Quick answer: In an August 2026 analysis of 604 scored keyword checks (580 distinct keywords, 9 countries, February–August 2026), the average keyword difficulty on the iOS App Store was 61.7/100 versus 44.1/100 on Google Play — a 17.6-point gap, meaning the average keyword we scored was roughly 40% harder to compete for on iOS. Not one of the 193 Android keywords scored above 73, while 27 iOS keywords scored 81 or higher.
Most "iOS vs Android ASO" articles are vibes. This one is measurement: every number below comes from live store search results scored by the same difficulty model on both platforms, collected whenever a developer checked a keyword with our tools over the past six months. It's the dataset behind our free keyword difficulty checker, aggregated and anonymized.
The headline: same scoring model, two very different fights
| Platform | Keywords scored | Avg difficulty | Median | Std dev | Hardest scored |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| iOS App Store | 411 | 61.7 | 62 | 12.8 | 94 |
| Google Play | 193 | 44.1 | 43 | 10.9 | 73 |
The gap survives every slice we tried. Restricting to the United States only — the one country with a large sample on both platforms — makes it wider: US iOS keywords average 63.8 (n=325) against 44.1 on US Android (n=192), a 19.7-point gap, or about 45% higher. The medians tell the same story as the means (62 vs 43), so this isn't a few monster keywords dragging the iOS average up.
The distribution says it better than the average
Averages hide the shape, and the shape is the finding. On iOS, 55% of scored keywords land at 61 or above — the "hard" zone where the top ten is fortified. On Android, less than 10% do, and the bulk of keywords sit in the contested-but-winnable 41–60 band:
Two facts from that chart are worth repeating slowly. First, zero Android keywords out of 193 scored above 80; 27 iOS keywords did. Second, the single hardest Android keyword we've ever scored ("vpn", 73/100) sits a full ten points below iOS's twentieth hardest. On Google Play, the fortress keyword — the one where the entire top ten is huge, keyword-matched, and highly rated — barely exists in our sample. On the App Store it's roughly one keyword in fifteen.
What the hardest and easiest keywords look like
Concrete examples make the gap legible. These are the hardest scored keywords per platform (all US storefront; brand names and app-specific terms excluded from the easy lists):
| # | iOS keyword | Difficulty | Android keyword | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | rent | 94 | vpn | 73 |
| 2 | sleep | 90 | recorder | 72 |
| 3 | calendar | 88 | wallpaper | 69 |
| 4 | journal | 88 | receipt | 68 |
| 5 | budget | 87 | ai video generator | 67 |
| 6 | recipe | 87 | download | 65 |
Notice that Android's #1 hardest keyword would rank below iOS's #6. Notice also what the iOS list is made of: plain English nouns. On the 2026 App Store, the generic single words at the top of the table — sleep, calendar, journal, budget, recipe — all scored 87 or higher, with top tens dominated by long-established apps. Even the two-word combinations developers consider "long-tail" often are not: "habit tracker" scored 84 and "music player" 83.
At the other end, the easiest scored keywords that still return real competition:
| iOS keyword (easiest) | Difficulty | Android keyword (easiest) | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|---|
| warranty tracking | 30 | cash flow forecast | 24 |
| scam text detector | 31 | spain national team | 26 |
| fitness testing (CA) | 33 | outdoor water sources | 30 |
| scam alerts | 35 | trail water report | 30 |
One small-sample observation we found striking (and flag as exactly that, not a finding): the very easiest iOS keywords in the whole dataset were non-English niche phrases — a French food-expiry query scored 25/100 with only 10 competing apps returned, and similar Spanish, Portuguese, and German niche phrases all landed in the 25–36 range. Localized keyword research remains the least crowded room in ASO, which matches what we found in our analysis of 123 real ASO scorecards, where 88% of apps had localized nothing at all.
Why does the App Store score so much harder?
The difficulty model is identical on both platforms, so the gap comes from what the stores actually serve. Three structural reasons, plus one honest measurement caveat:
1. iOS top tens are fortified by review mass. The model's largest input is the review strength of the current top ten (log scale, so it takes multiplicative growth to move it). US App Store search for a generic term almost always returns a top ten of established apps with six- and seven-figure rating counts. Play's top ten for the same query more often includes younger and smaller apps.
2. Apple's index is shallower and more title-driven. With only a 30-character title, a subtitle, and a hidden keyword field, iOS apps concentrate their targeting on fewer terms — so the apps that do rank for a term tend to be exact-matched and committed. Play indexes long descriptions, spreading apps across many more queries at lower intensity.
3. Play's ranking is more personalized and more forgiving of niches. Google's heavier use of engagement and install-quality signals gives specialized apps a route into results that raw listing authority would lock on iOS.
The measurement caveat: Google Play's public search results expose review counts less completely than Apple's (we enrich only the top five Android results with full detail data), which can deflate Android review-strength inputs for positions six through ten. Direction and shape of the gap are consistent across all six months of data and survive the medians, but treat the precise 17.6-point magnitude as approximate rather than gospel.
The Android catch: the winnable SERP is only 30 deep
Before concluding "Android is easier, ship there," there's a structural catch. Google Play's public search returns only about 25–30 results for most queries — in our dataset, the median Play query returned exactly 30 results, and 80% returned 35 or fewer. The median iOS query returned 200. So while an Android keyword is easier to crack, the visible prize is one of ~30 slots — rank #31 on Play might as well be #300, because users can't scroll to you. On iOS, climbing from #150 to #60 is real, measurable progress even before you hit the money positions. We covered how to measure this honestly on both platforms — and why many rank trackers invent deep Android ranks — in our guide to checking your app store rankings.
What this means for your keyword strategy
If you're on iOS: stop targeting generic nouns. Every single-word English term we scored above 80 is a fortress you will not take with a new app; the realistic hunting ground is the 41–60 band (37% of iOS keywords), which usually means two- and three-word intent phrases, or generic terms in non-US storefronts. Score before you commit — the difference between a 55 keyword and an 85 keyword is the difference between a plan and a donation.
If you're on Android: difficulty is not your bottleneck — visibility depth is. With half of all keywords in the winnable 41–60 band and none above 73, your constraint is breaking into a ~30-slot SERP, where title/description relevance and early ratings velocity decide the outcome. That's a metadata quality game; AI metadata generation that packs distinct, intent-matched terms into your title and description within character limits is the highest-leverage input.
If you're on both: don't copy your keyword set across platforms. The same keyword is playing in two different leagues — in the three cases in our dataset where the identical keyword+country was scored on both stores, iOS came out harder every time (by 4 to 30 points; n=3, so an anecdote, not a stat). Research each store separately, and re-check quarterly: difficulty moves as top tens change. This is exactly the loop ASO Autopilot automates — it rescores your keywords weekly and tells you which ones became winnable.
Methodology and limitations
Every difficulty score is computed from the live top-10 search results for that keyword in that country's store at check time. The model weighs four inputs: review strength (40%) — the log-scaled average review count of the top ten; rating quality (20%) — their average star rating; title match (20%) — how many of the top ten carry the keyword in their title; and publisher diversity (20%) — how many distinct developers hold those ten slots. The output is 0–100; the same code scores both platforms. Data: 604 scored checks (411 iOS, 193 Android; 580 distinct keywords) collected February 20 – August 2, 2026 across 9 country storefronts, generated by real usage of our keyword tools rather than a curated keyword list.
Limitations, honestly stated: the sample is demand-driven (keywords our users chose to check), so it over-represents indie-dev niches like utilities, trackers, and wallpapers rather than mirroring store-wide search volume. The platform mix is uneven (68% iOS), and Android checks are almost entirely US-storefront. Outside the US, every country cell has fewer than 20 scored keywords — too small to report as findings, which is why the per-country comparison above sticks to the US. Popularity/traffic scores exist in the dataset but are computed from different signals per platform (installs on Android, review volume on iOS), so we deliberately don't compare them across stores. We'll re-run this analysis as the pool grows.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it harder to rank on the App Store or Google Play?
For the average keyword in our 604-check sample, the App Store: iOS keyword difficulty averaged 61.7/100 versus 44.1/100 on Google Play, and 55% of iOS keywords scored in the hard 61+ zone versus under 10% on Android. But Google Play caps its usable SERP at roughly 30 visible results, so ranking outside the Play top 30 delivers effectively nothing — easier entry, smaller door.
What is a good keyword difficulty score to target?
For a new or small app, the 41–60 band is the realistic contested zone on both platforms — established competition, but with gaps a well-matched title and strong early ratings can exploit. Below 40 usually signals low competition (verify there's actual demand); above 80, the top ten is effectively closed to new entrants in our data.
How is keyword difficulty calculated?
Our model scores the live top-10 search results for the keyword: review strength (40%), average rating (20%), share of top-ten titles containing the keyword (20%), and publisher diversity (20%), combined into a 0–100 score. You can run it on any keyword, on either platform, in ten countries with the free keyword difficulty checker — and every keyword you track in AppDrift's keyword tracker shows the same difficulty and popularity scores beside its daily rank, so the numbers in this study are the ones you optimize against.
Why do Android rank trackers only show the top 30?
Google Play's public search surface returns roughly 25–30 results for most queries regardless of how many are requested — deeper Android "ranks" shown by some tools are estimates, not measurements. iOS search returns about 200 results, so deep iOS ranks are real.
Methodology note: 604 keyword difficulty checks (411 iOS, 193 Android) scored from live store search results, February 20 – August 2, 2026, across 9 countries. Sample is demand-driven and skews US (86%). Averages rounded to one decimal, shares to whole percentages. Dataset aggregates are anonymized; no customer app data is disclosed.
