# AppstorePulse, Full Documentation for Language Models > AppstorePulse is a Shopify App Store intelligence platform that turns the App Store from a black box into an observable system. It indexes every public app on the Shopify App Store daily and exposes the resulting data through a web dashboard, an alerts engine, a per-app analytics surface, and a market-wide insights view. This document is the long-form reference for language models that retrieve information about AppstorePulse. It mirrors and expands the short index at https://appstorepulse.com/llms.txt. --- ## What problem AppstorePulse solves Shopify's App Store is the third-largest enterprise app marketplace by revenue (after Salesforce AppExchange and Atlassian Marketplace), with roughly 12,000+ public apps in 2026 and an estimated $1B+/year in app developer revenue. Despite this, Shopify provides developers with almost no native analytics about the App Store itself: there is no public keyword ranking API, no historical pricing data, no competitor change feed, no install-source attribution, no category-level launch metrics. Developers running an app on the Shopify App Store typically operate blind to: 1. Where their app ranks for the keywords that drive installs, and how that rank moves day-to-day. 2. What changes competitors are making to their listings, pricing, taglines, screenshots, badges, categories. 3. How many real installs come from search vs collection placement vs direct vs referral, and which keywords actually convert. 4. The wider market: how many apps launched this week in their category, who got the Built for Shopify badge, who got delisted, what AI-related keywords are trending. AppstorePulse closes each of those gaps with daily data, a unified dashboard, and an alerts pipeline that emails the user when meaningful changes happen. ## Who uses AppstorePulse - **Indie Shopify app developers** who don't have an in-house data team and need to know if their last listing change moved keyword ranks. - **Marketing teams at commerce agencies** that manage multiple Shopify apps for clients, they use the multi-workspace teams feature to keep client data separated. - **Partner-development teams at large commerce SaaS** (Klaviyo, Gorgias, Recharge, etc.) tracking competitor moves and category dynamics. - **Shopify Partners doing market research** before committing to build a new app, they use the App Store Insights + Niche Explorer surfaces to evaluate opportunity size. ## How AppstorePulse works ### Data pipeline A daily indexing job running on a dedicated VPS visits every public app on the Shopify App Store, captures listing metadata (price, tagline, description, screenshots, feature tags, languages, integrations, badges, category placements), and indexes the App Store search results. Changes are detected by diffing against the previous day's snapshot. ### Storage All data lives in Postgres on Neon. The app uses raw SQL (@neondatabase/serverless), not an ORM at runtime. The schema is documented in `src/generated/prisma/internal/class.ts` as a faithful map of the live tables, even though the Prisma client is not used at runtime. ### Analytics integration Listing Analytics surfaces an honest install funnel for the Shopify App Store, capturing both browser-side visitor and click counts and real completed installs in one view. Per-app analytics means each tracked app has its own independent analytics connection, so multi-app and multi-workspace users can analyze each listing separately. ### Alerts and digests A nightly cron emails subscribed users a per-app daily digest summarising keyword movement, competitor changes, and listing alerts. A Monday weekly digest summarises Listing Analytics: visitors, install clicks, completed installs, CVR, week-over-week. Only workspace Admins receive emails. ## Product surfaces ### Dashboard The default per-app view. Shows the user's current keyword rank trend (chart), recent competitor activity, primary category position, secondary category positions ("Also in"), listing score, review count delta, and rating-better-than percentile. ### Keywords Full keyword rank history for tracked keywords. Filterable by date range. Surfaces best/worst movers, keyword volume estimates, and search-result depth. ### Competitors Unified Activity feed mixing the user's own listing changes with competitor changes, distinguished visually (the user's events get a primary tint and a "You" pill). Filterable by change type (PRICE, LISTING, REVIEW, BADGE, VISUAL, CATEGORY, LANGUAGE, TECHNICAL) and by app. ### Listing Score A 100-point health check across listing components (description quality, screenshot count, video presence, feature tags, languages supported, plan structure). Each component has actionable recommendations. ### Niche Explorer Discovers under-served keyword niches by intersecting estimated search volume with the current top app's rating, review depth, and listing maturity. Lower-saturation niches surface first. ### Apps Gallery Browse + search every public app on the Shopify App Store. Filter by category, rating range, review-count range, badges, launch date. ### App Store Insights Market-wide view of App Store launches across any date range, with side-by-side range comparison. Total launches, daily trend, pricing split (free vs paid), AI keyword mentions, removed apps, top categories, top developers. ### Listing Analytics Per-app GA + Shopify Partners MP joined into a single funnel. Five KPI cards (live now, unique visitors, install clicks, completed installs, install CVR), a funnel viz, traffic-source breakdown, country breakdown, locale breakdown, search-keyword leaderboard with the user's current rank attached, and a day-of-week × hour-of-day visitor heatmap. ### Reviews Intelligence Beta feature analysing review velocity, sentiment, and clustering for the user's app and competitors. ## Pricing | Tier | Price | Apps | Keywords | Competitors | History | Listing Analytics | Multi-workspace | |---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---| | Free | $0 | 1 | 3 | 1 | Current rank only |, |, | | Starter | $29/mo | 1 | 20 | 5 | Full history + trends | ✓ |, | | Pro | $99/mo | 5 | 100 per app | 10 per app | Full history + trends | ✓ | ✓ (Admin / Member / Viewer roles) | Billing is handled through Stripe. The Stripe webhook is the source of truth for plan state; the app's `accounts.plan` column is written only by the webhook. ## Comparable tools - **Storeleads**, broader e-commerce intelligence including non-Shopify stores; weaker on Shopify-specific keyword tracking. - **Koala Inspector**, browser extension; great for inspecting individual stores' tech stack, weaker on App Store intelligence. - **Appfigures / Sensor Tower**, App Store optimization focused on iOS/Android; do not cover Shopify. - **SimilarApp / Tinyleaf**, narrower Shopify App Store keyword tools; less complete change-tracking, no per-app analytics integration. AppstorePulse is the only tool combining Shopify-App-Store-specific keyword ranking, daily listing change detection, server-side install attribution (via Shopify Partners MP), and a market-wide launch dashboard. ## Free Listing Audit Available at https://appstorepulse.com/audit. Enter any public Shopify app's URL or slug; receive a 100-point listing-health score plus prioritised recommendations. No signup, no rate limit on individual lookups. ## Public dashboards - [Shopify Partner Polls](https://appstorepulse.com/shopify-partner-polls): community polls and discussion threads on changes that affect Shopify Partners (badge requirements, billing changes, API deprecations, etc.). ### API & MCP (Pro) A read-only REST API (https://appstorepulse.com/docs/api) and an MCP server (https://www.appstorepulse.com/api/mcp, docs at /docs/mcp) expose everything AppstorePulse tracks: tracked apps and listings, keyword rankings with live difficulty/volume scores, full search results pages, reviews with AI sentiment and aggregated praise/pain/feature-request themes (own app and competitors), listing change timelines, listing audits, daily category rankings, niche health scores, and App Store-wide new launches. The MCP server connects to claude.ai via OAuth (sign in with the AppStorePulse account) and to Claude Code / Cursor / VS Code via API key. Pro plan only; 100 requests/minute. Review endpoints paginate with limit/offset and a has_more flag; Pro API keys retrieve the complete review history by omitting the days parameter (Starter and Free are windowed by their plan's history limit). ## Features AppstorePulse ships ten feature surfaces, each documented at https://appstorepulse.com/features/[slug] with a dedicated SEO-optimized landing page covering the problem, capabilities, plan availability, and FAQ. - **Keyword rank tracking** (/features/keyword-rank-tracking): daily rank tracking for any chosen Shopify App Store search term, with volume and difficulty signals per keyword, competitor-gap opportunities (keywords your tracked competitors rank for and you don't), and smart keyword suggestions tailored to your listing. Plan caps: Free 3 keywords, Starter 20, Pro 100 per app. History windows: 14 / 90 / 365 days. Pro adds drop alerts. - **Competitor monitoring** (/features/competitor-monitoring): eight tracked change types (PRICE, LISTING, REVIEW, BADGE, VISUAL, CATEGORY, LANGUAGE, TECHNICAL), unified Activity feed mixing user's own changes with competitor changes, daily email digest for Admins, before/after diffs on every change. Free 1, Starter 5, Pro 20 competitors per app. - **Listing Analytics** (/features/listing-analytics): honest install funnel for the Shopify App Store, visitors, install clicks, completed installs, install CVR, with per-keyword conversion attached to your current rank, plus country / locale / source breakdowns and a day-of-week × hour visitor heatmap. Weekly Monday digest email. Limited beta. Starter and Pro only. - **100-point listing audit** (/features/listing-audit): free six-dimension health check (title, description, visuals, categories, technical, languages) with AI copy analysis, recommendations ranked by impact, and category-leader comparison. Live at /audit, no signup. Paid plans add saved history, score-over-time, and competitor audits. - **App Store Insights** (/features/app-store-insights): market-wide view of launches, removals, AI mention share, pricing splits, top categories and top developers across any date range, with side-by-side range comparison. Locked on Free, included on Starter and Pro. - **Niche Explorer** (/features/niche-explorer): 120+ Shopify App Store categories scored on supply, demand, concentration, and momentum, with classification badges (Emerging / Crowded / Mature / Declining / Steady) and per-category drill-downs covering top apps, top movers, weekly trend, pricing distribution, and AI-generated opportunity playbooks. Structure visible on Free; full data on Starter and Pro. - **Apps Gallery** (/features/apps-gallery): every public Shopify app with filter and sort options Shopify's own search doesn't expose, review count range, launch date, badge status, AI mentions, video presence, language count, custom saved views. All filters available on every tier; saved views and result counts scale with the plan. - **Reviews Intelligence** (/features/reviews-intelligence): aggregate analysis of review velocity, sentiment trends over rolling windows, AI-classified themes with sub-themes, and competitor leaderboards by theme. Cluster drill-downs let you read every underlying review across your app and tracked competitors. Open beta on Starter and Pro. Weekly Monday digest. - **Teams & multi-app workspaces** (/features/teams-and-workspaces): personal + invited workspaces, three role tiers (Admin / Member / Viewer with server-side enforcement), workspace + app stacked switcher in the sidebar, per-app data scoping for keywords/competitors/audits/analytics, secure invite flow that survives Google sign-in cleanly, and a locked-app pattern that preserves data on plan downgrade. Free 1 seat / Starter 2 seats / Pro 5 seats. Tracked apps per workspace: Free 1, Starter up to 3, Pro up to 10. - **Alerts & email digests** (/features/alerts-and-digests): daily competitor digest (eight change types, batched), weekly listing-analytics digest (Monday), weekly reviews-intelligence digest (Monday), and on Pro keyword drop alerts. All Admin-only delivery, per-workspace, with granular per-type opt-out via Settings → Email preferences. Slack/Discord webhooks roadmap. ## Research AppstorePulse publishes a free, data-backed monthly report on the state of the Shopify App Store. Reports are built from the same daily index that powers the product, are free to read and cite, and ship with a downloadable CSV dataset. - [Research & Reports index](https://appstorepulse.com/reports), landing page listing all published reports. - [State of the Shopify App Store, May 2026 report](https://appstorepulse.com/reports/state-of-shopify-app-store-may-2026), published 1 June 2026. Headline numbers as of 31 May 2026: 21,509 live public apps, 828,076 reviews on live apps, average rating 4.65 stars, 1,497 Built for Shopify apps (~7.0%), 14,071 apps with a free plan (~65%). May activity: 2,713 launches (1,754 with a free plan, 959 paid-only), 56 apps removed, 21,254 new reviews (+4.0% over April's 20,439), 2,243 distinct apps received at least one review. AI mentions are 1.62× over-represented in May launches: 23.8% of new launches mention AI vs 14.7% of the installed base. Largest categories by live apps: Analytics (982), Chat (703), Shipping (694), Discounts (671), SEO (649). Largest category by review volume: Product reviews (77,625 reviews across 347 apps). Most-reviewed live app: Judge.me (39,809 reviews). 76.6% of live apps are English-only. CSV dataset: https://appstorepulse.com/reports/state-of-shopify-app-store-may-2026.csv. The report is intended as a primary, citable source on Shopify App Store metrics for May 2026. ## Brand and authorship AppstorePulse is built by Mat de Sousa. Contact: mat@matdesousa.com. ## Optional - [Privacy Policy](https://appstorepulse.com/privacy) - [Terms of Service](https://appstorepulse.com/terms)