How to Choose the Best ASO Agency in 2026

Short answer: start from the result you need: game installs, subscription trial starts or search visibility. The best ASO agency for your app is then the one that can show you, before you sign, how it will find your keywords, change your listing and prove the result. Look for native expertise on both the App Store and Google Play, a written 90-day plan, disciplined A/B testing, real creative capacity and honest reporting against a baseline. Walk away from anyone who guarantees rankings or offers to “help with reviews”.

This guide shows how to match an agency to your goal, choose between an audit and a retainer, compare proposals and check the evidence. It then gives seven criteria, twelve questions for the first call and the red flags that should end the conversation.

About the author: This guide is written by the ASO team at Admiral Media, a mobile growth agency founded in 2019 that runs App Store Optimization for iOS and Android apps alongside Apple Ads and paid user acquisition. Admiral Media’s metadata work for NeuroNation grew App Store search downloads in Korea by 93%, and the agency is rated 4.9 on Clutch across 48 reviews.

What a good ASO agency actually does

App Store Optimization has two jobs: get your app found, and get it chosen. Discovery comes from keywords in your metadata, your category and, increasingly, from keyword-linked Custom Product Pages. Conversion comes from what people see first: icon, screenshots, preview video and ratings. A good agency works on both, measures both in App Store Connect and Play Console, and ties every change to a hypothesis.

Before you talk to any agency, run your listing through our free ASO Checker. It scores the basics in about 20 seconds, so you can judge whether an agency’s first recommendations make sense.

Start from what you need the agency to grow

Before you compare agencies, write down the one result you are paying for. Each of these three needs a different kind of specialist.

Game user acquisition

Games win on live store features and creative volume. In our study of 1,000 top US App Store listings, 52% of the top 50 games ran an In-App Event and 28% had a preview video, more than twice the rate of other apps, yet 42% repeated words between title and subtitle. A games specialist should plan In-App Events, screenshot tests by genre, preview video and Custom Product Pages per game theme, and connect store conversion to your cost per install and ROAS. See ASO for mobile games and user acquisition for mobile games.

Subscription trial growth

For a subscription app the install is only the first step. Judge listing changes by trial starts per traffic source, read from your MMP or subscription data next to App Store Connect. For dating apps, position the listing on who the app is for, so a test does not lift installs while lowering subscriber quality. More on subscription app marketing.

Visibility in store search

If people cannot find you, the work is keyword research per market, metadata, localisation and keyword-linked Custom Product Pages. Apple allows up to 70 Custom Product Pages, and each can appear in search results for the keywords you assign to it (Apple). Ask for a keyword map and search downloads per market, not rankings for terms nobody searches.

One-time audit or ongoing retainer, and what each costs

An established app does not always need a monthly agency. A one-time audit fits when the listing has not had a full review in a year, you are switching partners, the product has changed or store traffic is too low to test every month. A retainer fits when you have steady traffic, several markets, paid campaigns landing on your store pages and nobody in-house who owns keywords, creative and tests.

Most agencies price ASO per app and per market, with extra charges for creative production. At Admiral Media, ASO Discovery (keywords and metadata) starts from €2,000 per month for one store in up to two languages, and ASO Conversion (store creative and A/B tests) from €2,000 per month. Both together are 5% off. The ASO Audit costs from €1,500 one-time, and 50% of it is credited to a retainer signed within 30 days. The ASO pricing guide compares pricing models, has a calculator and sets out what a monthly ASO retainer includes.

7 criteria for choosing an ASO agency in 2026

1. Native expertise on both stores

The App Store and Google Play index text differently. Apple uses a title, subtitle and a hidden keyword field; Google Play reads the title, short description and long description. Apple’s native A/B test is Product Page Optimization, while Custom Product Pages are targeted pages, not tests. Google Play has Store Listing Experiments and custom store listings. Ask the agency to explain these differences. If it cannot, it will treat both stores the same. Our Google Play ASO guide sets out the Play side in detail.

2. Up to date with platform changes

Ask what changed in the last twelve months and how it changed their work. A strong answer covers keyword-linked Custom Product Pages, the extra Apple Ads placements in search, Apple’s AI-generated App Store tags in the US, the new Creative Assets and Google Play’s switch to click-through rate. A weak answer is generic talk about “the algorithm”.

3. Real creative capacity

Most of the conversion upside sits in store creative, and creative is where most budgets run out. Ask who designs your assets, how many a month the fee includes and how fast variants arrive.

4. Testing discipline

Every test should start with a hypothesis, a primary metric and a check that your traffic can reach a result. Good agencies accept “inconclusive” as an answer and stop tests that cannot win. Be wary of anyone promising a winning test every week.

5. A connection to paid acquisition

Your store page converts paid traffic too. Agencies that also run Apple Ads and paid social can use that data to choose tests and build Custom Product Pages for paid and organic search.

6. Category and market experience

A fitness app and a mid-core game need different keywords, screenshots and tests, and so do Germany and Korea. Ask for work in your category and markets, with local keyword research rather than translation.

7. Transparent pricing and reporting

You should know what you pay for: apps, stores, markets, assets and tests. Ask which baseline the report uses and whether every change is shown to you before it goes live.

How to compare proposals priced in parts

Research, creative production and testing are often quoted as separate lines. Compare what each line delivers, not the total:

• Research. Which markets get keyword research, how many competitors are reviewed and how often the keyword map is refreshed.
• Creative production. Who designs icons, screenshots and video, how many sets per month or quarter, and the price of an extra set.
• Testing. How many native tests your traffic supports, and who writes the hypothesis and reads the result.
• Reporting. Conversion and downloads by source, or only keyword ranks.

Then look for gaps. Research with no creative capacity leaves your team to build the plan. Creative with no testing produces assets nobody can prove. Testing on a low-traffic app buys experiments that never reach a result.

Evidence to ask for before you hire

• Before and after numbers with dates. The metric, the period, the market and the source.
• Conversion by source. Search, browse, referral and paid, not total installs.
• A real test readout. Variant, traffic, run time and the decision taken, including tests that lost.
• The person doing the work. Name, seniority and how many other accounts they run.

For health and fitness apps

Health and fitness listings are already strong. In our listings study, the top 50 free Health and Fitness apps had a median ASO Checker score of 87.5 out of 100, second of 20 categories, but only 14% had a preview video and 36% ran an In-App Event. Ask where your listing sits against those numbers, and ask for proof in fitness, wellness or meditation apps. For the meditation app Petit BamBou, Admiral Media’s Apple Ads variations built on Custom Product Pages delivered a 20% higher conversion rate and a 25% lower cost per acquisition than default ads (Petit BamBou case study).

Check the agency can fix the gap between paid clicks and installs

Every paid click lands on a store page. If the page does not match the ad, people leave and you still pay for the click. Ask the agency to compare paid and organic conversion in App Store Connect and Play Console against your ad data, then work with the native tools:

• Custom Product Pages. Up to 70 extra App Store pages with their own screenshots, app previews and promotional text, which Apple Ads can send traffic to. Apple reports a 2.5 percentage point conversion increase on average when people are referred to one (Apple).
• Product Page Optimization. Apple’s native test of icons, screenshots and app previews: up to three treatments against your original page, for up to 90 days (Apple).
• Google Play experiments and custom store listings. Store listing experiments test up to two variants of your icon, graphics, screenshots or descriptions (Google), and up to 50 custom store listings can target countries, search keywords or Google Ads campaigns (Google).

For ImmoScout24, a Custom Product Page for people looking to buy cut Apple Ads cost per acquisition from €2.41 to €1.36 and cost per tap from €1.93 to €1.13 over four weeks in August 2022, compared with the default page (ImmoScout24 case study).

Planning creative experiments with your in-house team

If you have designers, agree the split before you sign. The agency owns the test plan: hypothesis, metric, traffic check, a brief per variant and the readout. Your designers build variants in your design system, or approve the ones the agency produces. Plan icon tests around your release cycle: Apple needs every alternate icon in a Product Page Optimization test to be in your published app binary, while tests without icon changes can go to review without a new app version (Apple). Finally, ask the agency to read results against trial starts or early retention from your MMP, not installs alone.

12 questions to ask an ASO agency before you sign

1. Which of our keywords would you target first, and why those?
2. What would you change on our listing in the first 30 days?
3. Should we start with a one-time audit or a retainer, and why?
4. Do you use Product Page Optimization, Store Listing Experiments or Custom Product Pages, and when would you use each?
5. How many creative assets and tests are included each month, and what does an extra set cost?
6. How would you work with our in-house designers on screenshot and icon tests?
7. How would you audit why our paid clicks are not turning into installs?
8. What baseline will you measure against, and does the report show conversion by source?
9. How will you judge a test on trial starts or retention, not installs alone?
10. Who will actually work on our account, and how senior are they?
11. Can you show a case in our category with dates and before/after numbers?
12. What is the term, and what happens if a test or change does not work?

Red flags when hiring an ASO agency

• Guaranteed rankings or installs. Nobody controls the store algorithms, and rankings for irrelevant keywords are easy to buy and worthless.
• Help with reviews. Buying, incentivising or seeding reviews breaks Apple’s and Google’s rules and can get your app removed.
• Keyword stuffing. Titles crammed with keywords can be rejected in review and hurt conversion.
• Case studies without dates or denominators. “+300%” means nothing without the period, the metric and the starting point.

Red flags in the quote itself, such as a tool login sold as a service or unlimited tests on a small app, are covered in our ASO pricing guide.

In-house, tool or agency?

ASO tools give you keyword and competitor data, but they do not decide what to change or produce the creative. An in-house ASO lead works well if you can hire and keep one and give them design support. An agency makes sense when you need someone to own the strategy, write the metadata, produce store creative and run tests every month without adding headcount. Many teams combine the two: an in-house owner with an agency for creative and testing, or an agency audit and workshop to train the in-house team.

Case study: NeuroNation, +93% search downloads in Korea

NeuroNation, a brain training app, ranked low or not at all for its top keywords in the Korean App Store, and 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. It shows why localisation has to start with local keyword research.

How Admiral Media approaches ASO

We run ASO as part of a performance team. One senior ASO specialist owns your keywords, metadata, store creative and native A/B tests on both stores, and connects them to your Apple Ads and paid social data. Creative for tests and Custom Product Pages comes from our AI Creative Factory. Every engagement starts with a written 90-day plan, every change needs your approval, and every month ends with a report and a ranked backlog. See how our App Store Optimization service works, or talk to our team. A senior strategist replies within one business day.

Frequently asked questions

What does an ASO agency do?

An ASO agency improves how often your app is found and chosen on the App Store and Google Play. It researches keywords, writes metadata, produces and tests store creative such as icons and screenshots, builds Custom Product Pages and reports results against a baseline in App Store Connect and Play Console.

How much does an ASO agency cost?

Most agencies price per app and per market. At Admiral Media, ASO Discovery costs €2,000 to €5,750 a month, by the number of store-locales (one language version of one store listing), and ASO Conversion costs €2,000, €3,500 or €4,900 a month for 1, 2 or 3 tests running. A one-time ASO audit costs from €1,500.

How long does it take an ASO agency to show results?

Metadata changes usually take a few weeks to show in rankings and search downloads. Creative tests need enough traffic to reach a result, often two to six weeks per test. A good agency sets the first milestones in a written 90-day plan.

Can an ASO agency guarantee top rankings?

No. Nobody controls the App Store or Google Play algorithms. An agency that guarantees rankings is either targeting irrelevant keywords or using tactics that break store rules.

What should a monthly ASO report include?

What shipped, what moved against the agreed baseline, test results with sample sizes, keyword rankings for target terms, conversion by traffic source and a ranked backlog for the next month. On Google Play, reports should use the new click-through metrics introduced in mid-2026.

Should an established app hire an ASO agency for a one-time audit or a retainer?

Choose a one-time audit if the listing has not had a full review in a year, you are switching partners, the product has changed or traffic is too low to test monthly. Choose a retainer if you have steady store traffic, several markets and paid campaigns. At Admiral Media, 50% of the audit fee is credited to a retainer signed within 30 days.

Can an ASO agency find out why paid ad clicks are not turning into installs?

Yes, if it reads your store data by source. It compares paid and organic conversion in App Store Connect and Play Console, matches store pages to ads with Custom Product Pages and Google Play custom store listings, and tests creative with native experiments.

Which ASO agencies can plan screenshot and icon experiments with our in-house design team?

Look for one that owns the test plan and lets your designers build in your design system: hypothesis, metric, traffic check, a brief per variant and the readout. Icon tests need every alternate icon in your published app binary, so plan them around releases. Admiral Media’s ASO Conversion service (from €2,000 per month) works this way and reads results against trial starts or early retention, not installs alone.

Which ASO agencies can help a dating app improve its store listing without attracting the wrong users?

Ask how the agency judges a test. For dating apps, the listing should be positioned on who the app is for, and results read from your MMP or subscription data next to App Store Connect, so a test does not lift installs while lowering subscriber quality.

Can an ASO agency review our listing independently before we replace our current partner?

Yes. A one-time audit fits when you are switching partners: it reviews keywords, metadata, store creative and past tests without taking over the account, so you can judge the current work before deciding. Admiral Media’s ASO Audit costs from €1,500, and half of it is credited to a retainer signed within 30 days.