The frustration that started it all
I’ve been publishing apps on Google Play, App Store, and itch.io for years. Every morning I’d open three different tabs, log into three different dashboards, and try to mentally piece together a picture of how my portfolio was doing.
It was slow, fragmented, and annoying. And when I looked for a solution, I found tools like Sensor Tower ($450/mo), App Annie (pure enterprise), or Appfigures ($12/mo but no itch.io). Nothing built for a developer like me — someone with 5–15 apps across multiple stores who just wants a clear view without paying SaaS prices.
So I built AppWatch.
What it actually does
AppWatch pulls data from all three stores into a single dashboard:
– Google Play via the google-play-scraper API — install ranges, ratings, review counts, category rankings
– App Store via iTunes Search — ratings, downloads proxy, version tracking
– itch.io via OAuth API — the only tool with real itch.io integration. Exact download counts, views, purchases
Beyond the dashboard view, it also stores historical snapshots and shows you evolution charts over time. Did that update you shipped last Tuesday move the needle? You’ll know within hours, not at the end of the month.
There are also email alerts: get notified when your rating drops below a threshold, when you hit a download milestone, or when there’s a significant rating change. The kind of thing you want to know about immediately, not when you happen to open the app.
And for paid plans, category rankings: where does your app sit in the top charts for its category, updated every 6 hours.
The tech decisions
I built it with Next.js 16 App Router, Prisma 7 with MariaDB, and deployed it on a plain Ubuntu VPS behind nginx. No Vercel, no managed database — because this tool is going to be cheap for users and that means keeping infrastructure costs real.
A queue-based scraping pipeline with per-plan frequency and a simple license system integrated with my store.
What I learned building it
Scraping is fragile. Google Play’s google-play-scraper library works well but breaks occasionally. App Store’s iTunes Search API is stable but doesn’t give you download counts (only ratings as a proxy). itch.io‘s API is clean but only works with your own games.
Ship fast, then improve. The MVP went live in April 2026 with core tracking. Category rankings, CSV export, and email alerts came in the weeks after. I had paying users before I had charts. That was intentional.
Pricing is hard. Free tier with 3 apps, Indie at €19/mo with 25 apps, Pro at €49/mo with unlimited. These numbers came from looking at what indie developers actually say they’d pay in communities like r/gamedev and IndieHackers, not from a pricing spreadsheet.
Where it is now and what’s next
It’s live at appwatch.dev. There’s a free tier with no credit card required — if you have apps on any of these stores, you can connect them in 2 minutes and see everything in one place.
Next on the roadmap: Steam integration (the scraping is technically feasible, it’s a matter of prioritization), competitor tracking for Pro users, and a public API so developers can pipe their data into their own tools.
If you’re an indie developer publishing on multiple platforms, I’d love to hear what you track and how you do it today. The product is early and feedback from real developers is how it gets better.
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AppWatch is available at appwatch.dev. Free plan includes 3 apps, no credit card required.