Short answer: an ASO fee is set by scope: how many apps, stores and store-locales are covered, how often each listing is updated and how many store tests run at once. Admiral Media does not publish a price list. You get your fee in a written proposal after a 30-minute call. ASO programs run at least 6 months, then monthly, with no setup fee, and a one-time ASO audit is the other way to start. For app portfolios, the scope multiplies with every app and market, so it is planned across the whole portfolio at once.
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Running several apps or many markets? Go to ASO for app portfolios and size your store footprint. One app with modest store traffic? Start with our free ASO Checker.
How ASO pricing works: scope, not a price list
This is how Admiral Media’s App Store Optimization service is scoped. The unit is the store-locale: one language version of one store listing, for example App Store English (US). Every fee is set by scope, so it comes in a written proposal that confirms the apps, stores, store-locales, deliverables and term before any work starts.
| Work | What it covers | What sets the scope |
|---|---|---|
| Keywords and metadata | Keyword and competitor monitoring for every store-locale, and metadata updates timed to your releases: app name, subtitle and keyword field on iOS, title, short and full description on Google Play. Every change is approved by you before it goes live. | Stores, store-locales and how often each listing is updated. |
| Store creative and testing | Icons, screenshots, preview videos and product page assets, tested in Apple’s Product Page Optimization and Google Play’s store listing experiments. One hypothesis per test, read out and rolled out. | Tests running at once, stores and creative volume. |
| Custom product pages | Custom product pages on iOS and custom store listings on Google Play, linked to keywords and paid campaigns, localized per market and measured. | Pages per app and languages per page. |
| ASO audit | Competitors, metadata, creative, ratings and reviews, market potential and a 90-day roadmap, presented in a call. | One-time: apps and store-locales reviewed. |
| Team enablement | A workshop on your own apps and regular check-ins for in-house ASO and growth teams. | One-time: a fixed scope. |
ASO programs run at least 6 months, then monthly with one month’s notice. There is no setup fee: month 1 covers the onboarding audit, your baseline and the rotation plan. Every program comes with a written update every week and a results meeting every month. Audits and workshops are single projects with no term. How AI assistants describe and recommend your app is covered by our answer engine optimization (AEO) service.
ASO for app portfolios: how the scope multiplies
For a publisher with several apps, the scope is apps times stores times store-locales. Ten apps on the App Store and Google Play in 20 languages are 400 store listings to keep current, before a single custom product page. Since March 2026 the App Store accepts metadata in 50 languages, so the ceiling keeps rising. Apple allows up to 70 custom product pages per app and lets you link keywords to them so they appear in organic search, so a portfolio can run thousands of localized pages. Size yours below.
What 25 app portfolios show in the App Store (November 2026)
On 2 November 2026 Admiral Media read the public App Store listings of 150 top apps from 25 app publishers and consumer brands, mostly headquartered in Europe, in 14 storefronts. The pattern was consistent: the apps already support the local language, but the store listing often does not, and the gap grows below the flagship.
- 24%of 1,107 app and storefront pairs where the app supports the local language show a listing that is not fully localized: the base screenshot set or a base-language description.
- 48% vs 25%of other top apps have that gap, against flagship apps (48 of 99 against 6 of 24).
- 45% and 44%of language-supported pairs in Sweden and the Netherlands are not fully localized, against 21% in Germany.
- 151 of 271gaps have a translated description but still show the base screenshot set.
Source: Admiral Media portfolio store benchmark, public App Store data (iTunes lookup API and product pages), collected 2 Nov 2026. 25 portfolios (12 games publishers, 13 app companies), 37 verified developer accounts, 150 top apps, 14 storefronts. A selected sample, not a random one. Custom product pages and product page tests are not visible in public data and are not counted, and the same screenshot set does not prove untranslated text inside the images. Full method and findings: App Store Localization Study 2026.
Closing that gap is store work, not product work: the languages are already in the app. That is what the shared keyword library and creative system below are for.
What a portfolio program does differently
Admiral Media runs ASO programs for app portfolios across the App Store and Google Play. The difference from single-app ASO is that research, planning and creative are built once and reused, so the work grows with the portfolio without being repeated for every app.
- One keyword library per language, shared across apps. Research is done once per market and reused, with checks so your own apps do not compete for the same search terms.
- One release and event calendar. Metadata updates, in-app events and seasonal creative are planned across all apps around your release trains. For game publishers, that calendar follows LiveOps.
- Localization by native speakers, not translation. Keyword research per market, screenshots and captions adapted per storefront and reviewed before release, across as many languages as you run.
- Custom product pages tied to Apple Ads. One keyword map drives organic custom product pages and paid ad groups, so paid and organic search are planned together instead of competing blind.
- Approval workflows for regulated copy. For banking, fintech and health apps, every text change goes through your compliance review with a written change log.
- Continuity when people change. A named senior owner and documented playbooks, so the work keeps moving when an in-house ASO lead leaves or changes role.
- One view of results. Reporting by app and market against baselines agreed at the start.
What an ASO program includes every month
A program should cover four kinds of work every month. The last column is the question to put to any agency you compare.
| Work | What happens each month | What to check in any quote |
|---|---|---|
| Keyword research | Month 1: an onboarding audit, a baseline and a rotation plan. Then keyword and competitor monitoring for every store-locale, with your main markets updated every few months and smaller ones once or twice a year. | Which store-locales are covered and how often each one is updated. |
| Metadata | The planned metadata updates for the month: app name, subtitle and keyword field on iOS, title, short and full description on Google Play, timed to your releases and handed over for your approval. | Whether every change is shown to you before it goes live. |
| Creative testing | Tests in Apple’s Product Page Optimization or Google Play’s store listing experiments. Each test has one hypothesis and one challenger, designed in iPhone and Android phone sizes, then read out, and the winner is rolled out. | How many tests run at a time, who designs them and how many revision rounds are included. |
| Reporting | A written update every week and a results meeting every month: the store funnel by source (impressions, page views, conversion), rankings and organic installs per market, peer benchmarks and a ranked plan for the next month. | Conversion and downloads by source, not only keyword ranks. |
Scoped separately: creative refreshes, custom product page programs and additional apps. Compare quotes by these four rows rather than by the headline fee: a lower fee that leaves out creative or reporting is not cheaper.
What drives the cost of ASO
Two quotes for “ASO” can differ several times over because they describe different amounts of work. These six factors explain most of the gap.
1. Number of apps and stores
Each app needs its own keyword research, metadata and creative. Covering both the App Store and Google Play roughly doubles the metadata work, because the two stores index text differently: Apple uses a title, subtitle and hidden keyword field, while Google Play reads the title, short description and long description. Our Google Play ASO guide covers what the Play work involves. Across a portfolio, shared research per language keeps the work from growing in step with every app.
2. Markets and languages
Localization is research, not translation. Search terms in Germany, Korea or Brazil are not literal translations of English keywords, and screenshots often need local copy and proof. This is why most agencies scope per market or language. We scope per store-locale: one language version of one store listing.
3. Creative production
Store creative is where most of the effort sits. Icons, screenshots, preview videos, custom product pages and the newer product page header assets all need design, localization and approval. Ask exactly how many assets a month the scope includes.
4. Testing volume
Apple’s Product Page Optimization and Google Play’s store listing experiments are free to run, but each test needs enough traffic to reach a result. An agency promising weekly tests on a small app is selling activity, not learning. Test volume should follow your traffic.
5. Seniority and support
A senior specialist who owns your account, writes to you every week and meets you every month costs more than a junior running a checklist. Check who actually does the work and how often you will hear from them.
6. Connection to paid acquisition
ASO scoped as part of a performance team can use paid data: which Apple Ads keywords convert, which ad creatives win on Meta or TikTok. That makes metadata and creative decisions faster and better, and it lets custom product pages serve both paid and organic search.
How enterprise teams buy ASO: RFP, audit and procurement
A good brief makes agency proposals comparable. Put these six things in your RFP:
- A scope matrix: every app, store and store-locale in scope, with store traffic per market if you can share it.
- Your release and LiveOps calendar, so updates and in-app events can be planned around it.
- Access and approval rules: App Store Connect and Play Console roles with the least access needed, and who approves metadata, creative and regulated copy.
- Reporting needs: which sources and markets, how often, and who receives the reports.
- Success criteria for the first 90 days, written down before work starts.
- Procurement documents: NDA, data processing agreement, security questionnaire and the invoicing entity.
How we start: most portfolios begin with a one-time audit of the apps and markets that matter most, then move to a program of at least 6 months. The first 90 days have a written plan and success criteria agreed before work starts, with a formal review at day 90.
If your procurement team asks for a 90-day pilot, structure it inside the program rather than as a separate trial: pick two or three apps and markets, agree the baseline and target metrics per market in writing, ship the first metadata and creative changes by week 6, and judge the result at the day-90 review against those targets. Three months is usually too short for a store test program to finish, so a standalone 90-day trial tends to measure setup work instead of results.
ASO pricing models and packages
ASO is sold in four main ways. Knowing which one you are being offered makes quotes easier to compare.
Monthly program or retainer. The most common model for ongoing ASO. You pay a fixed fee for a defined scope: apps, stores, markets and a monthly set of deliverables. It suits apps that ship updates and have enough traffic to test.
One-time project or audit. A fixed fee for an audit, a launch listing or a metadata overhaul. Good for new markets, launches and teams that want a roadmap before committing.
Training and workshops. A fixed fee to upskill an in-house team, usually with follow-up check-ins. You keep the execution; the agency supplies method and review.
Performance-based fees. Some providers tie fees to rankings or installs. Treat these carefully: rankings are easy to move for irrelevant keywords, and installs are affected by paid campaigns, featuring and seasonality that the agency does not control.
Packages are usually built from the same blocks: work per app, per market or language, and add-ons for creative production or extra programs. At Admiral Media the work is scoped as a program plus one-time options, so you pay only for the part you need.
Program, audit or workshop: which one fits?
- Portfolio of apps, or one app in 10 or more markets: a program scoped across the whole portfolio, usually after a one-time audit of the apps and markets that matter most.
- Established app with store traffic and paid UA: a monthly program for keywords and metadata, with store tests once there is enough traffic to test. The gains compound month after month.
- New market launch or a listing that has not changed in a year: start with a one-time audit and metadata update. You get a roadmap and the first update, then decide whether ongoing work is worth it.
- Team with an in-house ASO or growth lead: a workshop and regular check-ins. We train your team instead of doing the work for you.
- Pre-launch or very low traffic: start with the free ASO Checker and our guides. Paying monthly for experiments your traffic cannot power is money wasted.
What the first 90 days should produce
Whatever you pay, the first 90 days should produce written, checkable deliverables. At Admiral Media they look like this:
- Weeks 1 to 2: read access to App Store Connect and Play Console, a keyword map per market, competitor listings reviewed and a baseline of impressions, page views and conversion by source.
- Weeks 3 to 6: a metadata plan for both stores, a review of icons and first screenshots, and the first approved updates live.
- Weeks 7 to 12: the next updates on the rotation plan and, where traffic allows, native A/B tests with a decision on each result.
- Every week: a written update on what changed and what is next.
- Every month: a results meeting with what shipped, what moved and how you compare with peers in App Store Connect, plus a ranked backlog for the next 30 days.
How to pick an ASO partner for what the fee buys
The fee only tells you part of the story. Before you sign, check that it pays for these five things.
- A named senior owner. One specialist who knows your account, joins a regular call and can explain every change.
- Transparent reporting. Store data by source against a baseline agreed before work starts, including tests that did not win.
- Experience in your markets. Local keyword research and results per market, not one global report.
- A workflow that fits your product team. Store changes timed to your release cycle and briefs your designers can build from. Icon tests need planning: Apple needs every alternate icon in a Product Page Optimization test to be in your published app binary. If the drop-off is after the install, in onboarding or on the paywall, the partner should be able to run conversion rate optimization on those screens too.
- A link to the rest of growth. Paid UA data to choose tests, and AEO (answer engine optimization) to see how AI assistants describe your app.
Admiral Media is one option built around these points. For the full selection checklist, read how to choose an ASO agency, or talk to our team. A senior strategist replies within one business day.
How to prove ASO pays back, including to finance
ASO pays back in two ways: more organic installs, and cheaper paid installs because more of your paid traffic converts on the store page. A simple illustration of the paid side: if each store visit costs the same, lifting the store page conversion rate from 30% to 36% cuts the cost per install by about 17%. That is arithmetic, not a client result, but it shows why ASO should be judged against your total acquisition cost.
Proving incremental installs to finance
- Fix a baseline per app and market before work starts: impressions, product page views, conversion rate and downloads by source, such as App Store search and browse, or Google Play search and explore.
- Change one market or one app at a time where you can, and compare it with markets or apps left unchanged in the same weeks.
- Use the stores’ native A/B tests for creative. They split live traffic between versions, so the lift comes from the change, not from seasonality.
- Keep paid search apart. Hold Apple Ads steady during metadata changes or read results by keyword, so paid installs are not counted as organic gains.
- Report value, not only installs. Combine the extra installs with your own retention and revenue data and set them next to the fee.
Two platform facts make the organic side worth the effort. Apple says 65% of App Store downloads start with a search, and it reports that custom product pages lift conversion by 2.5 percentage points on average compared with default pages. Now that keywords can be linked to custom product pages for organic search, they are an ASO lever as well as a paid one.
No agency can guarantee rankings or a specific lift. Judge an agency on whether its changes are tied to a hypothesis, measured against a baseline and reported honestly, including tests that did not win.
Case study: NeuroNation in Korea, +93% search downloads
NeuroNation, a brain training app, was ranking low or not at all for its top keywords in the Korean App Store. Hangul makes keyword work hard for non-native speakers. Admiral Media’s ASO team researched Korean search terms, analysed competitors and rewrote the App Store title, subtitle and keyword field. The NeuroNation Korea case study reports 93.10% growth in search downloads and 43.95% growth in search impressions from that metadata work.
Red flags in ASO pricing
- A tool login sold as a service. Data is useful, but you are paying for decisions, copy and creative.
- Unlimited tests on a small app. Tests without enough traffic produce noise.
- Changes without your approval. Every metadata and creative change should be shown to you before it goes live.
- A long contract with no written plan. Ask for the 90-day deliverables before you sign.
- One report for every market. A portfolio needs results per app and per market.
Guaranteed rankings and help with reviews are red flags too. See how to choose an ASO agency for the full list.
Frequently asked questions
How much does ASO cost per month?
It depends on scope: the apps, stores and store-locales covered, how often each listing is updated and how many store tests run at once. Admiral Media does not publish a price list. You get the fee in a written proposal after a 30-minute call, and ASO programs run at least 6 months. For a portfolio, all apps are scoped together, so keyword research and creative systems are shared across apps instead of repeated.
Do ASO agencies charge per app or per market?
Usually both, because each app and each market needs its own research and creative. We scope per store-locale: one language version of one store listing, for example App Store English (US). For a portfolio, the store-locales of every app are planned together in one program.
How do you scope ASO for a portfolio of apps?
Multiply apps by stores by store-locales to get the number of listings to keep current, then add custom product pages per language. Ten apps on both stores in 20 languages is 400 listings. A portfolio program shares one keyword library per language across apps, plans updates on one release and event calendar, and reports by app and market in one view.
How well do app publishers localize their App Store listings?
Less well than their apps. In Admiral Media's benchmark of 150 top apps from 25 app publishers and consumer brands in 14 App Store storefronts (public data, 2 Nov 2026), 24% of the 1,107 app and storefront pairs where the app supports the local language showed a listing that was not fully localized, usually the base screenshot set. Flagship apps were mostly covered (6 of 24 had the gap), other top apps were not (48 of 99). Sweden (45%) and the Netherlands (44%) lagged Germany (21%).
What should an enterprise ASO RFP include?
Every app, store and store-locale in scope, your release and LiveOps calendar, console access and approval rules, the reports you need, success criteria for the first 90 days and your procurement documents: NDA, data processing agreement and security questionnaire. With those in the brief, agency proposals become comparable.
How do we prove incremental organic installs from ASO to our CFO?
Fix a baseline per app and market before work starts, change one market or app at a time where you can and compare it with markets left unchanged, use the stores' native A/B tests for creative, and hold paid search steady or read it by keyword so paid installs are not counted twice. Then report the extra installs with your own retention and revenue data next to the fee.
What is the difference between ASO agency pricing and ASO tool pricing?
An ASO tool charges a subscription for keyword and competitor data. An agency fee pays for the people who decide what to change, write the metadata, produce the creative and run the tests. Agencies normally use licensed tools as part of that work.
Can I start with a one-time ASO audit?
Yes. The ASO audit is a one-time project, scoped by the apps and store-locales it reviews. It covers competitors, metadata, creative, ratings and reviews, market potential and a 90-day roadmap, presented in a call. Audits are single projects with no term.
How long does it take to see results from ASO?
Metadata changes usually take a few weeks to show in rankings and search downloads, because the stores need time to index them and collect traffic. Creative tests need enough traffic to reach a result, often two to six weeks per test.
Is ASO worth it for small apps?
A monthly program pays off once an app has enough store traffic for changes and tests to show a result. With one app in a few markets and modest traffic, start with the free ASO Checker and our guides, fix what they find, and talk to an agency when store traffic grows.
How do I measure whether my ASO agency is delivering value?
Agree a baseline in App Store Connect and Play Console before work starts: impressions, product page views, conversion by source and downloads from search. Track changes against it every month. Google Play switched from conversion rate to click-through rate in mid-2026, so compare like with like.
What is included in a monthly ASO program?
Keyword research and metadata for the App Store and Google Play, store creative and native A/B tests, custom product pages where they fit, and reporting: a written update every week and a results meeting every month with the store funnel by source and a ranked plan for the next month. ASO programs run at least 6 months, then monthly.
Get a scoped proposal for your app or portfolio
Share your App Store or Google Play links and the markets you are live in. A senior ASO specialist replies within one business day. For portfolios we start with a portfolio review: all apps, all markets, one senior ASO lead. After a 30-minute call you get a written proposal with scope, fee and term.
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