iPhone vs Android in the US: 61 of the Top 100 Free Apps Chart on Both. Ten 2026 Launches With Under 5,000 Ratings Made Google Play's Top 100. On iPhone, One Did

PDF Reader: Documents Master came out on Google Play on September 4, 2026. Thirty-three days later it's #10 in the US top-free chart, above Instagram, Cash App, and TikTok Lite. It has 257 ratings worldwide. Search "pdf reader", "pdf viewer", "pdf reader free", or "document reader" on Google Play in the US and it isn't in the top 30 for any of them.

There's no app like that in the iPhone top 100 today. The newest small app in Apple's US chart is a GPS camera at #77 with 733 ratings. Same country, same day, and the two charts let in very different kinds of newcomers. If you're deciding which store to launch on first, that difference matters more than any single ranking.

How we compared two charts that don't measure the same things

We pulled the US top-free top 100 from both stores on October 7 and matched apps by name, then checked every match by hand. "DoorDash" and "DoorDash - Dasher" are different apps. "Prime Video" on Android is "Amazon Prime Video" on iPhone.

Some numbers can't go side by side. On iPhone, the review count is the number of star ratings in the US. On Google Play, it's the number of written reviews in the US, which runs 10 to 40 times smaller. So when we call an Android app "small" below, we use its worldwide rating count, which is the stricter test: an app with under 5,000 ratings worldwide has fewer than that in the US too. Install figures differ the same way (an estimate on iPhone, Google's global counter on Android), so we left them out of every comparison. Star ratings are per-country on both stores, so those can be compared, with a caveat we get to below.

Same apps, different places

Sixty-one apps are in both top-100 lists. That sounds like the charts mostly agree, but only 25 apps are in the top 50 of both, and only 5 make the top 10 of both: Muse from Meta (#1 on both), ChatGPT, TikTok Pro, PineDrama, and Vinted. Many of the shared apps sit 30 or more places apart:

AI assistants take three of the iPhone top 10 (ChatGPT #3, Claude #8, Gemini #9) and one of the Android top 10. Gemini's drop has an easy explanation, since it ships as the built-in assistant on most new Android phones and people don't need to download it. The social apps go the other way: TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat all chart higher on Android. A top-free chart measures new downloads, not total users, so a higher spot on Android can just mean more people there are installing the app for the first time or reinstalling it.

Where the 100 slots go

Store categories don't line up one to one. WhatsApp and Telegram are "Social Networking" on iPhone and "Communication" on Android. Uber and Lyft are "Travel" on one and "Maps & Navigation" on the other. AI video generators file under "Photo & Video" on iPhone and mostly "Art & Design" on Android. So we merged the categories into shared groups before charting them:

Groups: Social & messaging = Social Networking (iPhone) / Social + Communication (Android). Photo, video & AI art = Photo & Video / Video Players & Editors + Art & Design. Utilities / Tools = Utilities / Tools. Travel & navigation = Travel + Navigation / Maps & Navigation. Everything else = Lifestyle, Food & Drink, Music, News, Education, Medical, Books, Personalization.

Three gaps stand out. Shopping takes 17 slots on iPhone and 10 on Android. Social and messaging takes twice as many on Android, 12 against 6, and that includes TextNow, a free calling and texting app at #25 that isn't in the iPhone 100 at all. And "drama" is the most common word in Android app titles, in 11% of them, against 5% on iPhone. Count the apps and Android has 12 short-drama and serial-story apps in its top 100 (PineDrama, ReelShort, FreeReels, DramaWave, DramaBox and its Lite version, and six others), while iPhone has 5.

Only on iPhone: Google's apps, big US brands, and new shopping

Thirty-nine apps are in the iPhone top 100 and not in Android's. Nine of them are Google's: the Google app, Gmail, Maps, Chrome, YouTube, Docs, Drive, Sheets, and Photos. That isn't a sign iPhone owners like Google more. Most of these come preinstalled on Android phones, so Android users rarely download them, and a download chart can't see them.

Most of the rest are established US brands: Target, Costco, Chase, Airbnb, Ticketmaster, eBay, Taco Bell, LinkedIn, MyChart, and Ring. The newcomers in the iPhone-only group are mostly shopping apps. Quince, a direct-to-consumer clothing and home brand, is #4 on iPhone with 9,249 US ratings. Its Android app exists, but it launched in 2026 and has 677 ratings worldwide, and it isn't in the Android top 100. Koupon (#20) and Rips by Triumph (#65) are also iPhone-only. When a brand sells premium goods, its iPhone app usually comes first and gets more effort, and this chart reflects that.

Only on Android: the newcomer lane

The Android-only list is younger. Nineteen of its 39 apps launched in 2025 or 2026, and ten of them launched this year with under 5,000 ratings worldwide:

On iPhone the count is one: EarthScope, the GPS camera at #77. Notice what these apps are. PDF readers, a volume control, a browser, a reminder app, a location tracker, AI photo and video makers. These are basic phone tools, the kind Android lets third-party apps replace and Apple mostly doesn't. Several come from studios with two apps in the same chart: DQL TechLab has Nexus and Lynix, Supercool Labs has Vidix and a photo-video maker, and AtomApplications has a volume control and a clap-to-find-your-phone app.

Search doesn't explain how they got there. We checked Nexus, #4 overall, on Google Play's US search:

— = not in Google Play's visible top 30 for that term.

PDF Reader: Documents Master misses the top 30 for all four PDF terms we checked. The top 30 for "ai video generator" is held by PixVerse, Kling, Hailuo, Canva, and other funded names. So these apps didn't climb the chart by being found in search. The chart counts recent installs, and a 33-day-old app with 257 ratings worldwide and roughly 256,000 installs worldwide got those installs some other way. Most of the time, that means paid install campaigns.

For an indie developer, that cuts both ways. Google Play's US chart clearly lets a brand-new tool app in, which Apple's chart doesn't do much of today. But it lets them in because someone paid for the volume. Ratings of 3.31 (Lynix), 3.42 (Nexus), and 3.81 (the PDF reader) suggest the installs aren't all turning into happy users. If your plan is "build a better PDF reader and rank organically", the chart isn't proof that plan works. It's proof that someone with an ad budget can rent the spot.

The same app is rated lower on Android, almost every time

Of the 61 shared apps, 55 have a higher US rating on iPhone than on Android. The median gap is 0.19 stars, and 11 apps are at least half a star apart:

X is one of only six apps rated higher on Android. The chart can't tell you exactly why. Android versions run on thousands of different phones and bugs on cheap devices end up in reviews, and the two stores ask for ratings differently. What the data does show is that the gap is consistent, not a quirk of a few apps.

So don't compare your Android rating with your iPhone rating, or with an iPhone competitor's. A 4.3 on Google Play is ordinary: 31 apps in the Android top 100 sit below it. On the App Store, only 4 of the top 100 do. Judge each store's rating against that store's chart.

Same keywords, two stores

DealSeek, a coupon app launched in 2025, is one of the few small-publisher apps that charts on both (#33 on iPhone, #7 on Android). Its search positions are close on both stores:

Same title, same core keywords, same result. Metadata that works on one store mostly carries over. What doesn't carry over is the words people type. Google Play's autocomplete for "pdf reader" in the US includes "pdf reader without ads" and "pdf reader for android free no ads". The App Store's list for the same seed has "pdf reader pro", "pdf reader out loud", and "pdf reader free for iphone and ipad", and nothing about ads. "Short drama" works the same way: Google Play suggests "short drama app free no ads", while the App Store suggests "short dramas free" and "free short drama".

Android users search to avoid ads because so many Android apps are paid for with ads. If you're putting an ad-free or ad-light app on Google Play, say so in the short description. That's a phrase people actually type there, and on iPhone it's barely a selling point.

Verdict: where to launch first

Before you pick a store

• Open both pulses for your target country and count how many apps in your category launched this year on each. That tells you which chart lets newcomers in
• Don't read Google Play rank as proof of organic demand. Check the newcomer's search positions for the category term first. If it isn't in the top 30, the rank came from somewhere else
• Benchmark your rating against the same store only. 4.3 is ordinary on Android and near the bottom on iPhone
• On Android, add the "no ads" and "free" phrasing people search for to your short description if it's true for your app
• If you port an app from iPhone to Android, keep the title and core keywords. They tend to rank in similar places on both stores
• Don't treat Google's missing apps on the Android chart as an opening. They aren't downloaded because they're already on the phone

Data pulled from the live US top-free charts of the App Store and Google Play, store search, and store autocomplete via Pumf.it on October 7, 2026. Apps were matched across stores by name and checked by hand; category groups in the chart merge store categories that don't map one to one. Review counts aren't comparable across stores (US star ratings on the App Store, US written reviews on Google Play), so "small" Android apps were identified by worldwide rating count, and install figures were left out of every comparison. Google Play search results are only visible to the top 30, so "not in the top 30" doesn't mean an app isn't indexed for a term. Charts change every few hours. This is a read of public store data meant to help developers choose a launch platform, not a critique of any app or developer named above.