Launching an app is just the beginning; real growth comes from understanding how it performs across both Android and iOS devices.
Each platform offers unique strengths: Google Play Store leads in downloads and app variety, while the Apple App Store dominates in revenue.

Cross-platform analysis uncovers these dynamics. Tracking metrics like downloads, ratings, and reviews helps teams spot trends early, find opportunities, and make smarter, data-driven decisions.

In this tutorial, we'll use SerpApi’s Apple App Store API and Google Play Store API with Node.js to fetch real-time app data in a JSON format and perform a side-by-side comparison.

SerpApi makes it easy with dedicated endpoints that return clean app metadata — like names, ratings, and genres — in a ready-to-use JSON format. By querying both stores with the same keywords — like meditation, productivity, or games — we can directly compare key metrics without building custom scrapers.

Step 1: Getting Started

First, let's set up a Node.js project and install the required packages. In our project directory, we will run the following commands:

npm init -y
npm install axios dotenv

If you prefer using SerpApi’s official client library, you can also install serpapi via npm install serpapi, but we’ll use raw HTTP requests with Axios here for illustration.

Next, let's create a .env file in our project root and add our SerpApi API key:

# .env
API_KEY=your_serpapi_api_key_here

Now we will create index.js in our folder and we will load these environment variables and import Axios:

require('dotenv').config();
const axios = require('axios');
const { API_KEY } = process.env; // Your SerpApi private key

We’ll use async/await and Promise.all to query both stores concurrently. This runs both HTTP requests in parallel and waits for the responses:

// Example of using async/await with Promise.all for parallel queries
async function fetchApps(keyword) {
  const [appleRes, googleRes] = await Promise.all([
    // Apple App Store search by keyword
    axios.get(`https://serpapi.com/search.json?engine=apple_app_store&term=${keyword}&country=us&api_key=${API_KEY}`),
    // Google Play Store search by keyword
    axios.get(`https://serpapi.com/search.json?engine=google_play&store=apps&gl=us&hl=en&q=${keyword}&api_key=${API_KEY}`)
  ]);
  // (We’ll parse the responses in the next step)
}

Step 2: Comparative Data Analysis

Now let’s fetch and compare data for a sample keyword – say “meditation”. Using the code above, we get two JSON objects: one from Apple App Store and one from Google Play Store.

Each JSON contains an array of app results. We can map these into a simpler format for comparison. SerpApi’s Apple App Store JSON results include fields like title, rating and count (review count), and genres. The Google Play Store JSON includes title, rating, downloads (download count), and category​. For example:

// run: node index.js "meditation"

async function fetchApps(keyword) {
  const [appleRes, googleRes] = await Promise.all([
    axios.get(`https://serpapi.com/search.json?engine=apple_app_store&term=${keyword}&country=us&api_key=${API_KEY}`),
    axios.get(`https://serpapi.com/search.json?engine=google_play&store=apps&gl=us&hl=en&q=${keyword}&api_key=${API_KEY}`)
  ]);

  // Extract relevant fields from Apple results
  const appleApps = appleRes.data.organic_results.map(app => ({
    title: app.title,
    rating: app.rating[0]?.rating,    // e.g. 4.7 stars
    reviews: app.rating[0]?.count,    // e.g. 2540 reviews
    genre: app.genres[0]?.name        // e.g. "Health & Fitness"
  }));

  // Extract relevant fields from Google Play results
  const googleApps = googleRes.data.organic_results.flatMap(group =>
    group.items.map(app => ({
      title: app.title,
      rating: app.rating,            // e.g. 4.5
      downloads: app.downloads,      // e.g. "1,000,000+"
      category: app.category         // e.g. "Health & Fitness"
    }))
  );

  console.log({ keyword, appleApps, googleApps });
}

// receive args from command line
const keyword = process.argv[2];
fetchApps(keyword);

When we run the code above, we get the following output:

{
  "keyword": "meditation",
  "appleApps": [
    {"title": "Headspace", "rating": 4.85, "reviews": 970430, "genre": "Health & Fitness"},
    {"title": "Calm", "rating": 4.77, "reviews": 1874439, "genre": "Health & Fitness"},
    {"title": "Insight Timer", "rating": 4.9, "reviews": 421584, "genre": "Health & Fitness"},
    {"title": "Balance", "rating": 4.88, "reviews": 115319, "genre": "Health & Fitness"},
    {"title": "Medito", "rating": 4.89, "reviews": 2906, "genre": "Health & Fitness"},
    {"title": "Waking Up", "rating": 4.93, "reviews": 41261, "genre": "Health & Fitness"},
    {"title": "Aura", "rating": 4.67, "reviews": 33366, "genre": "Health & Fitness"},
    {"title": "Happier", "rating": 4.82, "reviews": 139320, "genre": "Health & Fitness"},
    {"title": "BetterSleep", "rating": 4.76, "reviews": 374749, "genre": "Health & Fitness"},
    {"title": "Breethe", "rating": 4.73, "reviews": 63890, "genre": "Health & Fitness"},
    {"title": "Mesmerize", "rating": 4.74, "reviews": 34028, "genre": "Health & Fitness"},
    {"title": "Chakra Meditation", "rating": 4.76, "reviews": 5603, "genre": "Health & Fitness"}
  ],
  "googleApps": [
    {"title": "Insight Timer", "rating": 4.8, "downloads": "10M+", "category": "Health & Fitness"},
    {"title": "Headspace", "rating": 4.4, "downloads": "10M+", "category": "Health & Fitness"},
    {"title": "Calm", "rating": 4.4, "downloads": "50M+", "category": "Health & Fitness"},
    {"title": "Serenity", "rating": 4.9, "downloads": "1M+", "category": "Health & Fitness"},
    {"title": "Balance", "rating": 4.7, "downloads": "1M+", "category": "Health & Fitness"},
    {"title": "Let's Meditate", "rating": 4.8, "downloads": "1M+", "category": "Health & Fitness"},
    {"title": "Idanim", "rating": 4.7, "downloads": "500k+", "category": "Health & Fitness"},
    {"title": "Medito", "rating": 4.9, "downloads": "1M+", "category": "Health & Fitness"},
    {"title": "Simple Habit", "rating": 4.6, "downloads": "1M+", "category": "Health & Fitness"},
    {"title": "Down Dog", "rating": 4.9, "downloads": "500k+", "category": "Health & Fitness"},
    {"title": "Chakra Healing", "rating": 4.7, "downloads": "100k+", "category": "Health & Fitness"},
    {"title": "Evolve", "rating": 4.5, "downloads": "1M+", "category": "Health & Fitness"},
    {"title": "Meditopia", "rating": 4.6, "downloads": "10M+", "category": "Health & Fitness"},
    {"title": "Waking Up", "rating": 4.7, "downloads": "1M+", "category": "Health & Fitness"},
    {"title": "Meditation Moments", "rating": 4.3, "downloads": "1M+", "category": "Health & Fitness"},
    {"title": "Atom", "rating": 4.7, "downloads": "1M+", "category": "Health & Fitness"},
    {"title": "Hallow", "rating": 4.7, "downloads": "5M+", "category": "Books & Reference"},
    {"title": "Prana Breath", "rating": 4.8, "downloads": "5M+", "category": "Health & Fitness"},
    {"title": "Aura", "rating": 4.7, "downloads": "1M+", "category": "Health & Fitness"},
    {"title": "Smiling Mind", "rating": 4.3, "downloads": "1M+", "category": "Health & Fitness"}
  ]
}

In this snippet, we loop through the Apple App Store results and Google Play Store results, collecting each app’s title, rating, and either reviews (Apple) or downloads (Google). (As documentation shows, Apple App Store results include rating.rating and rating.count fields​, while Google Play Store results include rating and downloads​.) Running this code prints out two lists of app data for the keyword “meditation” – one from each store. You can repeat this for other keywords (like “productivity” or “games”) or even specific app IDs by using the appropriate SerpApi endpoints.

Step 3: Insights Generation

With the data in hand, we can start spotting trends and differences. For example, suppose our “meditation” query returned a top app with a 4.8-star average on iOS (with 2,500 reviews) but only 4.5 stars on Android (with 10,000 downloads). This gap might indicate that the Android version could be improved, or that Android users have different expectations. Alternatively, if a keyword yields dozens of high-ranking apps on one platform, but only a few on the other, this suggests more competition on the first platform and a potential niche opportunity on the second.

Some actionable insights might include:

  • Rating Gaps: If top competitors on iOS average higher ratings than on Android, we need to consider improving features or UX on the weaker platform. A rating difference often points to platform-specific bugs or design issues.
  • Competition Density: A keyword that returns many results on one store indicates high saturation. In this case, we can try targeting more specific or niche keywords on the relevant platform to stand out.
  • Platform Opportunities: If a leading app dominates the top charts on Apple App Store but has a low presence on Google Play Store, that may signal an underserved Android market. (We can even fetch top-chart data using SerpApi’s chart parameter for deeper insight.)
  • User Demographics: High download counts with relatively low review counts on one platform (vs. the opposite on another) might imply differences in user engagement or app usage patterns. For example, Android apps often show huge download numbers, while iOS apps may generate more revenue or reviews per user.

In summary, by comparing metrics like rating and downloads/reviews side-by-side, we can make informed decisions: e.g. “Since Calm has a higher rating on iOS than Android, we should focus on bug fixes on Android”, or “The productivity category is more competitive on Android, so we’ll allocate marketing budget accordingly.” These insights help tailor our app strategy to each platform’s strengths and weaknesses.

You can fork or download the sample code from this repo and use it as a starting point.