How to Save Money on iPhone Apps

Updated July 6th, 2016.

— How to Save Money on iPhone Apps —

AppMiner

Some iPhone apps are free. Some aren’t. Except when they are. Turns out that iPhone app pricing changes all the time. That app that you didn’t buy because it cost too much might suddenly cost half as much– or maybe even nothing at all. The trick, of course, is to get ’em when they’re cheap. AppMiner, itself a free iPhone app, helps you do it.

UPDATE: AppMiner has been removed from the App Store. Apparently AppMiner’s concept violates the terms of the App Store so the app had to be pulled.

In a nutshell, AppMiner watches the prices on the iTunes App Store, and when a price goes down, AppMiner makes a note of it. All you have to do it launch AppMiner and check the categories you’re interested in. See below.

Here are some of the categories…

Here are some more…

And here are the rest.

The numbers tell you how many items in each category have dropped in price either today or yesterday. They don’t go further back because prices change pretty quickly and out of date info wouldn’t be useful.

Touch a category and you’ll see something like this:

We’re looking here at items that used to cost something, but don’t anymore, in the Education category. You can see that some of these things are marked down considerably.

Touch any of the items and you get a description of the app, just like on the iTunes App store. Here’s what it looks like:

If the description sounds interesting you can tap the “Free” button (or the “Get It!” button) to go straight to the right place on the iTunes App store, where you can “buy” the thing (for free). Otherwise, you can just go back and see what else might be interesting.

Of course you don’t have to check only what’s free. You can check what’s on sale, what’s new, what’s top rated, etc. I go for the free stuff myself.

I check AppMiner every night to see what gems may have fallen into my lap. I don’t know exactly how much money I’ve saved but I do know that I have a whole lot of apps on my iPhone and I’ve paid for only a few. AppMiner is saving me money and I’m sure it will for you also. It’s on my first home screen– a place of honor. Go get AppMiner and check, check check it. You’ll be glad you did.

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