Guide
Which App Store locales to localize first
Picking the wrong ten locales costs more than any vendor's markup, and it is the decision most people make on instinct. This is the method we use before writing a single word — it takes about half an hour and it works whether you hire someone or do the job yourself.
- Start where you already have evidence — countries sending installs on an English-only listing.
- Population is the worst possible sorting key. The biggest markets are the most contested.
- Check competition per market in five minutes by switching your App Store region and searching.
- Prefer depth over breadth. Five locales done properly beat twenty done thinly.
- Pick languages, but decide using country data — one locale often serves many countries.
Why "the big languages" is the wrong instinct
The default plan is Spanish, Chinese, German, French, Japanese — the languages with the most speakers. It is the wrong order, for the same reason you would not launch a new product by competing head-on with the market leader.
Large markets are large for everyone. The top results are funded apps with fully localized listings, localized screenshots and paid acquisition behind them. Entering there means competing on their terms with a first-pass listing. Meanwhile the terms that are hopeless in English are frequently quiet in Dutch, Czech, Swedish, Thai or Romanian, where a well-researched listing can rank near the top because almost nobody has bothered.
Ranking first in a modest market beats ranking fortieth in a huge one. Position, not population, is what produces installs.
Step 1 — Read the demand you already have
Open App Store Connect analytics and pull impressions and product page views by country, then installs by country. You are looking for a specific pattern: countries with meaningful impressions but a conversion rate below your average.
That gap is the language barrier made visible. People are finding your listing and declining to install it, and the most likely reason is that the page is not in their language. Those countries are your first locales, because the demand is already proven and you are only removing friction.
The opposite pattern — no impressions at all — means you are invisible in that market rather than unconvincing. That is still worth fixing, but it is a harder, slower bet, so it goes later in the queue.
Step 2 — Map countries to locales
Your analytics report countries. App Store metadata is stored per language locale. The mapping is not one to one, and this is where reach per unit of work is won or lost.
Spanish (Spain) and Spanish (Mexico) between them cover most of Latin America and Spain. French covers France, Belgium, Switzerland and much of West Africa, with French (Canada) as a separate entry. Arabic covers a large multi-country market with a single locale. Meanwhile Japanese and Korean each serve essentially one country — still worth doing, but the arithmetic is different.
Where Apple offers a regional split, take it seriously. Portuguese (Brazil) and Portuguese (Portugal) diverge on ordinary technical vocabulary, and using one to serve the other reads as foreign to the reader. If budget forces a single choice, pick the one your data points to and treat the other as a later step rather than filling it with the wrong variant.
Step 3 — Check competition per market, in five minutes each
This is the highest-value half hour in the whole process, and almost nobody does it.
- Change your App Store region to the candidate country.
- Search the two or three terms your app should obviously rank for.
- Read the top ten results and ask one question: are these listings localized, or are they English listings sitting in a foreign store?
If several of the top results are plainly English-only, the market is open and you can take position cheaply. If every result has a localized name, subtitle and localized screenshots, the market is mature and you are buying a fight. Both are legitimate choices — but you should know which one you are paying for before you commit.
Step 4 — Sort by effort, not just opportunity
Some locales cost more to do well. Right-to-left languages such as Arabic and Hebrew need screenshot layouts mirrored, not just retyped. German runs roughly 30% longer than English and routinely breaks a 30-character name that fit comfortably in English. Japanese and Chinese need script decisions that a translator cannot make from the English alone.
None of this is a reason to skip those markets. It is a reason to schedule them once your process is working, rather than making them your first attempt.
A reasonable default order
If you have no data at all — a new app with no installs anywhere — this order is a defensible starting point, and you should replace it with your own data the moment you have any.
- German — high spend per user, a market that strongly prefers its own language, and a genuine barrier for English-only listings.
- Spanish (Spain) and Spanish (Mexico) — the widest reach per locale of anything on the list.
- Portuguese (Brazil) — large, mobile-first, and less contested than its size suggests.
- French — multi-country reach, and a market with a strong local-language preference.
- Japanese — high spend, but genuinely hard to do well; worth it once your process is proven.
- Then the quiet ones — Dutch, Swedish, Czech, Polish, Turkish, Thai. Small, cheap, and frequently where the actual wins are.
Note what is missing: Chinese (Simplified). It is an enormous market and it is also a different game, with its own stores, its own review considerations and a competitive listing culture. It deserves a dedicated decision, not a slot in a default list.
Frequently asked questions
Which App Store languages should I localize first?
Start with the countries already sending you impressions or installs on an English-only listing. Those markets are converting despite a language barrier, which is the strongest available evidence that removing the barrier will pay. Only after that should you consider large markets where you currently have no presence, because those require you to create demand rather than capture it.
Is it better to localize a few locales well or many locales quickly?
A few, well, if the choice is forced. Thin coverage across many locales produces listings that rank for nothing and read as machine-translated, which can suppress conversion below where you started. Depth means per-locale keyword research and localized screenshots, and both are what actually move installs.
Do I need separate listings for Spanish (Spain) and Spanish (Mexico)?
They are separate locales in App Store Connect and they do diverge on everyday vocabulary, so ideally yes. If you can only do one, choose by where your install data points, then reuse it as the base for the other later rather than leaving the second empty. The same logic applies to Portuguese (Brazil) versus Portuguese (Portugal), French versus French (Canada), and the four English variants.
Are small-language markets worth localizing?
Often yes, and they are systematically underrated. Competition thins dramatically outside the major languages, so terms that are unwinnable in English can be close to uncontested in Dutch, Czech, Swedish or Thai. A modest market you rank first in usually beats a huge market where you sit on page four.
How do I know if a locale is worth the money before paying for it?
Switch your App Store region to that country and search the terms your app should rank for. If the top results are large funded apps with fully localized listings and screenshots, the market is contested and expensive. If several results are clearly English-only listings that nobody has localized, the market is open and cheap to enter. That five-minute check predicts return better than population figures.
Should I localize for a country or for a language?
For a language, but choose it using country data. App Store metadata is stored per language locale, while your analytics report installs by country — so you map countries to the locale that serves them. One locale can cover several countries, which is why languages like Spanish, French, Arabic and Portuguese give more reach per unit of work than their single largest country suggests.
If you would rather not do the selection yourself
Locale selection is the first stage of our Localization Sprint, and it happens before anything is written — you see the shortlist and the reasoning before we produce a word of copy. If you would rather compare the options first, we wrote an honest breakdown of App Store localization services, including doing it yourself.