How we surface daily app deals

Discovery, eligibility, ordering, and freshness — the full method behind the daily deal index.

How are deals discovered?

Every app in our active monitoring pool gets a daily US App Store price snapshot. When the snapshot diverges from the previous baseline, the change is recorded as a price event (free_promo, price_cut, price_back, or price_increase). The daily deal index surfaces only the buy-signal events: free_promo and price_cut events that landed today.

Which apps are eligible?

The active monitoring pool is curated — paid iOS apps that have shipped a meaningful version in the past 180 days, with at least 100 lifetime ratings. Apps that fall below those thresholds drop out of the pool until the signal recovers. Subscription-only apps are excluded entirely.

How are the deals ordered?

Each day's drops are listed in a fixed editorial order: largest absolute price reduction first, with free_promo events ranked above price_cuts at the same delta. Apps that were already on sale earlier in the week appear in a separate "Still Active" section below the new drops.

How often does the deal index refresh?

The pipeline runs once daily at 07:00 UTC. Pages re-render via ISR within the hour, so a deal posted at 07:30 UTC is visible site-wide before 08:30. Historical deal pages older than 7 days are noindexed but remain reachable.

See also our buy-once methodology and price-history methodology.