They measure different events
Sales and Trends is a financial report. It counts units and proceeds, it settles in close to real time, and it reports exact figures because money has to reconcile. Analytics is a product report. It counts impressions, taps, downloads, sessions and deletions, it lags roughly two days, and it suppresses figures that fall under Apple’s privacy thresholds.
So a day can legitimately show one unit in Sales and Trends and no reported download in Analytics. The unit was sold; the download was not published. Neither number is a bug.
For a new app, Analytics is simply empty
An Analytics Report Request has to exist, and then Apple has to generate a first instance against it. That gap runs to roughly two weeks on a new app. During it the API answers every request successfully and returns nothing, which reads exactly like zero downloads.
If you launched inside the last month and your dashboard shows nothing, check whether Apple has published an instance yet before you conclude the launch failed. Sales and Trends will already show the truth.
Which one to use for which question
- Did anyone buy it? Sales and Trends. Exact units, no privacy threshold, near real time. This is the right report for a new or low-volume app.
- Is the listing earning the tap? Analytics. Impressions and taps exist nowhere else.
- Are people keeping it? Analytics, with care. Sessions and deletions are the most heavily suppressed metrics in the set.
- What do I owe tax on? Neither, on its own. Use the financial reports and your payout statements.
The mistake that produces fake trends
The tempting move is to divide a number from one report by a number from the other — downloads from Analytics into proceeds from Sales and Trends, say, to get revenue per download. The two reports cover different days to different depths, so the ratio measures coverage as much as it measures your app.
The same trap applies to week-over-week changes. If the current week is missing two days of reporting and the prior week is complete, the “decline” you are looking at is the missing days. Compare equal, complete windows or do not compare at all.
Manifest reads Apple’s Analytics reports. It shows uncovered days as gaps rather than zeroes, and withholds a week-over-week change until both windows have the coverage to support one.
Next
If a specific day reads zero and you want to know which kind of zero it is, work through the zero-downloads checklist. If you are trying to recover data older than the window Apple currently serves, see history limits and snapshots. For the weekly habit these reports are meant to support, start with the solo-developer metrics checklist.