What moved on the App Store: week of 17 August 2026

Three storefronts became six this run. Germany, Japan and South Korea had been banking snapshots quietly for weeks; this is the first window where their charts are read next to the US, UK and Turkey, and the first thing they say is that a category is not the same business twice. This is the Week of Aug 17, 2026 run: chart moves measured over a seven-day window, review evidence from each app's most recent sample, 296 scored ideas.

The biggest climbs

Chart movement is a two-point diff, so it needs two days of history and nothing else. No estimates, no modelling. These are the largest free-chart jumps in the window:

1. Gizmo: AI Tutor+91

   #100 → #9 · Education · UK · free top 100

2. 기프또 - 매일 혜택 받는 만보기 앱테크+78

   #91 → #13 · Health & Fitness · KR · free top 100

3. Terminal & SSH -+78

   #91 → #13 · Developer Tools · TR · free top 100

4. Alta Daily: Digital AI Closet+77

   #86 → #9 · Lifestyle · DE · free top 100

5. MEGA地震予測+76

   #87 → #11 · News · JP · free top 100

6. Safety tips+75

   #94 → #19 · Weather · UK · free top 100

What it costs to enter a top 100

We model an entry wall for every category and storefront: roughly how many ratings an app needs before it can hold a top 100 slot. Pick a storefront below; these are the cheapest doors each one had open this run. Developer Tools is the cheapest door in five of the six, which says less about developers than about how few people bother shipping one.

Same store, same week, and the widest gap in the run is 1,974,637 ratings for Entertainment in the US against 38 for Developer Tools in South Korea. Picking the storefront is a bigger decision than picking the feature, and almost nobody treats it as one.

The same category is priced three different ways:

• Magazines & Newspapers: about 287,483 ratings in the US, about 131 in South Korea, a 2195x gap.
• Travel: about 121,888 ratings in the US, about 99 in South Korea, a 1231x gap.
• Reference: about 297,266 ratings in the US, about 382 in South Korea, a 778x gap.

Charting, and hated

A chart position proves distribution and nothing else. Whether the people inside it are happy is a separate question, and the gap between the two answers is where an opening sits. Counts below are how many of the sampled reviewers said the same thing.

What scored highest

Every idea is scored 0–100 on demand, winnability, monetization, feasibility and momentum, with a penalty for picking a fight with a giant. The scoring engine is public, weights included, so you can disagree with a number rather than take it on faith.

• Parcel Inbox

  Shopping · US · month to build

  97/100

  Takes from Package tracker: Parcels Hub · Prime bet

• オリパ収支

  Shopping · JP · week to build

  88/100

  Takes from CHAPACITY · Prime bet

• イニング栞: the baseball watch log that remembers where you stopped

  Sports · JP · week to build

  87/100

  Takes from SPOTV NOW · Quick win

What this run cost

Building in public means the bill too. This run took 7,549,079 model tokens across 25 categories, 53 agents and 6.6 hours of agent time, about 25,504 tokens per scored idea. 8% of those tokens went on retries, which is the number worth watching: it is what tells me a stage is quietly half-working.

Check it yourself

Weekly runs go to subscribers, but a complete monthly run is published free and in full: all 25 categories, every score and the evidence behind it. Older monthly runs land in the archive as they age out. If you only want one number, the keyword checker is free and needs no account.