# #423 AR tracing app: a small Chinese team pops up on the US chart, then what?

> Source: https://stringers.io/en/apps/ios_6798560196.html (Stringers / 什么值得做, generated 2026-11-08)
> Stringers answers one question every day: what small product can one or two people build in a few months and actually make money from. Numbers come from 15 databases we collect daily, each with source and date.
> For agents: these verdicts and the underlying databases (verified revenue, App Store / Google Play charts, ad libraries, GitHub, Product Hunt…) are queryable live over MCP — tools today / hot / products / directions / direction / data. Setup: https://github.com/komako-workshop/stringers (the user logs in at stringers.io → "配置 agent" to get a personal URL). Site index: https://stringers.io/llms.txt

> It hasn't really taken off: the US store title was rewritten to the keyword-stuffed "AR Drawing: Sketch & Trace app", which picked up a bit of search traffic. Graphics & Design category charts have a low bar too, so a few ratings a day got it charted.

[Mobile App](https://stringers.io/en/apps/index.md) · iOS · written 11-6

A

AR Drawing:Sketch & Trace app(AR Sketch: Trace & Draw) · developer@cloudleaplimited.com

# #423 AR tracing app: a small Chinese team pops up on the US chart, then what?

**What it is** An iPhone tracing app: you prop your phone above paper, the image on screen is overlaid semi-transparently on the camera feed, and you trace the lines. $9.99/$29.99 subscription.

**Why it took off** It hasn't really taken off yet. The US listing alone was retitled "AR Drawing: Sketch & Trace app", stuffed with keywords to catch some search traffic, and the Graphics & Design chart bar is low, so a few ratings a day was enough to chart.

**C** **How you could follow it** Don't build a generic tracing app. Copy its per-store title ASO, make the tracing tool for a specific niche (tattoo stencils, embroidery, cake decorating), and get users with short vertical videos showing "draw it in seconds with your phone propped up."

C grade: category revenue is already public, there are 422 same-name clones, and the top players add thousands of ratings a week and have taken over TikTok. This app has no differentiation and hasn't really broken out; the only thing worth learning is the per-store title trick. Few people know about it yet

Data (updated daily) · launched 2026-09-17 · US store rating 80 · charted in 11-08 of 5 stores

iOS · best category chart rank · by store

US store Australia UK

Data 2026-10-28 → 2026-11-08 (12 days, 12 observations). Lower rank is higher; gaps mean it wasn't charted that day

iOS · rating count · US store

Data 2026-10-28 → 2026-11-08 (12 days, 12 observations). Apple doesn't publish download counts; rating growth is a proxy for downloads.

AR Sketch is an iPhone app that uses your camera to overlay an image on paper so you can trace it. It launched in mid-September and by early November had squeezed into the Graphics & Design free charts in the US, UK, Australia and Canada. It looks like it's gaining traction, but worldwide it has only 77 ratings, while there are over 400 apps with the same name and function on the App Store. This piece covers how it surfaced, how crowded the category is, and the one tactic worth learning from it.

### A one-star review: "Not free like the ads say it is"

In Oct 25 2026, a US user left a 2-star review titled "Not free like the adds say it is":

> Good app, but stinks you have to pay to import photos, Instagram users that use the app say it's free or never talk about a cost.

(App Store US reviews, 10-25)

This review sums up the category: drawing itself is free, but tracing your own photos requires payment, and users found it through Instagram videos promising "free AR drawing." But ads and videos for "free AR drawing apps" are everywhere, so what he saw may not have been this one.

A week later the app's ratings started accelerating. From 10-28 to 10-31 it added only 1 ratings a day; from 11-01 to 11-06 it added 5 to 10 a day, taking its total from 36 to 77 (App Store rating counts, logged daily). In Nov 4 it shipped version 1.0.4, and the last line of the release notes lists a support email, customerservice26@126.com.

### What it is

On the US store it's titled "AR Drawing: Sketch & Trace app" with subtitle "Drawing Projector for Photos"; in the UK, Australia and other storefronts it's "AR Sketch: Trace & Draw." Developer: CloudLeap Limited, launched 2026-09-17, English only, no Android version.

You prop the phone above the paper and the image is overlaid semi-transparently on the camera feed for tracing. Features include opacity, zoom, flip, lock, flashlight, photo-to-line-art, with templates sorted into anime, cartoon, animals, people, flowers and food. Free to download; in-app purchases include two tiers at $9.99 and one Premium tier at $29.99, likely weekly and yearly subscriptions (US store page, 11-06).

In one line: **it's the same thing as the top players, same features and pricing, just smaller.**

### Who makes it

CloudLeap also has a China-store app, "Anniversary - Countdown Timer," with 36,561 ratings; it peaked at #54 in the China Top Grossing chart and is still adding 740 ratings over the last 7 days. There's also "盼盼鸭" and "拼豆助手," launched in August 2026 (#31 Top Free in the China store). The two going global are Beadcraft, the English version of 拼豆助手 (3 ratings on the US store), and this AR tracing app.

This is a domestic tools team that builds subscription paywalls, and its playbook is clear: pick categories overseas that have already proven they make money, build an English version with the same paywall template, ship 4 versions in 7 weeks, and move on to the next one if it doesn't work. As for overseas marketing capability, there's no outside evidence either way.

### Why it charted

**First, the US store got its own name.** Every other store uses the brand name "AR Sketch", but the US store changed the title to "AR Drawing: Sketch & Trace app", stuffing in AR Drawing, Sketch and Trace, the three highest-volume search terms. 11-06 ranks #17 (out of 168 results) for "ar drawing" in the US App Store. Of the 77 ratings, 76 come from the US store, which fits the explanation that it's riding US search traffic.

**Second, the chart bar in this category is low.** It charted in the Graphics & Design free chart: in the US it went #75,11-01 → #56,11-06 → #58 (rank 10-28); in the UK it climbed from #155 to #78, in Australia from #193 to #64, and in Canada it went #127 to #90. Adding 6 ratings a day was enough to land around #60 in the US, and in the UK, Australia and Canada it charted with almost no ratings.

**Third, something happened around 11-01.** Ratings growth rose several-fold, but the new version shipped on 11-04, so the timing doesn't line up. It could be a small ad spend, rising keyword weight, or a rating prompt added to the app. **Unverified.**

It has never charted on any top-grossing list.

### How crowded the category is

There are **422** App Store apps with names containing AR Draw, AR Sketch, Trace & Draw or AR Trac, 175 of which launched in 2026, and 87 launched after July (full App Store catalog, 11-06).

US top apps (App Store US, 11-06,7, new ratings over the last 7 days):

| App | Developer | Launched | US ratings | 7 days |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AR Drawing: Sketch & Paint | Digital Solutions Technologies | 2023-05 | 95,683 | 621 |
| Artrace: AR Drawing & Sketch | Braly (Vietnam) | 2024-01 | 78,852 | 1,908 |
| PicTrace: AR Drawing & Sketch | AvnTech | 2024-07 | 60,125 | 159 |
| Artmate: Drawing Together | Braly | 2025-04 | 18,363 | 1,490 |
| Da Vinci Eye | Da Vinci Eye LLC | 2016-06 | 12,123 | 70 |
| Sketchar | SketchAR | 2017-04 | 9,873 | 21 |
| ARtie Lab | TenetApps | 2025-11 | 6,301 | 148 |
| **AR Sketch (this article)** | CloudLeap | 2026-09 | 76 | 41 |

Its new ratings per week are roughly 2% of Artrace's. On Google Play the numbers are larger: Artrace has 64.8M installs, and AR Drawing: Sketch & Paint has 37.1M (Google Play, 11-06).

The money is public too: Sensor Tower estimates AR Drawing: Sketch & Paint did 10–500k downloads and $10–500k revenue in the US store last month. "Best AR Drawing Apps 2026" review articles and ASO blogs have covered it many times. On Reddit, indie devs are already shipping free, no-subscription versions aimed squarely at the paywall.

Acquisition happens on TikTok, and the top spots are already taken. Search "ar drawing app" and the front rows are almost all PicTrace's official account @pictrace_ardrawing: titles are all "Free AR Drawing app", 11-04 posts several videos a day, and a February one has 658k views. An account called @ar_drawing.anime has a May post, "I can't draw anything until i met this ar drawing app", with 1.2M views (TikTok, 11-06). None of these videos are for AR Sketch.

### The one move worth copying, and the apparent gap

**Changing the title by store** is the only thing in this app worth copying: the US title is stuffed with keywords, other stores keep the brand name. It costs almost nothing, requires no ad spend, and lets a new app with no differentiation rank #17 for "ar drawing" in the US store.

**Adjacent audiences** look like an empty slot: tattoo flash, cake piping, murals, embroidery, and bead patterns all boil down to "trace the image." But don't overthink it. 11-06 Search "tattoo stencil" in the US store and the front rows already have Tattoo Stencil Maker (658 ratings), StencilStudio (455,2026-03 on the chart), and Stencil AI (295,2026-03 on the chart), all new this year. Search "trace tattoo ar" and you'll find Tracer: AR Tracing, which just charted in September. The volume is small, so nobody has gone big yet, but it also means you're not the only one who's thought of it.

### If it were you

**C: Worth learning from, not worth chasing.**

Building an AR tracing app along these lines is the #423 reskin, competing for the same keywords as the leaders who add thousands of ratings a week and post videos on TikTok every day. It hasn't taken off on its own yet: 77 ratings and no Top Grossing ranking.

**Who it suits** : teams that already have a subscription paywall template and can ship an English version a week, using it as a cheap test product; or people who know a specific niche well (tattoo artists, cake decorators, embroidery hobbyists) and can build dedicated templates and workflows for it.

**Who it doesn't suit** : people who want a general-purpose AR tracing app; people who don't make TikTok content and rely on ASO alone; people hoping one app will support a team.

**How to do it** : skip general tracing and pick one vertical. Make the template library and workflow specific to that audience (tattoo stencils should export at print size, embroidery should align to a fabric grid). Write titles per store, using the words that audience searches in the US. Put the paywall at the "import your own image" step, but say so clearly on the store page and in videos so users don't feel tricked. The 2-star review above is exactly that complaint.

**How to get users** : start with ASO, it's the cheapest. To get real volume you'll need short video: vertical clips of a phone propped over paper, drawing a picture in under a minute. That's how the leaders in this category got going.

**When to get in before** : there's no obvious deadline. This category isn't a one-off event and won't suddenly close; it will only get more crowded.

**What would mean you read this wrong** : ① AR Sketch entered the US Graphics & Design Top Grossing chart before December, showing that ASO plus small ad spend can make money in this red ocean even without differentiation, so raise your estimate; ② among vertical tracing apps (tattoo stencils, embroidery), one has gone from zero to thousands of ratings within 3 months, showing the adjacent-audience gap is real and worth acting on quickly; ③ conversely, if AR Sketch's daily rating growth falls back to 1 a day by late November, this spike was just a burst of ads or a rating prompt, and even the lessons are worth less.

### Data and sources

- Store info, versions, IAPs, reviews: US App Store listing and reviews (as of 11-06).

- Rating counts and category chart ranks: daily records from the App Store US, UK, AU and CA stores (10-28 to 11-06).

- Number of same-named apps and competitor ratings: full App Store catalog and US store data (11-06); Google Play installs (11-06).

- Revenue estimates: Sensor Tower (AR Drawing: Sketch & Paint, US store, last month), third-party estimates.

- TikTok videos and view counts: TikTok search for "ar drawing app" (11-06).

- Developer's other apps: China and US App Store (11-06).

- Where it says "inferred" or "unverified", it's an inference.

[iOS store page ↗](https://apps.apple.com/app/id6798560196)

**Research notes: competitor table, acquisition evidence, full research report**

Competitors

| Name | Where | Launched | Scale | How it differs from this one |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Artrace: AR Drawing & Sketch(Braly) | iOS | 2024-01 | US 78,852 ratings, 7d +1,908; Google Play 64.8M installs | The leader, with an Android version, multiple languages, and a TikTok content operation; this product does the same thing at two orders of magnitude less scale |
| AR Drawing: Sketch & Paint(Digital Solutions Technologies) | iOS | 2023-05 | US 95,683 ratings, #9 in the free chart; Sensor Tower estimates US monthly revenue of $10–500k; Play 37.1M installs | The category's revenue benchmark; this product is a clone of it |
| PicTrace: AR Drawing & Sketch(AvnTech) | iOS | 2024-07 | US 60,125 ratings, #16 in the Top Grossing chart | The TikTok official account posts several "Free AR Drawing app" videos a day and acquires users through content; this product has no presence on TikTok |
| Da Vinci Eye | iOS | 2016-06 | US 12,123 ratings, #35 in the Top Grossing chart | Veteran of the category, with a brand and a base of paying users |
| Sketchar | iOS | 2017-04 | US 9,873 ratings; Play 7.11M installs | Veteran, with creators selling it via @Sketchar (single TikTok videos with hundreds of thousands of views) |
| A batch of ARtie Lab / ArtEasy / Sketchify and similar reskins, 2024–2025 years old | iOS | 2024–2025 | US ratings in the thousands to tens of thousands, 7d new ratings 60–150 | Copycats, all larger than this product |
| Free AR tracing with no subscription (an indie dev's project on Reddit) | Android | 2025–2026 | Small | Its pitch is no subscription fee, aimed squarely at the paywall this product uses |

Where users come from

- **Verified** **Store search / ASO** : the US store listing got its own name, "AR Drawing: Sketch & Trace app" (other stores use "AR Sketch: Trace & Draw"), with subtitle "Drawing Projector for Photos." On the US store, "ar drawing" ranks #17 in iTunes search; ratings 76/77 are concentrated in the US store.

- Inferred **Paid ads / Instagram** : a US review from 10-25 with 2 stars says: "Not free like the adds say it is… Instagram users that use the app say it's free"; the Meta ad library has not tracked this app

- Inferred **Rating prompt / ads turned on** : from 11-01, daily new ratings jumped from 1 to 4–10, not in sync with the 1.0.4 version (11-04); cause unknown

- Inferred **TikTok / creators** : a TikHub search on three keyword groups returned only PicTrace / ArtEasy / Sketchar / Artrace, with no sign of this product

## AR Drawing:Sketch & Trace app (iOS 6798560196) research report

> One-liner: This is an AR tracing app (the camera overlays an image on paper so you can trace it) from the small Chinese team CloudLeap Limited 2026-09-17, in a category already flooded with more than 400 same-name clones. It hasn't actually broken out yet: the US store added only 41 ratings in the last 7 days, while the category leader Artrace sits at 1,908 and AR Drawing: Sketch & Paint at 621. The recall signal comes from its placement in Graphics & Design, a low-bar category where it squeezed into the Top Free charts in the US, Australia, UK and Canada, ranking 56–90. The growth levers we can see are mainly a US-only ASO title rewrite, and possibly a little paid acquisition (one review mentions ads and Instagram). It has no real product differentiation.

### 1. How to read the data (correcting for bias first)

- **Ratings are almost entirely in the US** : total ratings 77, of which us 76, gb 1, au 0, ca 0 (appstore library app_profile, 2026-11-06; Apple lookup for the US store: 76 ratings, average 4.61). It also charts in the free rankings in AU/UK/CA, but almost nobody rates it in those stores.

- **The acceleration starts on 11-01** : from 10-28 to 10-31 it added only 1 ratings a day; from 11-01 to 11-06 it added 4–10 a day (appstore.app_day, us). The 1.0.4 version 11-04 shipped (Apple lookup currentVersionReleaseDate), so the update isn't what caused the acceleration. The more likely causes are ads turned on or keyword rankings improving around 11-01, or a rating prompt added to the app. But these are **unverified** .

- **US free chart** (Graphics & Design, genre 6027): 10-28 #75 → 10-31 #57 → 11-01 #56 → 11-02/03 #68–70 → 11-06 #58. Adding 6 ratings a day gets you to around #60, which shows how low the bar for this category is. UK: 155 → 78; AU: 193 → 64; CA: 127 → 90. All are trending up, but from very low starting points (appstore.app_day).

- **No Top Grossing ranking at all** . In-app purchases include AR_Sketch_Premium at two tiers, $9.99 and $29.99, plus a $2026-11-06 tier (App Store web page, scraped via Jina). Likely weekly and annual subscriptions, but revenue can't be verified.

### 2. Competitors (doing the same thing)

In the full App Store catalog, apps with names containing AR Draw / AR Sketch / Trace & Draw / AR Trac number **422** , of which 2026 are 175 years old and 2026-07 launched after 87 (appstore library app table + app_name, 2026-11-06). This is a category that has been run into the ground by reskins.

US leaders (appstore.app_profile, us, 2026-11-06; numbers in brackets are new ratings in the last 7 days):

| App | Developer | Launched | Score | 7d | Position |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Artrace: AR Drawing & Sketch | Braly (Vietnam) | 2024-01 | 78,852 | 1,908 | Free chart #22 |
| Artmate: Drawing Together | Braly | 2025-04 | 18,363 | 1,490 | Free chart #34 |
| AR Drawing: Sketch & Paint | Digital Solutions Technologies | 2023-05 | 95,683 | 621 | Free chart #9 |
| PicTrace: AR Drawing & Sketch | AvnTech | 2024-07 | 60,125 | 159 | Top Grossing #16 |
| ARtie Lab: AR Drawing & Sketch | TenetApps | 2025-11 | 6,301 | 148 | Top Grossing #19 |
| Da Vinci Eye | Da Vinci Eye LLC | 2016-06 | 12,123 | 70 | Top Grossing #35 |
| ArtEasy | AI Art Apps | 2024-11 | 9,597 | 62 | Top Grossing #64 |
| Sketchar | SketchAR | 2017-04 | 9,873 | 21 | Top Grossing #148 |
| Camera Lucida | Camera Lucida | 2010-03 | 2,005 | 4 | Top Paid #11 |
| **This product** | CloudLeap | 2026-09 | 76 | 41 | Free chart #58 |

Bigger on Google Play: Artrace 64.8M installs, AR Drawing: Sketch & Paint 37.1M, Draw Cartoon (Braly) 24.6M, Trace Drawing (GeniusTools) 16M, Sketchar 7.11M (googleplay library app_profile). This product **has no Android version** (CloudLeap not found in the library). Revenue is already public: Sensor Tower estimates AR Drawing: Sketch & Paint did 10–500k downloads and $10–500k revenue in the US last month (app.sensortower.com/overview/6448484908). ASO blogs and "Best AR Drawing Apps 2026" review articles have covered the category (kidsee.app/blog/best-ar-drawing-apps). On Reddit, people are already building free, no-subscription alternatives to push back against subscriptions (reddit r/ProductivityApps, "AR drawing apps aren't worth a monthly subscription").

### 3. Growth tactics (evidence)

1. **Store search / ASO (confirmed)** : the US store has its own name, "AR Drawing:Sketch & Trace app", while other stores still use "AR Sketch: Trace & Draw" (Apple lookup us / gb / au). The subtitle is "Drawing Projector for Photos". The US title packs in AR Drawing, Sketch and Trace, all high-volume search terms. In an iTunes search for "ar drawing" in the US store it ranks #17 (2026-11-06, out of 168 results returned). It only charts in the Graphics & Design category, and its ratings are concentrated in the US store, which fits the explanation of US keyword traffic.

2. **Paid ads / Instagram (leads, unconfirmed)** : A US-store 10-25 2-star review reads "Not free like the adds say it is … Instagram users that use the app say it's free" (Apple reviews RSS). So at least some users came in through ads or Instagram content. But that review may also be about the flood of "Free AR Drawing app" ads for the whole category. Our Meta Ad Library hasn't tracked CloudLeap or this app's iOS id (metaads.advertiser / app_link returned nothing). But that library only tracks about 60 keywords, so no match there doesn't mean no spend.

3. **TikTok creators / official accounts (none found)** : TikHub searches for "AR Sketch Trace Draw", "ar drawing app" and "AR Drawing Sketch Trace app" returned only PicTrace (@pictrace_ardrawing posts several "Free AR Drawing app" videos a day), ArtEasy, Sketchar, Artrace and similar official accounts and creators. This app wasn't among them.

4. **Media / X / communities: none** . A Jina search for CloudLeap only turned up a US logistics company with the same name, and x-radar has no relevant discussion.

5. **Developer background** : CloudLeap Limited (developer id 1856168982) has "纪念日 - 时间倒计时" on the China store (36,561 ratings, best China-store Top Grossing rank #54, 740 new ratings in the last 7 days), "盼盼鸭", and "拼豆助手" (2026-08, China-store Top Free rank #31). The overseas versions include Beadcraft (the overseas edition of 拼豆助手, 3 US-store ratings) and this AR Sketch (appstore library). The support email is a 126 address, and only the English version was localized. This is a China-based tools team: it tests a proven overseas category quickly with an English version first. It uses a subscription paywall, but we have no evidence it has overseas acquisition capability.

### 4. Why it was surfaced / did it take off

- The category demand is real and large: "trace with your phone" makes easy short-form content, and US teens and beginners have kept paying. Top monthly revenue is $10–500k (Sensor Tower).

- This app's lift has three likely sources: (a) US-store ASO picking up some "ar drawing" search traffic; (b) possibly small paid buys or rating prompts starting 11-01; (c) the Graphics & Design Top Free chart has a low bar, and a few ratings a day can get it into the top 60.

- By volume, it has **not broken out yet** : 41 new ratings in the last 7 days, roughly 2% of Artrace's and 7% of AR Drawing: Sketch & Paint's. It also has no Top Grossing rank.

### 5. Differentiation

**No differentiation.** Its features (opacity, zoom, flip, lock, flashlight, category templates, photo-to-line-art) and $9.99 / $29.99 subscriptions are category standards, with no real difference from Artrace, PicTrace or Sketchar. It is English-only with no Android version, so it is weaker than the leaders. It got some traction from ASO plus a bit of traffic, showing up on low-bar category charts, not because the product stands out.

### 6. What others can learn

- Changing the title per store (keywords in the US store, brand name kept elsewhere) is a cheap ASO move.

- The China-based tools-team playbook: reuse one subscription-paywall template to quickly copy overseas categories that are already proven (bead patterns → Beadcraft, AR tracing), ship within 7 weeks with 4 updates, and switch to the next idea if it doesn't take off.

- The real opportunity may be in adjacent audiences: tattoo stencils, cake piping, murals, embroidery/bead patterns. The leaders in those niches haven't been commoditized yet (speculation from the recall card, unverified).

### 7. Uncertain

- Whether the acceleration from 11-01 came from paid acquisition, ASO weight or the rating prompt can't be told apart.

- Whether it runs Meta / TikTok ads isn't covered by our ad libraries.

- Subscription conversion and revenue are completely unknown.

- A US-store rating of 4.6 with almost no long reviews beyond complaints may reflect incentivized ratings (unverified).

This article was written by AI from public data and the data we collect daily. Numbers are sourced, and inferences are labeled.