Short answer: Sports, Lifestyle and Education have the easiest popular searches on the US App Store; Games, Travel and Productivity the hardest. But the gaps that matter most for a new app are inside each category: in Entertainment, 79% of popular searches have an app with under 1,000 ratings in the top 10, against 41% in Games.
How we measured it
AppTrendKit records the top results of thousands of US App Store searches every day. We took the popular ones (a search popularity of 40 or more on Apple's 5–100 scale), left out brand searches where people look for one specific app, and gave each search the category that at least 5 of its top 10 apps share. That placed 672 searches in 17 categories on October 24, 2026. For each category we compared:
- Difficulty: AppTrendKit's 0–100 score for how hard a search is to rank for (the median search in the category).
- The #1 app: how many ratings the app at the top usually has.
- Small apps in the top 10: how often an app with under 1,000 ratings makes it there.
- Title gap: how often 3 or fewer of the top 10 apps have the search phrase in their name, which leaves room for an app that does.
All 17 categories, easiest first
| Category | Searches | Median difficulty | #1 app ratings | Small app in top 10 | Title gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sports | 28 | 55 | 39K | 64% | 64% |
| Lifestyle | 36 | 57 | 46K | 72% | 39% |
| Education | 52 | 57 | 77K | 48% | 42% |
| Reference | 20 | 60 | 132K | 70% | 40% |
| Books | 20 | 61 | 50K | 75% | 45% |
| Music | 25 | 62 | 62K | 68% | 28% |
| Photo & Video | 60 | 64 | 89K | 57% | 28% |
| Entertainment | 28 | 64 | 97K | 79% | 50% |
| Weather | 17 | 65 | 118K | 65% | 35% |
| Utilities | 75 | 65 | 89K | 77% | 31% |
| Business | 25 | 67 | 216K | 68% | 32% |
| Health & Fitness | 58 | 67 | 133K | 59% | 34% |
| Social Networking | 25 | 68 | 258K | 60% | 40% |
| Finance | 31 | 68 | 199K | 58% | 61% |
| Productivity | 30 | 71 | 158K | 63% | 37% |
| Travel | 19 | 71 | 190K | 47% | 37% |
| Games | 123 | 74 | 211K | 41% | 26% |
“#1 app ratings” is the median across the category's searches. “Small app in top 10”: share of searches with an app under 1,000 ratings in the top 10. “Title gap”: share of searches where 3 or fewer of the top 10 use the phrase in their name.
What stands out
- Sports is the easiest overall. The lowest median difficulty (55), the #1 app usually has about 39,000 ratings, and in 64% of its popular searches at most 3 of the top 10 use the phrase in their name. An app that does has a clear advantage there.
- Entertainment, Utilities and Books are the most open to small apps. Their difficulty is middling, but 75–79% of their popular searches have an app with under 1,000 ratings in the top 10, even though the #1 app usually has 50,000 to 97,000 ratings.
- Games is the hardest category. The highest difficulty (74), a #1 app with about 211,000 ratings, and a small app in only 41% of top 10s. The searches are also crowded with exact-name matches: only 26% leave a title gap.
- Finance has an unusual opening. It's hard on paper (difficulty 68, #1 apps with about 199,000 ratings), but 61% of its popular searches have 3 or fewer top-10 apps with the phrase in their name. Many of its biggest apps don't use the searched words in their name, which leaves room for one that does.
- Social Networking has the biggest leaders: the #1 app usually has about 258,000 ratings.
Small apps that rank in the top 5 right now
| Category | Search | App | Rank | Its ratings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Education | anatomy learning | Anatomy Game | #3 | 316 |
| Education | music theory | Music Theory 101: Study Course | #3 | 70 |
| Sports | golf swing analyzer | GolfFix AI Golf Swing Analyzer | #4 | 816 |
| Lifestyle | hairstyle try on | Hairstyle Try On - Trimr | #4 | 86 |
| Health & Fitness | peptide tracker | PeptidePal – Peptide Tracker | #1 | 587 |
| Photo & Video | light meter | Lightme - Lightmeter | #3 | 930 |
| Music | volume booster | Volume Booster | Boost Bass | #1 | 696 |
| Productivity | temp mail | Temp Mail - Temporary Mail Box | #2 | 556 |
| Games | dress up games | SCENEZ: Cozy Dress up | #3 | 102 |
Most of them put the search phrase, or close to it, in their name: the same pattern as in our study of how many ratings it takes to reach the top 10. Rankings change daily, so treat these as a snapshot.
What to do with this
- Pick the category, then the search. A category's median hides a lot: even in Games, small apps reach the top 3 for searches like “dress up games”. Check the searches for your idea one by one with the free ASO keyword tool.
- Look for title gaps. Where few of the top 10 use the phrase in their name, an app that does competes on relevance most rivals ignore.
- Size the money too. An easy search in a category where apps earn little isn't worth much. How much apps make by category shows what the apps at each rank earn.
Limits
- US App Store, iPhone, rankings as recorded on October 24, 2026. Rankings change every day.
- Only popular searches (Apple popularity 40 or more) that AppTrendKit tracks, and only those where at least 5 of the top 10 apps share a category; a category with fewer than 12 such searches isn't shown.
- Brand searches are the ones our keyword model marks as navigational (a brand flag, or difficulty 90 or more). The rule misses some brands.
- “Phrase in the name” is a whole-word match on the app name only, not the subtitle or keyword field.