I built an analytics dashboard for indie devs tired of paying $450/month for Sensor Tower
Hey IH 👋
I'm a solo developer with apps and games published on itch.io, Steam, Google Play, and the App Store. For years I had the same problem: I had to check four different dashboards every morning just to get a basic picture of how everything was doing.
The "professional" tools? Sensor Tower starts at $450/month and doesn't support itch.io or Steam. Appfigures is cheaper but ignores both platforms completely. None of them were built with indie devs in mind — they're designed for growth teams at funded companies.
So I built AppWatch.
What it does:
Tracks your apps and games across itch.io, Steam, Google Play and App Store in one dashboard
Shows downloads, ratings, reviews, and crash rates in one place
Alerts you when something changes (rating drops, review spikes)
Steam integration live and in testing
Starts at €19/month — or free for up to 3 apps
The itch.io and Steam support is what I'm most proud of. There's basically nothing out there for indie devs who publish on both platforms and want real analytics beyond what each platform shows natively.
Where I'm at:
MVP is live at appwatch.dev. Users on the free plan but zero paying customers yet. Looking for indie devs who actually publish games or apps to try it and tell me what's broken, what's missing, and what would make them pull out their credit card.
Free plan, no credit card required.
My question for the IH community: What do you use right now to track your metrics across multiple stores? Spreadsheets? Native dashboards? Something else? I'm genuinely curious what the current workflow looks like for most indie devs here.
Hi, Roberto!
Pretty much same things here - we were building multiple untilities apps and realized that tracking app store and revenue cat subs together with analytics and campaigns data is quite a pain, so came up with building our own tool to do the thing
Week 2 update — slow and steady
The numbers:
What I shipped this week:
Added in-app feedback — users can now report bugs and suggest features directly from the dashboard. Already getting signal from it. Fixed a couple of bugs that the first user caught. Steam integration is in active testing — it's the platform I'm most excited about since nothing in this space covers it properly.
Where I spent most of my time:
Honestly, more on distribution than on code. Commented on threads here on IH, posted on dev.to, responded to gamedev forums, tried to show up in conversations where the pain point is real rather than just broadcasting. It's slower than I expected but the quality of interactions is higher.
Also reworked the landing page to better communicate the value prop — the original was too technical, not enough "here's your problem, here's how we fix it."
The hard part:
One new user in a week. I know that's how early-stage looks but it doesn't make it easier. The anti-bloat question from last week's comment is still the north star: stay useful for solo devs, don't chase features that only make sense for growth teams.
If you publish on itch.io, Steam, Google Play or App Store and want to help shape what this becomes — free plan at appwatch.dev, no credit card required.
The pattern you're describing keeps showing up across every tool category: the incumbent gets acquired or VC-funded, adds features for the enterprise buyer, doubles the price, and suddenly the indie maker who actually loved it is an afterthought. Sensor Tower is a good example. It was probably great for a certain buyer profile, just not yours. The hard scale-up question for you now is: when more than one paying user starts asking for features, how will you decide what to add without repeating the same bloat cycle you escaped from?
That's exactly the trap I'm trying to avoid, and honestly the question I ask myself most.
My current answer is: I'm keeping the pricing tiers tied to usage (number of apps, refresh frequency) rather than features. That way growth pressure comes from volume, not from adding complexity to justify a higher price. The feature set stays the same across tiers — you don't unlock "better analytics" by paying more, you just get more apps and faster updates.
For feature decisions, the rule I've set for myself is: if a feature only makes sense for a team or a growth department, it doesn't go in. Things like competitor tracking, market share estimates, category rankings — that's the path to becoming Sensor Tower. I'd rather stay boring and useful for the solo dev who just wants to know if their last update moved the needle.
Whether I'll hold that line when money is on the table is the real question. Ask me again in 12 months.
Week 1 update — honest numbers
One week since posting. Here's where things stand:
The numbers:
What actually happened:
The first real user connected their apps almost immediately after signing up, which was validating — it means the onboarding isn't broken. They sent feedback within 24 hours: bug reports, feature requests, and a couple of things I hadn't thought of at all.
I've been communicating directly with them — fixing issues as they come in, explaining what's on the roadmap, asking what would make them upgrade to a paid plan. That conversation has been more valuable than any analytics I could run.
What's next:
Shipping the fixes and the first requested features this week. Historical charts are the most requested thing so far — working on that.
If you're an indie dev publishing on steam,itch.io, Google Play or App Store and want to be the next guinea pig, free plan is at appwatch.dev. I respond to every message personally.