The short answer
You cannot buy App Annie. The company rebranded to data.ai in late 2021, and Sensor Tower acquired data.ai in March 2024, folding its market-intelligence products into the Sensor Tower platform. The appannie.com and data.ai domains now point visitors toward Sensor Tower.
So the live comparison is Appfigures vs Sensor Tower, not Appfigures vs App Annie. If a comparison article still frames it the old way, it has not been updated since 2023.
Looking for what to use now that App Annie is gone? See App Annie alternatives.
What each one is for
Appfigures combines your own store analytics with market intelligence and ASO keyword tools across iOS and Google Play. It serves independent developers as well as teams, and it is a reasonable choice if you want your numbers and competitor research in the same place.
Sensor Tower, which now carries the data.ai datasets, is enterprise market intelligence — competitor estimates, category trends, ad intelligence. It is priced and scoped for companies doing competitive research, not for a solo developer reviewing a personal portfolio.
Manifest is neither. It is a daily record of your own Apple reports. It has no competitor estimates, no keyword rankings, and no Android data. If what you actually need is market intelligence, one of the two above is the right purchase and Manifest is not.
One thing worth knowing about estimates
Market-intelligence products publish download and revenue figures for apps whose owners never gave them data. Those numbers are modeled, and the modeling is only as good as the panel behind it.
This is not hypothetical. In 2021 the SEC charged App Annie and its co-founder with securities fraud for using confidential customer data to alter the app-performance estimates it published; the company paid a $10 million penalty. Sensor Tower has since rebuilt the combined pipeline, and the current product is not the 2021 one.
The point is not that estimates are worthless — they are useful for sizing a market. It is that an estimate about someone else’s app and a report about your own app are different kinds of number, and it is worth knowing which one you are reading.
Where Manifest fits
Manifest answers one question: what changed across my own iOS apps, and is the data behind that complete enough to act on?
- Apple’s reports captured daily and kept indefinitely, rather than the roughly 35-day window Apple keeps generated report instances available. What Apple actually retains.
- Missing days marked unreported, never silently counted as zero.
- Every figure a sum, ratio, or difference over Apple’s own reports. No model, no AI, no panel.
- CSV and plain-text export. Your account data is not sent to an AI provider.
Indie is $14/month for up to 8 apps; Studio is $39/month for an unlimited portfolio, both with a 7-day trial that bills automatically unless canceled.
How to choose
- Researching a market, sizing competitors, or planning ad spend — Sensor Tower, or Appfigures if you also want keyword tools.
- Wanting your own numbers and competitor research together in one subscription — Appfigures.
- Wanting a permanent, checkable record of your own portfolio, and already having the store data you need — Manifest.
These are not mutually exclusive, and the third is the cheapest to try. If you are unsure whether your own reports are even complete, start there before buying anything.
Related
- Appfigures alternative: whether Manifest fits instead of Appfigures.
- Appfigures vs Astro: if the real question is keyword research.