Privacy
Last updated
AppGapFinder has no accounts, no sign-up and no payment. The things you add (keywords, fetched app lists, AI settings and your AI provider key) are stored in your own browser. Our servers proxy requests to Apple’s public App Store data, cache that public data so it can be shared, and hold AI analysis jobs just long enough to finish them. This page lists exactly what lives where.
What stays in your browser
The workspace is a browser-local app. Nothing below is sent to us unless a section further down says so.
| Data | Where | How long |
|---|---|---|
| Keywords and the storefront you chose for each | Local storage | Until you delete the keyword or clear site data |
| Fetched app lists (metadata, prices, screenshot URLs) | Local storage | Until you delete the keyword or clear site data |
| Collected reviews and pagination state | IndexedDB | Seven days, for the 10 most recently opened apps |
| AI provider, model and reasoning settings | Local storage | Until you change them or clear site data |
| Your AI provider API key | Local storage, plain or AES-GCM encrypted with your passphrase | Until you remove it in AI settings or clear site data |
| Appearance (light, dark, system) | Local storage | Until you change it |
| Your analytics choice (accepted or declined) | Local storage | Until you change it or clear site data |
There is no sync. Another browser or another device starts empty. Clearing site data for appgapfinder.com removes everything in this table.
What our servers process
- Keyword searches and app lookups
- When you add or refresh a keyword, or open an app, our API routes request the public listing data from Apple on your behalf and return it to your browser. These responses are cached on the CDN for a short time and are restricted to a fixed list of App Store countries. The keyword itself is part of the request; we do not store a history of who searched what.
- Review pages
- Public review pages fetched from Apple are cached in site-scoped storage (Netlify Blobs) so that the next person looking at the same app does not trigger another request to Apple. A successful page is reused for one hour and can be retained for up to seven days to serve during an Apple outage; empty checks are kept for five minutes. These pages contain public App Store reviews only, never anything about you.
- AI analysis jobs
- When you start an analysis, your browser sends the app metadata, the collected review sample, your chosen provider and model, and your API key to a job starter. The key is passed to a background worker for that run only, so the worker can call the provider; it is not written to any database or log. Job status and the finished analysis text are stored temporarily in Netlify Blobs so the result can be delivered after long provider calls, then expire.
- Rate limiting and logs
- Requests to the API routes are rate limited by IP address at the edge to protect Apple and the AI providers from abuse. Netlify, our hosting provider, keeps standard request logs for its platform under its own retention rules.
Third parties
- Apple.Search, lookup and review requests go through our servers, so Apple sees our server, not your browser, for those. App icons and screenshots are loaded directly by your browser from Apple’s image CDN, so Apple’s CDN sees your IP address for those image requests, as it would on the App Store website.
- AI providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google).Only when you run an analysis. The app metadata and the review sample are sent to the provider you selected, using your own API key, under that provider’s terms and data policies. If you do not run an analysis, nothing is sent to any AI provider.
- Netlify. Hosting, CDN, serverless functions and the Blobs storage described above.
- Google Analytics 4, only if you accept.We use Google Analytics to count visits and see which features are used. Until you accept in the banner, nothing is loaded from Google and nothing is sent there. If you accept, Google’s tag is loaded, it sets Google’s analytics cookies (
_gaand_ga_…) and it sends page views plus three usage events to Google, which processes them under its own terms. Advertising features stay switched off. Content blockers that block Google Analytics do not affect the tool.
Your analytics choice
The banner asks once per browser and stores your answer in local storage. If you decline, no analytics code runs. If you accept, these are the only events sent besides page views:
| Event | When | What is attached |
|---|---|---|
keyword_added | A new keyword is added to the workspace | The storefront and how many keywords the workspace holds |
app_opened | An app’s detail view opens | The storefront |
analysis_started | An AI analysis job is created | The storefront and the number of reviews in the sample |
The keyword text, app names, review text, your AI settings and your API key are never part of an event. You can change your choice at any time; declining after accepting stops the tag in this tab, removes its cookies for this site and keeps it from loading on later visits.
Change your analytics choice
Reading this browser’s current choice…
What we do not do
- No accounts, email addresses, passwords or payment details are collected.
- No analytics runs before you accept it, and declining costs you nothing.
- No data is sold or shared with advertisers.
- Your API key is never persisted on a server and never logged.
- Nothing is scraped from behind a login; all App Store data used is public.
How to delete your data
- Delete a keyword from the sidebar to remove it and its fetched app list from this browser.
- Remove the API key from the AI settings dialog in any app’s detail view.
- Decline analytics under Your analytics choiceto remove Google’s analytics cookies for this site.
- Clear site data for this domain in your browser settings to remove everything, including cached reviews.
Server-side caches contain public App Store data only and expire on the schedule described above. A finished AI analysis is stored only until its job record expires; it is not linked to you.
Changes and contact
This page is updated when the way the tool stores data changes; the date at the top is the date of the last change. AppGapFinder is built and maintained by Linas, an iOS developer. Questions about this page can be raised through GitHub.
App Store is a trademark of Apple Inc. AppGapFinder is an independent tool and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Apple. Back to the home page.