[Android Apps and Games] Skyica:
Overview of the available tools to find and obtain Android apps and games, with test searches and analysis

The following classification is used, although it is not completely precise:

Stores

get their apps in general directly from the developers.

APK services

provide app packages fetched from stores, but may also allow developers to upload app packages directly.

Search engines

don't have app packages, but link to stores or APK services.

In each table, the tools are sorted by the estimated number of available apps. Tools that seem to be of limited use are in non-bold font.

Stores

Apps available	Relevant results / total results for "email client"	Relevant results / total results for "graphing calculator"	Different countries / regions	Different languages	App / Website	Remarks
Google Play	~3,800,000

link

~70 / 150 *	~42 / 92 *	200+	87

link

A W
Aptoide	~1,000,000

link

~35 / >250 inex	~24 / >250 inex	?	32	A W
Uptodown	?	~65 / >250 inex	~12 / >250 inex	-	15	W A
Amazon Appstore	~820,000

link

~30 / 90 ** inex	~13 / 21 inex	yes	yes	A
Huawei AppGallery	?	~30 / 80 inex	~7 / 190 inex	?	80

link

A W
Samsung Galaxy Store	?	~23 / 118 inex	~8 / >150 inex	yes	yes	A W	Samsung devices only
GitHub	?	~42 / 63 ***	~15 / 21 ***	-	-	W A	Open source only
Rootpk	?	~13 / 40 inex	~20 / 42 inex	-	-	A W
SlideMe	~30,000

link

~7 / 22	5 / 6	-	-	W	Curated
F-Droid	~5000

link

~5 / 20	2 / 2	?	yes	W A	Open source only
GetJar	?	0 / 5	~2 / 5	-	-	W

Some other device manufacturers like Xiaomi also have own app stores for their devices.

There are some other open source sites like GitLab that have some Android apps.

Obtainium can search apps in GitHub, GitLab, Codeberg, and F-Droid, and obtain the apps and update them.

The game-specific stores are listed in the last section.

* The Play Store hides apps that "were made for an older version of Android" deliberately, although they very often do work on current versions. The search was done on Android 12.

** Has apps that contain the keyword in the Play Store description but not in the Amazon Appstore description.

*** The word Android has been added to the query.

inex Inexact: Returns many apps where the phrase does not occur, and also apps where not both words occur.

Analysis

Google Play clearly has more apps than any other store. However, some apps are only available on other stores (I did not investigate this in detail yet).

Also, many apps that are on Google Play are hidden in the Play Store search on recent Android versions because they were not updated according to Google's guidelines. Such apps can be found with search engines like App Finder and AppBrain, and obtained from APK services like APKCombo and APKPure.

The build-in search of the Play Store is very unreliable for finding the best apps for a specific purpose or apps with specific features if quotes are not used, as shown

here

in detail. With quotes however (either around single words or around phrases), it reliably finds exactly all apps where the words or phrases occur in title, developer name, or description.

The search engines of Aptoide, Samsung Galaxy Store, Huawei AppGallery, Uptodown, and Rootpk seem to be at least as unreliable as the Play Store search without quotes, and quotes are not supported.

The search engines of Amazon Appstore and SlideMe seems to work somewhat better. However, many of the best apps are not available there.

GitHub has many important open source apps, and the search works quite well.

F-Droid has many of the best open source apps, but can only search phrases, i.e. all words from the query are required in sequence, which is obviously a big problem.

GetJar seems to have quite few apps, and the search only returns a maximum of 5 results.

APK Services

Apps available	Relevant results / total results for "email client"	Relevant results / total results for "graphing calculator"	Different countries / regions	Different languages	App / Website	Remarks
APKCombo	very many *	(13 / 13) miss	(24 / 24) miss	-	19	W
APKPure	many	(~18 / 20) miss	(14 / 20) miss	-	32	W A
APK-DL	many	(11 / 11) miss	(~27 / 27) miss	-	8	W
APK Support	many	(~30 / 30) miss	(~23 / 23) miss	-	-	W
9apps	?	>50 / many inex	>40 / many inex	-	21	W A
ApkOnline	?	~65 / 150 inex	~48 / 150 inex	-	28	W
APKFab	?	~44 / 75 inex	~22 / 87 inex	-	8	W A
APKMirror	?	(2 / 2) ndes	(4 / 4) ndes	-	-	W	Curated

There are several more APK sites that return between 0 and about 30 relevant results for the test queries: Malavida, AAPKS, Apkmonk, AppsApk, Appvn, Usroid, ApkBe, ApkClean, APKTurbo, APK4Free, APK4Fun, APKFollow, AndroidAPKsFree, AndroidAPKsBox.

* Claims to have 8,000,000 apps. Since there are only about 3,800,000 apps available on Google Play and APKPure is only in operation since 2018, many of those must have been removed from Google Play quite quickly.

miss Has apps that contain the exact keywords but does not return them with the search.

inex Inexact: Returns many apps where the phrase does not occur, and also apps where not both words occur.

ndes Descriptions are not searched, only titles. (Searching descriptions is only possible for APK search, not for app search, so that a long list of APKs of the same apps would have to be examined.)

Analysis

APKCombo seems to clearly have the most apps, however APKPure also has many, and sometimes has older versions that APKCombo does not have. APK-DL and APK Support also have many apps. The search engines of these services however are only suitable for finding apps by name, developer, or package name.

APKMirror has a curated selection of popular high-quality apps.

There are many other APK sites with a small selection of apps.

Search Engines

Apps available	Relevant results / total results for "email client"	Relevant results / total results for "graphing calculator"	Different countries / regions	Different languages	App / Website	Remarks
Aurora Store	~3,800,000 *	~34 / 36	~42 / 92	200+	87	A	Uses the Play Store search
Playsearch	~3,800,000 **	~11 / 11	~28 / 30	-	-	W	Uses the Google Play search
AppBrain	~2,590,000

link

~32 / 300 nphr	~68 / 300 nphr	-	-	W A
App Finder	~3,700,000	~75 / 253 N1	~110 / 187 N2	200+	-	A
AppAgg	? ***	~60 / 177	~64 / 135	-	26	W A
Finder+ by AppTap	?	~42 / >250 inex	~23 / >250 inex	-	-	A
Really Free Apps	~240,000	~5 / 7	5 / 5	-	-	W	W/o ads and IAPs only
AppsHive	?	15 / 17 tag	-	-	-	W A	Curated

There is a site Play Store Finder that however returned no results for the test searches.

* Uses the Play Store API, however there are fewer results sometimes.

** Uses the Google Play website API, so all apps on Google Play (US) are available, but returns mostly significantly fewer search results than the Play Store search.

*** The site reports ~3,600,000 apps total, which include iOS, mocOS, Windows, Steam, Nintendo, Playstation, and Xbox apps / games. The test search suggests that it has fewer Android apps than AppBrain and App Finder.

nphr No phrase search.

inex Inexact: Returns many apps where the phrase does not occur, and also apps where not both words occur.

N1 Using the query +"email client", ~33 / 34, using "email client" +email, ~74 / 113. A much more comprehensive search can be done with "email/mail client/app" +email

tag Does not search app descriptions, but seems to have tags that are searched. The query email was used.

Analysis

There are 3 quite comprehensive search engines for Android apps: AppBrain, App Finder, and AppAgg.

AppBrain has the most apps and historical download count and rating data, which can be found nowhere else publicly.

However, the search is very limited. Most importantly, it has no phrase search, no minus, no OR, no quality or popularity filters, no filter for update date, no filters for in-app purchases or ads, and shows a maximum of 300 results. Much important information is missing in the result list.

App Finder has nearly as many apps as AppBrain, and has all the important search features that are missing from AppBrain.

Further, it has several unique and highly useful features, such as an operator to require words in title or summary that can often lead to significantly higher specificity, scrollable and scalable screenshots in the result list, and world-average user ratings that are available for about 2.5 to 30 times more apps than local ratings.

AppAgg seems to have significantly fewer apps than AppBrain and App Finder. It has many important search features, but some significant problems.

Most importantly, different word forms are not searched, which may often lead to users not finding some of best apps. Further, most filters are implemented as search operators, which is inconvenient. It has an OR operator, but the common OR is not supported. A minus operator is missing. The result list is missing much important information.

Aurora Store is an alternative to the Play Store for searching Google Play and obtaining apps. While it sometimes returns the exact same results as the Play Store (although in a slightly different order), at other times (or for other queries), it returns significantly less results.

Finder+ by AppTap seems to have quite many apps, however the search is inexact and missing many highly important features.

Really Free Apps has significantly fewer free and IAP-free apps that App Finder, and can only search phrases, i.e. all words from the query are required in sequence, which is obviously a big problem.

AppsHive has a comparably small curated and categorized selection of apps. Descriptions cannot be searched.

Game-specific tools

Apps available	Results for "time travel"	Results for "science fiction"	Different countries / regions	Different languages	App / Website	Remarks
Play Games	?	~64 / 69	~70 / 85	200+	87	A
Itch	~60,000	62 tag	803 tag	-	-	W	Store for indie games
Mob	?	~30 / many nphr	many / many nphr	-	9	W
MiniReview	~1,500	( - )	197 tag*	-	-	A	Curated, all games reviewed
TapTap	?	(~8 / 8) ndt	(~0 / 10) ndt	-	-	W A	Also a store

QooApp is a quite large store specializing in anime games.

tag Tag was used. Query search is very limited.

nphr Does not support phrase search.

tag* Tag was used. Search queries only search titles.

ndt No description search, no tags.

Analysis

Play Games and Mob seem to be the only game-specific tools that can search descriptions. In Mob, phrase search is not available which leads to many irrelevant results. Play Games has many important filters, but the result list is uninformative. Mob has no filters, but the result list is much better.

While Itch and MiniReview cannot search descriptions, they have many important filters.

TapTap has neither description search, nor tags or filters other than category.