Advertising & Affiliate Disclosure
Effective 1 September 2026
Appstro is free to use and has no paywall, so it has to be paid for some other way. This page says exactly how — what is earning money today, what is labelled, and what money cannot buy here. It is written to be read before you need it rather than found afterwards.
What is running right now
As of September 2026, Appstro carries no advertising of any kind. There are no display ads, no ad networks, no affiliate links, no sponsored articles and no paid placements anywhere on the site. Nothing you read here has been paid for by the company it describes.
That is a statement of fact on the date above, not a promise about the future. The advertising page describes the formats that are open, and this section is updated in the same change that ships the first paid item. If you are reading it and it still says none, there is none.
Affiliate links, when they exist
Some of the third-party tools Appstro writes about run affiliate programmes, which pay a commission when a reader signs up through a tracked link. Where such a link is used it will be:
- Marked in the page markup with
rel="sponsored nofollow", which is how search engines are told the link is commercial. - Labelled where you can see it, on the page carrying the link — not disclosed only here.
- Free for you. An affiliate link never changes the price you pay. The commission comes out of the vendor's margin, not your bill.
- Never a condition of being written about. Tools without an affiliate programme are covered on exactly the same terms as tools with one.
Sponsored content, when it exists
A sponsored article or a paid mention is labelled as sponsored at the top of the page it appears on, in text, before the content it applies to. It is never disguised as an ordinary post.
A sponsor may check that its own product is described accurately. It does not get to approve, edit or veto the conclusions, the comparisons, or anything said about anyone else. Where a sponsored piece names competing products, they are described to the same standard as the sponsor's.
What advertising money does not buy
These are the same terms published on the advertising page, so a reader and a buyer are reading one policy rather than two:
- Dofollow paid links. Every paid link carries rel="sponsored". This is Google's published requirement for links that have been paid for, and it does not change at any price.
- Editorial rankings. Position in a comparison, directory or list is decided by the stated criteria and is identical for advertisers and non-advertisers. Sponsor placements sit separately and are labelled as sponsored.
- Reader or subscriber data. A sponsor buys a placement in front of the audience. The audience list itself is never sold, shared or rented.
- Undisclosed placements. Every paid item is labelled on the page it appears on, not in a footer. Anything that would read as an editorial recommendation without disclosure is declined.
- Reviews of products we have not used. Anything published here about a tool is checked first. If it cannot be verified it is not written, whoever is paying.
Rankings, scores and comparisons
Appstro publishes a lot of ordered output — chart movers, keyword difficulty, rating benchmarks, opportunity scores, competitor cohorts. None of it can be bought, and none of it has an advertiser input of any kind. Every one of those figures is computed from public App Store data or from the user's own numbers, and the method is described on the page that prints it.
The same applies to any directory or comparison published here. A paid slot, if one exists, sits separately and is labelled as a paid slot. It never moves an editorial row up the page.
Apps and companies covered on this site
Appstro reports on App Store listings using Apple's public APIs and publicly available App Store pages. Being covered here is not an endorsement, and it is never paid for. No developer can pay to appear in the app directory, the charts, the movers lists or any search result, and no developer can pay to be removed from them.
Appstro is independent and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Apple Inc., or by any of the third-party data providers or tools referenced on the site.
Outbound links
Pages such as the launch directory link to sites Appstro has no relationship with and earns nothing from. Those links carry rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" and the pages say plainly that nothing is earned from them. Appstro is not responsible for what those sites publish, charge or change after the link was checked.
Telling us we got it wrong
If something on this site looks like it was paid for and is not labelled, that is a mistake worth hearing about — email [email protected] or use the contact form. Labelling errors are corrected on the page, not quietly removed.
Advertising and partnership enquiries go to the same address. Rates and formats are on the advertising page.