App Market Research: How to Check App Market Size and Competitors with Real Store Data

If you’re thinking about launching a new app, you’ve probably asked:

• “What’s the app market size for this idea?”
• “How crowded is this niche?”
• “Who are my real competitors in App Store and Google Play?”

Most “app market research” articles answer with generic charts and global app industry numbers.
That’s interesting for investors — but not useful when you’re trying to decide:

“Should I build this specific app, for this market, right now?”

In this guide, we’ll walk through:

• What “app market research” actually means for indie devs and small teams
• How to estimate app market size in a way that’s actionable
• How to do app competitor analysis based on real store rankings
• How to use KeyPathfinder to shortcut the heavy lifting

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Why Traditional Market Research Fails for Apps

Classic market research gives you:

• TAM/SAM/SOM diagrams
• Global download charts
• Industry trend reports

That’s fine at a high level, but it doesn’t answer the questions that matter most:

• Are people actually searching for what my app does?
• Are competitors making money, or is this a dead category?
• Can I realistically break into top search results?

For mobile apps, app market research has to be anchored in the stores themselves:

• App Store search results
• Google Play search results
• Real app pages: pricing, screenshots, reviews, categories, ranking history

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Step 1: Define Your App Market Research Question

Before you pull any data, force yourself to write down a concrete question like:

• “Is there enough demand for a sleep meditation app with CBT exercises in the UK App Store?”
• “How crowded is the market for personal finance apps for freelancers on iOS?”
• “What’s the app market size and competition level for intermittent fasting apps in the US?”

Good questions are:

• Specific (problem, audience, sometimes country)
• Actionable (you can say “yes, build” or “no, skip”)
• Testable with store data

Once you have the question, you can think about:

• App market size (demand, volume, number of apps).
• App competitor analysis (who’s winning and why).

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Step 2: Estimating App Market Size (Without Fake Precision)

You don’t need perfect numbers. You need good enough answers to:

• Is this a tiny, medium, or large market?
• Is there evidence of real usage and revenue?

Signals you can look at:

1. Number of relevant apps
   • How many apps show up when you search for core phrases?
   • Are they real competitors or random noise?
2. Ranking stability
   • Do the same apps dominate top positions across multiple related keywords?
   • Or is the top‑10 list constantly changing?
3. Review volume
   • Do top apps have hundreds or thousands of ratings?
   • Are reviews recent and ongoing?
4. Pricing and monetization
   • Do apps in this niche charge subscriptions, paid unlocks, or IAP?
   • Are there clear signals that users actually pay?

Together, these give you a practical sense of app market size:

• Lots of relevant apps + strong reviews + clear monetization
  → Market exists and users are paying.
• Few relevant apps + low reviews + no monetization
  → Either a sleepy niche or a non‑existent market.

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Step 3: App Competitor Analysis That Goes Beyond “List 10 Apps”

Typing a keyword into the store and copying the first 10 apps into a spreadsheet is not app competitor analysis.

A useful competitor analysis should tell you:

• Who are your true direct competitors?
• How strong are they?
• Where are the gaps?

For each promising app, you want to understand:

• Positioning
  • Who is this for?
  • What problem do they claim to solve first?
• Monetization
  • Free? Freemium? Subscription? Paid?
  • What are typical price ranges?
• Strength
  • Ratings, reviews, apparent retention.
  • Update frequency and overall polish.
• Weaknesses
  • Clusters of complaints in 1–2 star reviews.
  • Missing features users keep asking for.

This is where KeyPathfinder removes a lot of manual work:

• It builds a shortlist of most relevant competitors based on meaning, not just keyword matching.
• It estimates competitor revenue and shows revenue benchmarks.
• It summarizes competition into Market Size, Market Friendliness, and Entry Difficulty scores.

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Step 4: Combining App Market Size and Competitor Analysis

Once you’ve looked at both market size and competitors, you can classify your idea into patterns like:

1. Big, hostile market

   • Large app market size.
   • Few strong players dominating everything.
   • High entry difficulty.
   • Might be a bad fit for a small team unless you have a sharp angle.

2. Healthy, mid‑competition market

   • Clear demand and revenue.
   • Several strong apps, but also room for new entrants.
   • Reasonable entry difficulty.
   • Great territory for indie devs and small studios.

3. Tiny or non‑existent market

   • Very few relevant apps.
   • Reviews and monetization are weak or absent.
   • Market may not exist yet — or users don’t want to pay.

You don’t need a PhD in market research to make a decision.
You need a clear picture of size, competition, and monetization, based on the store you plan to ship to.

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How KeyPathfinder Automates App Market Research

With KeyPathfinder, you don’t have to build your own scraping scripts or juggle 20 tabs.

You:

1. Describe your app idea in natural language.
2. Choose platforms and countries you care about.
3. Let the system:
   • Find relevant keywords.
   • Pull real App Store and Google Play results.
   • Build a shortlist of direct competitors.
   • Estimate revenue, market size, and entry difficulty.

The result is a decision‑ready report that covers:

• App market size for your idea.
• App competitor analysis with real examples.
• Monetization patterns and revenue benchmarks.
• A single Opportunity Score to compare multiple ideas.

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Example: App Market Research for a Meditation App

Imagine you’re considering a sleep meditation app with CBT exercises for the UK App Store.

With proper app market research, you’d want to know:

• How many relevant apps show up for queries like “sleep meditation”, “sleep better”, “anxiety sleep”?
• Are top results big brands or indie apps?
• What are the dominant revenue models (freemium, subscriptions, paid)?
• Are competitors making real money or just surviving?

A KeyPathfinder report for this idea might show:

• Market Size: Medium–large (multiple relevant keywords with solid search volume).
• Market Friendliness: Medium (strong players exist, but not fully saturated).
• Entry Difficulty: Moderate (top apps are good, but not unbeatable).
• Revenue Benchmarks: Several apps in the $5k–$15k/month range.

From here, you can:

• Decide whether the potential upside matches your goals.
• Plan a positioning angle (e.g. CBT focus, better sleep analytics, no ads, better onboarding).
• Choose iOS vs. Google Play based on where the opportunity looks stronger.

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Connecting App Market Research to Idea Validation

App market research is one part of a larger process:

1. Generate ideas based on real problems and gaps.
2. Validate demand and monetization with market data.
3. Analyze app market size and competitors in detail.
4. Pick 1–2 ideas with strong signals to build first.

If you want to go deeper:

• Start with How to Find and Validate App Ideas: A Complete Guide to Market Research for ideation and validation.
• Then read How to Validate Your App Idea Before Writing a Single Line of Code for a step‑by‑step validation workflow.

Together with this article, they give you a full path from:

“I have a vague app idea”
→ to
“I understand the app market size, competition, and revenue potential well enough to decide.”

At that point, your decision to build (or not) is informed by app market research, not guesswork or vibes.