Export a Google Play developer's app list and a category's competitor apps, with installs and ratings

By Keencrest · 2026-11-01

Two questions come up when you size a Google Play niche: which apps compete with mine, and what else does a given publisher ship? Both have answers on the public store pages, but only one app at a time. This guide shows how to pull both as tables with one API call, with a real run. Keencrest makes the tool used here (Google Play Scraper, published on Apify under the Data Gleaner name); "Google Play" is only the name of the data source. For the competitor side alone, with another example, see find a Google Play app's competitors and similar apps.

Price

The price is per app returned. Apps that do not exist are skipped and not charged. No start fee, no monthly plan; a maximum spend per run stops the Actor when it is reached.

Part 1: competitor apps for one app

On 6 November 2026 we ran this on Apify's servers with one seed app, a well-known to-do app chosen only as an example. Input to reproduce it:

{"similarAppIds": ["com.todoist"], "developerIds": ["Doist"], "maxItems": 12, "includeDetails": false}

Run Jd0o9dOabBb3LtcE7 returned 12 app records, all from Google Play's own "similar apps" list for the seed app:

Read the table with care. "Similar" is Google Play's suggestion, so it mixes true rivals (other to-do apps) with neighbours (notes, habit and focus apps, a school planner). installs is the public bracket, such as 10,000,000+, not an exact count; use minInstalls to sort. A rating can be empty for a new app.

Part 2: a developer's app list

Developer mode takes a publisher name exactly as Google Play shows it. We used the names of two publishers that appeared in part 1. Input:

{"developerIds": ["TickTick Limited", "Seekrtech"], "maxItems": 12, "includeDetails": false}

Run 9PfeCTLPw41OxbEeC returned 5 records:

Two limits showed up in testing. The name must match the store's wording: a shortened name for another publisher returned a "not found" notice and no charge. And the list is the apps on the developer's store page, so it is a starting point, not proof that nothing else exists under other accounts.

What to do with it

1. Run part 1 for 3 to 5 of your closest rivals and count how often each app appears; the ones that recur are your real competitor set.
2. Take the developers of the top rows and run part 2 to see their other bets and how fast their small apps grow.
3. Export to CSV, sort by minInstalls and rating, and repeat monthly to see who enters the list.

Limits to know

• Public store pages only, no login. Keyword search on Google Play is not offered, because the store's robots.txt disallows that path.
• About 50 similar apps per seed app; install figures are brackets; ratings and installs change daily.
• These are 17 records from one afternoon, not a market study. Check the Google Play terms for your own use of the data, especially before republishing it.

Try it: Google Play Scraper on Apify. $0.30 per 1,000 apps. The Apify free plan includes monthly credit, so a test run costs nothing out of pocket.

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