AppTierList › How we rank
How we rank
Nothing on this site is for sale. No tier, position, category placement or mark can be bought. There is no paid plan. Listing and claiming are free, no credit card, no account.
Where the apps come from
For each category we ask the App Store the same searches a person would, in several countries, and keep every app it returns. A model then reads each app's description and rejects apps that only share the words but not the function. Makers can also submit an app; it goes through the same check.
The score
Every app in a list gets a score out of 100. It is computed from the App Store rating, how many people rated it, where the App Store itself ranks it for that category across several countries, and how recently it was updated. Nothing else goes into it, not who owns the app, not whether they have claimed it here, not whether they link to us. The four components are averaged with equal weight; there are no tuned weights. An app can be in several categories and has its own score and position in each; a category's ranking is only ever compared within that category.
When we are not sure
A model judges each app against the category's definition. When it cannot settle a membership after two looks, the app stays in the list marked contested rather than being removed or decided by a person. An app with fewer than ten ratings, or whose search rank we have not observed yet, is marked provisional. A category 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 the score: S is the top band, F the bottom. No tier is allowed to swallow the list, so a strong category still shows a spread. The top 40 are tiered; the rest are listed by score. Everything is recomputed daily.
Nothing about the score is for sale, and nothing a maker does can move it. Claiming and verifying are free, and they change what your page says, never where it sits.
Claiming a page
Put the token we give you in your app's App Store promotional text. We read it from Apple's public data; that proves you control the app. You get a private edit link by email. Editing changes the description fields only, never the position.
Verified mark
Put our badge on your website with a normal (dofollow) link. When we see it, your page gets the Verified mark and we link back to your site the same way. If the badge is gone for 30 days, both are removed. That is the whole exchange, the mark is a trust signal next to your app, and it does not touch your score or your tier.