AppGlance vs App Store Connect Analytics

Every Apple developer already has this one. It is free, it needs no SDK, it costs you nothing on the privacy questionnaire, and for some questions it is the only source that exists. So the honest version of this page is not "switch". It is: here is exactly what Apple's numbers can and cannot tell you, and here is the gap.

What only Apple can tell you

Start with the part where there is no competition. An SDK runs inside your app, so it cannot see anything that happens before the download. Apple can, and does:

• Impressions and conversion rate. How many people saw your product page and how many of them downloaded. No SDK will ever measure this.
• Sales and proceeds. Apple is the merchant. Its numbers are the money, and anything else is an estimate of the money.
• Subscription reporting, including the newer subscription reports available through the Analytics Reports API.
• Custom product pages, product page optimisation and In-App Events performance. Store surfaces, measured by the store.
• Peer group benchmarks, built with differential privacy, so you can see whether your retention is normal for your category. Nobody else has the corpus to offer this.
• Deletions. Uninstalls are visible to the platform and invisible to an SDK, which by definition stops running.

If you are choosing between paying for an analytics tool and reading App Store Connect properly, read App Store Connect properly first. It is free and half of the above is not available anywhere at any price.

The three things that shrink Apple's numbers

Apple's analytics is honest about its own limits, but they are easy to miss, and together they explain why the dashboard often feels quieter than your app actually is.

The fourth limit is structural rather than statistical: there are no custom events. Apple counts what Apple defines. "How many people finished onboarding", "how many hit the paywall and backed out", "how many used the feature I shipped last Tuesday" are not questions App Store Connect can be asked, however you phrase them.

Which one to pick

Side by side

Where App Store Connect is the better pick

• It is free and already on. No integration, no SDK review, no line on your privacy label, no decision to make.
• The store side is exclusive to it. Impressions, conversion rate, custom product pages, In-App Events, uninstalls. Nothing we build will ever see these.
• The money is authoritative. Apple is the merchant of record. Our numbers describe behaviour; Apple's describe revenue.
• Peer benchmarks. Knowing your crash rate is worse than your category's is a genuinely useful thing that requires a corpus only Apple has.
• Zero privacy exposure. If your position is "no third-party SDK in my app, ever", that is a coherent position and App Store Connect respects it completely.

Where we think we are better

• Now, not tomorrow. A release goes out and you watch it land, instead of finding out at breakfast.
• Your questions, not Apple's. Custom events mean the funnel is the one your app actually has.
• Everyone counted. No opt-in filter standing between you and your own usage numbers.
• No thresholds. Small numbers are still shown, which matters most for exactly the apps Apple hides data from.
• A person, not a percentage. When someone writes in, you can open their install and read the session.
• Both stores, one board, and a push on your phone from either.

Questions people ask

Is App Store Connect analytics free?

Yes, completely, and it is included with the Apple Developer Program at no extra cost. It needs no SDK, adds nothing to your App Store privacy label, and is already running on every app you have shipped. It is the correct place to start, and for some questions it is the only place.

Why are App Store Connect's numbers lower than my own analytics?

Three reasons, all deliberate. App usage metrics only include users who agreed to share diagnostics and usage information with developers, so anyone who declined is missing. Some sources need a minimum data threshold before Apple will display them at all. And the data is daily rather than live, so today is never complete. An in-app SDK counts every install that runs it, which is why the two will never match exactly.

Can App Store Connect track custom events like “finished onboarding”?

No. App Store Connect reports Apple's own metrics: impressions, downloads, sessions, active devices, retention, crashes, sales and subscriptions. There is no way to define an event of your own. If you need to know how many people completed onboarding or hit the paywall and backed out, that requires an SDK inside the app.

How fresh is App Store Connect data?

Daily, not live. Apple states that daily reports are available by 5 am Pacific for the Americas, by 5 am Japan Standard Time for Japan, Australia and New Zealand, and by 5 am Central European Time everywhere else. We probed yesterday's report seven times on 2026-08-24 and it was still unavailable 75 minutes after Apple's own stated deadline, so treat the schedule as a target rather than a guarantee.

Should I use both App Store Connect and AppGlance?

For most indie developers, yes. They do not overlap much: App Store Connect owns everything before the download and everything about the money, and an in-app SDK owns everything after the download. Using both costs you one line of code and nothing in money at our free tier.

Also worth reading: all the comparisons, how this compares with Firebase Analytics, the free App Store privacy label tool, and what privacy-first analytics actually means.