AppGlance vs TelemetryDeck
If you're evaluating us, TelemetryDeck is probably the other tab. It's a good product with a longer track record, built by people who care about the same things we do — and it makes one design choice we deliberately made differently.
Who wrote this: we make AppGlance. TelemetryDeck is an independent product and we don't speak for it; details below were checked in August 2026 and products move, so verify anything decision-critical at telemetrydeck.com. If we've got something wrong, tell us and we'll fix it.
What both of us already agree on
This is most of the list, and it's why either is a better answer than the default:
- No IDFA, no advertising identifiers, no cross-app tracking, no fingerprinting.
- No ATT prompt and, in a standard setup, no cookie or consent banner.
- Built for Apple developers by Apple developers — Swift-native SDKs, not a web tool with an iOS wrapper.
- EU hosting and EU companies (TelemetryDeck in Germany; AppGlance's database is in Ireland, made in Norway).
- Open-source client SDKs you can read before you ship them.
- Small, indie-friendly, with a free tier you can actually launch on.
The real difference: what a "user" is
TelemetryDeck's model is strictly pseudonymous by design. You pass it a user identifier and it is hashed on the device before anything leaves, so the service — and you — see a stable but meaningless string. You cannot go from a row in the dashboard to a person, because the product will not let you. That is a real guarantee, and for some teams it's exactly the point: nobody can misuse what nobody can see.
AppGlance's model is anonymous by default, identifiable if you choose. Every install is a
random UUID with no name on it, and that's where it stays unless you call identify — at which
point you can attach an email, a name, or your own account id, search by it, and open one user's story. Apps
with accounts often want this (a support email arrives, and you'd like to see what that person actually hit).
The cost is honesty about it: the moment you identify, your App Store label changes to
Data Linked to You, and the dashboard says so before you flip the
switch.
Pick by which failure you fear. If your worry is "someone on my team will eventually do something creepy with this", the strict hash is the better architecture. If your worry is "a paying customer wrote in and I can't help them", the optional label is worth more. Neither answer is naive.
Side by side
| AppGlance | TelemetryDeck | |
|---|---|---|
| Identity | Random install UUID; optional identify attaches email / name / your user id. |
Client-side hashed identifier — pseudonymous by construction, not reversible. |
| Live presence | “Active right now” per app, refreshed every few seconds, from a once-a-minute presence ping. | Not the focus; reporting is oriented around signals over time rather than who is in the app this second. |
| The feed | One row per session, read as a story: install → paywall.viewed → purchase, expandable. |
Insight- and chart-oriented rather than a session timeline. |
| Querying | Fixed panels: funnels, retention, sessions, versions, countries, per-user pages, CSV. | More flexible — a mature insight/query builder for slicing signals your own way. |
| Alerts | Push on any signal — install, purchase, anything — via ntfy, Discord, or signed webhooks. | Digest-style summaries rather than per-event pushes. |
| Privacy labels | Generated: exact App Store Connect ticks from your toggles, plus a public tool. | Documented guidance you map to the questionnaire yourself. |
| Setup | Two lines of Swift; a paste-in prompt that makes an AI agent do the integration and the tracking plan. | Comparable: a small SDK and an app id, well documented. |
| Platforms | Apple-first, a Kotlin SDK for Android, HTTP API for anything else. | Broader — established clients across Apple platforms and beyond. |
| Track record | New. Built for the author's own nine apps, then opened up. | Years of it, with a real community and a lot of shipped apps. |
| Pricing | Free to 100k events/month, then $4.99/mo (1M) and $14.99/mo (10M). Presence pings never count. | A free tier then volume-based plans — check their site for current numbers. |
Where TelemetryDeck is the better pick
- You want the strict guarantee. If "we literally cannot identify a user" is a promise you want to make to your users or your legal team, that's their architecture, not ours.
- You want to ask your own questions. Their insight builder is more flexible than our fixed panels.
- You value maturity. They've been doing this for years; we haven't. That matters for a tool you plan to keep for a decade.
- You're beyond Apple already and want one established tool across everything.
Where we think we're better
- The live glance. Opening a page and seeing eight people in your app right now is a different feeling from a chart of yesterday, and it's the thing this product is named after.
- Alerts that reach your phone the moment someone buys.
- Sessions as stories, and a page per user when you want to understand one journey.
- The App Store questionnaire, answered — generated ticks rather than guidance.
- The agent prompt — paste one block into Claude Code or Cursor and the integration and a sensible tracking plan get written for you.
The fastest way to compare is to look
The demo is the real dashboard on sample data from three apps. No account, nothing to uninstall.