thee3/step-counter-survey

In-app purchases, ratings and widgets of iPhone step counters (US App Store, 17 August 2026, updated 29 September 2026)

A hand-made survey of 19 iPhone step counter apps, read off their own App Store pages on 17 August 2026; Angel Step, the publisher's own app, added the day it went on sale, on 29 September 2026.

It exists because the one number people most want — what an app charges once you have installed it — is not available from Apple's search interface at all. It appears only on each app's own page, and only if you scroll to the In-App Purchases block.

There is no ranking and no score in this file. It is what the store showed on that date.

• Live page with the same data, in a table: https://angelstep.app/data
• Canonical JSON, always current: https://angelstep.app/data/step-counter-survey.json
• Canonical CSV: https://angelstep.app/data/step-counter-survey.csv

What is in it

file	what it is
step-counter-survey.json	the canonical record: metadata, method, license, summary, and the 19 apps
step-counter-survey.csv	the same 19 rows, flat, for spreadsheets and notebooks

Columns

column	meaning
name	app name as listed on the US App Store
listed_in	which of our guides the app appears in (cute, simple, free)
ratings_count	number of ratings shown on the listing
rating_average	average rating shown on the listing
widget_per_description	the listing's own text mentions a widget — not that we verified one exists
reads_health_per_description	the listing's own text says it reads Apple Health
last_updated	month of the last update shown on the listing
in_app_purchases	whether the listing shows an In-App Purchases block
prices_listed	the price range shown in that block
lock_screen_per_description	the listing's own text mentions a lock screen widget
kind	what the app is, in one phrase (walking game, counter + virtual dog) — carried by rows from the cute guide, the only table with that column; an empty cell means the row is not in that guide
app_store_id	Apple's numeric identifier for the listing; appended to https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id it opens the page this row was read from (id1037595083 is the first row)

An empty cell means the store did not show it, which is not the same as no.

What the numbers say

• 14 apps had their purchases checked; 4 of them list no in-app purchases at all (Pedometer α, Plod, STEPPI, Steps — Simple Pedometer).
• Listed prices run from $0.99 to $88.99.
• 13 of 19 listings mention a widget in their own description — but only 7 of 19 mention a lock screen. On this evidence, "widget" on a store listing usually means the home screen alone.
• Ratings counts run from 0 to 291,037, median 500 — the category is a few large apps and a long tail of small ones.

Method, stated plainly

Each app's App Store page was opened and read by hand on 2026-08-17. Purchases come from the In-App Purchases block on that page; 'per its description' means the listing's own text says so, not that we verified the feature exists. The lock-screen column was read on 2026-08-19 from Apple's public listing data, matched to each app by name, rating count and last-updated month; in the same pass the widget and Health columns were re-read that way and agreed with the hand reading in every one of the 18 rows. Angel Step, the publisher's own app, was added on 2026-09-29, the day it went on sale, read off its own listing the same way; with no ratings yet it lowers the median rating count (1,267 over the other 18).

Absence in a description is not proof of absence in the app; it is what the maker chose to mention.

Region: US App Store. Date of reading: 17 August 2026; Angel Step, the publisher's own app, added the day it went on sale, on 29 September 2026 (2026-08-17, 2026-09-29).

Limits worth knowing before you cite this

• It is a snapshot. Prices, ratings and descriptions change; nothing here is re-checked automatically.
• It is 19 apps, not the whole category — those that appeared for the searches behind three buyer's guides.
• There is no ranking, on purpose. A ranking published by a participant in the market is an advertisement. The facts are Apple's; the compilation is ours.

The other dataset

This survey says what the store shows. A second dataset says what its customers talk about: what reviews of iPhone step counters talk about — 7,859 reviews of 10 of these apps, counted against 21 themes and split by rating band. It joins to this one on app_store_id; 6 of its 10 apps are rows here. Neither dataset ranks anything.

Who made it

Collected by the people building Angel Step — a step counter for iPhone built around one number, with widgets on the home screen and the lock screen. https://angelstep.app · on the App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id6805609971

Where these rows are written out

• what step counters actually cost — the prices, per app, in a table
• how to choose one — what these numbers do and do not decide
• cute step counters — the nine that are pleasant to look at
• simple step counters — the nine that ask least of you
• steps to calories — the MET model written out, with the tables precomputed
• how far 10,000 steps is — distance by height, in a table you can read

License

CC BY 4.0 on the compilation, its structure and the described method. Not claimed: the underlying facts, which are Apple's public store listings.

Attribution: Angel Step, https://angelstep.app/data

Citation

Angel Step (2026). In-app purchases, ratings and widgets of iPhone step counters (US App Store, measured 2026-08-17, updated 2026-09-29). 10.5281/zenodo.22032007 · https://angelstep.app/data

Mirrors

https://angelstep.app/data is the canonical copy. The same files are mirrored on Hugging Face, Kaggle.