Guide — agency vs freelancer · September 2026

ASO agency vs freelancer: who actually does the work, and how to tell them apart

Here is the industry’s worst-kept secret: a large share of the ASO execution billed by agencies in London, New York and Sydney is done by freelancers in Ukraine, Pakistan, the Philippines and Vietnam. The agency provides the relationship and, in theory, the decisions. The freelancer provides the hands. Once you know that, the agency-versus-freelancer question becomes a different question: who is making the decisions, and what are you paying for the layer in between?

How the two actually relate

An agency sells you a strategist, an account manager, a designer and a report. Behind the scenes, the keyword research is often a freelancer’s tool export, the screenshots are produced to a template by a contractor, and the localisation is coordinated through a marketplace. The strategist’s job is to decide what all of that should say. At a good agency, that decision is made carefully. At a busy one, the strategist has fourteen accounts and the freelancer’s output goes to the client with a logo on it.

So when you compare an agency to a freelancer, you are often comparing the same execution with and without a markup, and the only real variable is whether anyone in the chain made a decision about your category.

The three kinds of freelancer

The tool exporter. Runs your app through a keyword tool, exports the suggestions, writes a stuffed description, delivers it as ‘optimised’. An hour’s work at a gig price. No decision in it.
The execution specialist. Skilled, reliable, inexpensive, often the back office of a Western agency. Excellent at running a brief. Does not usually write the brief.
The practitioner. Has audited hundreds of listings, thinks in categories, makes the decision about what your first screenshot should claim. Rare, usually booked, and indistinguishable from the first two on a gig listing until you ask the right questions.

The questions that separate them

Which tool did you use, and what did you decide that the tool did not suggest? Why?
What is the claim in our first screenshot, and what is the hypothesis behind it?
Show me a listing you optimised six months ago. Is it still ranking, and what did retention do?
Which agencies have you done delivery work for, and what did they send you as a brief?
Where do any ‘guaranteed ranking’ installs come from? Put it in writing.
If I send you a brief with the keyword architecture and the screenshot claims decided, what does the price become?

A tool exporter cannot answer the first two. An execution specialist answers the fourth honestly and the last one with a lower number. A practitioner answers all six in specifics.

When to hire which

Situation	Hire
You do not yet know what your listing should say	A practitioner or consultant, for the decision layer. Not hands first.
You have the brief and need it executed well and cheaply	An execution specialist, directly, in Ukraine, the Philippines, Vietnam or Pakistan
You need volume: many storefronts, many variants, ongoing production	An execution team, or an agency if you want the coordination done for you
You need media, creative and organic managed permanently from one contract	An agency, with the trade-offs in the reviews on this site
You want your own team to learn it	A consultant whose engagement ends in a handover

The right order

Decisions first, hands second. The most common mistake I see, in every country, is hiring the hands before anyone has decided what the listing should say, and then paying to do the wrong work well. The second most common is paying an agency markup for hands you could have hired directly, with the decision layer somewhere in between and often nowhere.

The right order is: get the teardown and the brief from someone who makes decisions about listings for a living; then execute it yourself, or hire the best-value hands you can find and give them the brief. That is what my engagement is built to produce. The handover is written so that your team, or a freelancer in Lahore, can run it.

A note on the grey zone

Some freelancers and some agencies include install bursts, purchased reviews or rating campaigns under names like ‘boost’ or ‘review management’. Both stores prohibit it, both detect it increasingly well, and the developer account that carries the penalty is yours. Ask, in writing, before you pay anyone anything.

This guide is part of a set: the honest case against hiring an ASO agency, a plain explanation of what ASO services really are, reviews of every named agency, and the country-by-country guide.

Objections

“Are freelancers cheaper than agencies?” +

For execution, dramatically, because you skip the markup. For decisions, price is not the variable; whether the person makes decisions at all is.

“Is it safe to hire a freelancer in another country?” +

For execution to a brief, yes, and it is where most agencies get theirs. Ask the six questions above and pay by milestone.

“How do I know if an agency is subcontracting?” +

Ask who, by name, does the keyword research and the screenshots, and where they sit. Most agencies will answer honestly if asked directly.

“Can you recommend a freelancer?” +

I hand over a brief your team or any execution specialist can run, and I will tell you the questions to ask. I do not resell hands.

Stop funding
someone else’s
office.

A limited number of engagements at a time, in one language: what we change, when it ships, what it costs. If an agency is the better fit for you, I will say so on the first call.