AppTierList › How we rank
How we rank
Nothing on this site is for sale. No tier, position, list placement or mark can be bought. There is no paid plan. Listing and claiming are free: no credit card and no password. A maker signs in with an email address and a code we send.
Where the apps come from
App details, icons and screenshots come from Apple’s public App Store listings.
For each list we ask the App Store the searches a person would, in five countries (US, UK, Canada, Australia, Germany). The results show where the App Store ranks each app and bring new apps to our attention, together with the App Store's top charts. Makers can also submit an app. Every app we find is read by a model that compares its listing with what each list is for, and an app is placed only in the lists whose job it really does.
The score
Every app in a list gets a score out of 100. It is computed from the App Store rating and how many people rated it worldwide (ratings from all 170 App Store countries, refreshed weekly; the first full pass finishes in the weeks after November 2, 2026, with the best known count until then), where the App Store itself ranks it for that list in five countries (US, UK, Canada, Australia, Germany), and how recently it was updated. An app showing Apple's Editors' Choice badge gets a fifth component of 100, which can only lift its score: the four are then averaged with that 100. Apps whose maker has verified ownership get a small score component, because an active maker is a sign the app is kept up to date. It never decides a tier on its own. Updated daily. How many people rated it counts on a log scale, so each tenfold step adds the same: 1,000 ratings scores 70, 100,000 scores 90 and a million scores 100. The components are averaged with equal weight, except ownership, which is weighted as just said. There are no other tuned weights. An app can be in several lists and has its own score and position in each, and a list's ranking is only ever compared within that list.
When we are not sure
Two models place each app: one reads its listing and picks the lists it actually serves, and a stronger one checks each list from the list's side. An app in a list that this check has not approved yet is shown as under review: it has no tier and no position and comes after every ranked app. It stays under review until the check answers. A clear no takes it out of the list. Nothing is guessed or placed by a person. An app with fewer than ten ratings, or whose search rank we have not observed yet, is marked provisional. A list that falls below three apps for sixty days is archived: its page stays, marked as no longer recommended, and returns automatically if apps come back. All of this is in the JSON API as plain fields.
Tiers
Tiers follow fixed score bands: S from 90, A from 80, B from 70, C from 60, D from 50, F below. The list's leader is S if it scores 80 or more. On a list of 20 or more ranked apps, a tier from S to D takes in new apps only up to a quarter of the top 40: an app pushed out of a full tier falls to the next tier with room, and F takes the rest. An app already in a tier keeps its place while the tier is at most 2 apps over a quarter; past that, only the apps over that margin go down, lowest score first. Equal scores share a tier, and no app has a better tier than an app ranked above it. An app keeps its tier until its score passes the band edge by more than 1 point, or a full tier or the order above moves it. Only the top 40 of a list get a tier. A strong large list still shows a spread; a smaller list takes its tiers from the score bands alone. An app moves up into a place a full tier freed only when a place is left to spare. The rest of a list is listed by score. Each list shows when it was last scored.
Nothing about the score is for sale. The badge and the Verified mark are free.
Verified mark
Sign in with your email address: there is no password, we send you a code. Pick your app and copy its badge. Put the badge, as we give it, on the website, support or privacy page the app's App Store listing names. When we see it there, the app is Verified, with no review by a person: only the app's maker can put it on that site. Verified opens the Visit link on the app's page, your words and links on the page, a private report, the Verified mark and the ownership component in the score (see The score above). Claiming the app without the badge opens none of these. If the badge is gone for three days after our warning, all of it is switched off until the badge is back. It never decides a tier on its own.