned an A, 72 a B, 32 a C, and 12 a D. Zero apps reached A+. That ceiling matters: it means even the best-optimized indie listings we measured still leave visible points on the table, usually in exactly one place — which brings us to the headline finding.
The one check 94% of apps fail: localization
Of 123 apps, 116 grade D on localization. 108 apps — nearly nine in ten — ship their store listing in exactly one language. The median localization component score is 10 out of 100, against a median of 100 for titles and 95 for descriptions. No other component comes close to this failure rate:
The pattern is easy to explain and hard to excuse. Translating a listing used to mean agencies, spreadsheets, and per-locale review cycles, so single-language listings became the default. But the store surface itself is global: both stores serve dozens of locales, and an untranslated listing simply doesn't compete in any of them. Modern AI metadata translation with live per-market keyword research has collapsed the cost side of that trade-off, but the behavior hasn't caught up — 88% of the apps we measured haven't localized at all.
If you want one action from this article: your next ranking gain is more likely sitting in Spanish, Portuguese, German, French, or Japanese than in another English title tweak.
The basics are solved — and that's the problem
Here's the flip side the averages hide: on-page fundamentals are in good shape almost everywhere. The median app uses 90% of its available title characters. 81% of apps grade A or better on their title. Descriptions run a healthy median of 2,418 characters, and 90% of apps grade A or better there too.
That's bad news disguised as good news. When four out of five competitors already have a keyword-bearing title and a long, structured description, those things stop being an edge — they're table stakes. The differentiating work has moved upstream, into which keywords you target and how deep your research goes. Our app store keyword research guide covers that workflow end to end, and it's where the gap between a 74 and an 81 usually lives.
One nuance from the character data: while the median title is nearly full, 16% of apps still use less than half their title characters. If you're in that group, fixing it is the fastest single improvement available — the exact limits per field and store are in our character limits reference.
Half of apps still keyword-stuff their descriptions
62 of 123 apps — almost exactly half — were flagged for repeating the same keyword too often in their description. This is the last surviving habit of 2015-era ASO. Google Play does index description text, but repetition past natural frequency doesn't add ranking weight; it costs readability and can hurt you. The fix isn't deleting keywords, it's coverage: more distinct, intent-matched terms instead of one term repeated. That's a generation problem more than an editing problem, which is why we built AI metadata generation to draft within character limits and keyword-frequency guardrails from the start.
Does your app category matter?
Less than you'd think. Median overall scores by category, for every category with at least four apps in the sample:
| Category | Apps in sample | Median ASO score |
|---|---|---|
| Education | 14 | 78 |
| Finance | 23 | 76 |
| Health & Fitness | 12 | 75.5 |
| Productivity | 10 | 74 |
| Personalization | 6 | 74 |
| Tools | 8 | 73.5 |
| Lifestyle | 10 | 71 |
Seven points separate the best median category from the worst. Category explains very little of the variance in this sample; execution explains most of it. Whatever market you're in, the same two moves dominate: fill the gaps the basics leave (usually localization), and out-research competitors on keywords rather than out-writing them on adjectives.
What to do with these numbers
1. Get your baseline. Run your app through the free ASO Score checker — it takes about ten seconds per platform and produces the same component grades used in this analysis.
2. Close the localization gap first. If you're one of the 88%, five languages (Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Japanese) cover most major app-store markets. This is the highest-leverage fix in the dataset.
3. Then move the fight to keywords. With basics at parity across the market, research depth is the remaining edge — per-market autocomplete data beats guessing in a spreadsheet every time.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a good ASO score in 2026?
Based on this 123-app sample, the median score is 74/100 and the top of the range is 81. Anything above 74 puts you in the upper half; above 78 is the top decile. No app we measured exceeded 81, so treat the low 80s as the practical ceiling for a fully optimized listing under this scoring model.
Why do so many apps fail at localization?
Because listing translation historically required agencies and long review cycles, single-language listings became the industry default: 108 of the 123 apps we measured ship in one language. The cost side of that trade-off has collapsed with AI translation, but most teams haven't revisited the decision.
How was this data collected?
All 123 scorecards were generated by AppDrift's public ASO Score tool between May and July 2026, scoring live App Store and Google Play listing data (94 Android apps, 29 iOS apps). Subtitle and iOS keyword-field components were excluded from the analysis because Apple doesn't expose them publicly.
Does a higher ASO score guarantee more downloads?
No. The score measures listing hygiene — whether you're using the levers the stores give you. Downloads also depend on which keywords you target, your ratings, and your conversion assets like screenshots. A high score removes self-inflicted handicaps; keyword research and creative testing generate the growth.
Methodology note: sample of 123 public scorecards (self-selected by the developers who ran them), scored May–July 2026. Percentages rounded to whole numbers. We'll re-run this analysis as the scorecard pool grows.
