Most app ideas get validated the hard way: build, launch, wait, hope.
There's a cheaper signal hiding in plain sight. Apple publishes top-grossing charts for every country and every category. When a brand-new app is earning enough to rank in a country's top-grossing chart, someone is already paying for that idea. And very often that app exists in one country only.
So I scanned them all.
What I scanned (November 2026)
- 56 countries, 12 categories (Business, Finance, Food & Drink, Shopping, Health & Fitness, Productivity, Travel and more)
- top-grossing charts only, so these are apps that make money, not just get downloads
- 66,875 chart entries in total
Then I kept apps that:
- were released in the last 12 months,
- rank in the top 50 of a category's top-grossing chart,
- in 3 countries or fewer,
and checked whether each one is even available in 10 big markets: US, UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Brazil, Japan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
Result: 1,358 new apps that earn money locally. Most of them are not available in any of those 10 markets.
The pattern that jumped out: grocery-budget apps
One theme kept showing up in different countries, built by different teams, in different languages: apps that help people spend less on groceries.
| app | where it's charting (category top-grossing) | released | missing from |
|---|---|---|---|
| NomNom: budget meal planner | ๐ญ๐บ Hungary #1, Food & Drink | Jul 2026 | 9 of 10 big markets (in the US store but not charting) |
| SeSum: Sammenlign Matpriser | ๐ณ๐ด Norway #3, Shopping | Aug 2026 | all 10 |
| ืฉืฃ ืืืก (weekly menu on a budget) | ๐ฎ๐ฑ Israel #2, Food & Drink | Sep 2026 | all 10 |
| Suppie: Weekmenu Aanbiedingen | ๐ณ๐ฑ Netherlands #9, ๐ง๐ช Belgium #27 | Jul 2026 | all 10 |
| Grocery Go: Compare & Save | ๐ฆ๐บ Australia #10, Shopping | Jul 2026 | all 10 |
| Rรฅkollen | ๐ธ๐ช Sweden #11, ๐ซ๐ฎ Finland #30, ๐ณ๐ด Norway #63 | Aug 2026 | all 10 |
| Dete: Grocery Prices | ๐ฆ๐บ Australia #21, Shopping | May 2026 | all 10 |
Seven independent apps, launched within a few months of each other, each making money in its own country. Two flavours:
- price comparison: "which supermarket is cheapest for my list this week?"
- budget meal planning: "plan my week's meals around this week's promotions."
When the same idea earns money in Hungary, Norway, Israel, the Netherlands and Australia at the same time, that's not luck. It's a need. None of these apps is available in the UK, France, Germany or Spain.
Other examples from the same scan
- Pulga: compra y vende usados: ๐จ๐ฑ Chile #5 in Shopping, 2,281 ratings at 4.8 stars, released Dec 2025. A local second-hand marketplace, not available in any of the 10 markets.
- Bildirio: ๐น๐ท Turkey #6 in Business, released Jul 2026. Earning, but rated 2.0 stars by 358 users: proven demand, unhappy users. That's an opening for a better version.
How to read a "gap" honestly
A gap is a lead, not a guarantee:
- Top-grossing in a small country can mean small revenue. #3 in Norway's Shopping chart is not #3 in the US. Treat the rank as proof of willingness to pay, not as a revenue figure.
- Some ideas are local by nature. Grocery price comparison depends on local supermarket data. That's exactly why nobody has copied it everywhere yet, and also why it takes real work in each new country.
- Low rating counts mean early. An app with 14 ratings at #10 just launched. Check again in a month.
- "Not available" can be a choice. Some developers deliberately stay local. That's fine: the idea is still validated.
Who this is useful for
- Indie developers and small studios looking for an idea with demand already proven somewhere.
- Localization and ASO agencies: every app earning money in one country and absent everywhere else is a potential client. They have revenue, and they haven't expanded yet.
- Investors and scouts who want to spot local winners before they go international.
Run the scan yourself
The scan runs on Apify as App Store Market Gap Finder. Default input:
{
"mode": "gaps",
"releasedWithinDays": 365,
"maxCountries": 3,
"maxRank": 50,
"targetCountries": ["us", "gb", "fr", "de", "es", "it", "br", "jp", "sa", "ae"]
}
You can change the categories, the 56 source countries, the target markets, how new the apps must be and how deep in the chart to look. Each row gives you the app, where it charts and at what rank, where it's missing, a gap score, ratings and the App Store link.
From Python:
from apify_client import ApifyClient
client = ApifyClient("YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("easydata-labs/app-market-gap-finder").call(run_input={
"categories": ["Food & Drink", "Shopping", "Finance"],
"targetCountries": ["us", "gb", "fr", "de"],
})
for row in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
print(row["appName"], row["chartingInText"], "missing:", row["notAvailableInText"])
There's also a raw mode that simply exports the top charts of every country you choose.
Pricing: pay per result, $20 per 1,000 market gaps ($0.02 each). A default scan returns up to 100 gaps (you set the limit), so about $2.
Disclosure: I built this tool. The data comes from Apple's public App Store charts and lookup API. If you spot a gap worth a closer look, or want a filter that isn't there, leave a comment.
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