You can do real ASO without spending a cent. Not all of it, and not forever, but enough to find keywords, track ranks, and make smarter metadata decisions while you are still validating an app. This is a practical guide to the free ASO tools and free tiers that are actually worth your time in 2026, and where “free” stops being enough.

What You Can Do for Free

Before the tools, be clear about the goal. A zero-budget ASO workflow needs to cover four jobs:

  1. Find keywords people search and that fit your app
  2. Estimate whether you can rank for them (popularity vs difficulty)
  3. Track where you rank over time
  4. Act by updating your metadata

Most free tools cover one or two of these well. The trick is stacking them, or finding a free tier that covers more than one.

Free Sources You Already Have

These cost nothing and most developers underuse them:

  • App Store autocomplete. Type a seed word into the App Store search bar and read the suggestions. They are ordered roughly by popularity and are one of the most honest free keyword signals available.
  • App Store Connect Analytics. Apple gives you impressions, product page views, and conversion rate for free. This is the only source of your own truth, and it tells you whether your ASO changes are working. See how to read your App Store Connect data.
  • Competitor listings. Your competitors’ titles, subtitles, and screenshots are public. Reading what terms they target and how they convert is free competitive research.

If you do nothing else, mine these three before paying for anything.

Free Tiers Worth Using

Most commercial ASO tools gate their best features, but several offer a free tier that is genuinely useful for a single app.

  • Marteso (free tier). One app, 50 tracked keywords, daily rank updates, and 3 competitor apps, with no credit card required. Crucially, it also lets you edit metadata and push it to App Store Connect, so the free tier covers all four jobs (find, estimate, track, act) rather than just monitoring. This is the rare free tier that lets you act, not only watch.
  • Keyword research tools with limited free searches. Several tools give a handful of free keyword lookups per day with popularity and difficulty scores. Enough to research a single app in short sessions, not enough for ongoing tracking.
  • Free rank checkers. A number of sites let you check your current rank for a few keywords for free. Useful as a spot check, but they do not track history, so you cannot see trends.

How to Build a Free ASO Workflow

Here is a workflow that costs nothing and actually moves rankings:

  1. Seed your keyword list from App Store autocomplete and your competitors’ metadata.
  2. Run those terms through a free-tier keyword tool to get popularity and difficulty estimates. Keep the terms with usable demand that you can realistically rank for. If you are new to those numbers, read ASO keyword difficulty.
  3. Place your keywords with the highest-value terms in your title and subtitle and the rest in your keyword field, without repeating words. See the App Store keyword field.
  4. Track a small set of keywords on a free tier so you can see movement over time, not just a single snapshot.
  5. Measure in App Store Connect Analytics. Watch impressions and conversion rate after each change to confirm it worked.

Where Free Hits Its Limits

Free is enough to start. It runs out when:

  • You manage more than one app. Free tiers are almost always single-app. A second app usually means a paid plan.
  • You need history. Spot checks tell you today’s rank. Optimization needs weeks of history so you can tell a real trend from daily noise. See why rankings change every week.
  • You track more than a handful of keywords. Fifty tracked keywords is plenty for one app; serious multi-market work needs hundreds.
  • You localize. Translating metadata into 20 locales by hand is the point where automation pays for itself. See app store localization.
  • You want screenshots automated. Free means Fastlane or manual work. See screenshot automation for iOS apps.

The honest answer: free tools get a single early-stage app a long way. The moment you have traction, a second app, or international ambitions, the time you spend stitching free tools together costs more than a paid plan.

Try Marteso Free

Marteso’s free tier is built for exactly this stage: one app, 50 tracked keywords, daily rank updates, and 3 competitor apps, with the ability to push metadata changes straight to App Store Connect. No credit card required.

Start at app.marteso.com and connect your App Store Connect account in under five minutes.