Same charger, 22.90 or 15.90 crowns: a Czech EV owner blogged for a year, and two weeks after launch the app hit the top 10 of the navigation chart

A Czech EV charging app called WattBox launched in Oct 192026 and, 9 days later, ranked #7 on the Czech App Store free navigation chart. Ahead of it was the national utility's charging app, behind it the veteran global player PlugShare. Kilowatka, which launched two weeks earlier with nearly the same pitch, still has zero ratings. The two apps don't differ in features. They differ in the website WattBox's owner had been writing for a year. This piece covers how it got going, where the money comes from, and whether you can copy the playbook.

A man who got an EV and couldn't find the answers, so he wrote them himself

Jan Machač used to drive a Škoda Superb, then switched to an electric Enyaq 85x. The questions he wanted answered were specific: how much does a charge cost outside, how much range do you lose in winter, how do you plan charging on a long trip. Neither the manufacturers' nor the operators' materials answered them, so he worked it out and wrote it up himself.

It started as a Škoda fan blog called Škodabox. In January 2026 it was renamed WattBox and repositioned as a data publication for the whole Czech EV scene. In February a new site went up with a charging map, a model catalog, and a calculator. In July it added a monthly "charging price index" and route planning. In October 19 the app launched on iPhone, Android, CarPlay, and Android Auto together. The footer names the operating company as NOAH Natural Products s.r.o., a firm whose core business is health supplements and which has very small revenue. It looks like his own shell company. It is still a one-person operation, and the site says: "Messages are always answered by Jan himself, not a form bot."

What it is

A charging map where each charger shows three things right beside it: power, price, and whether a spot is free now. The cheapest price on the map lights up green. A row of quick filters across the top: available now, my cards, under 10 crowns, over 50 kW.

What sets it apart from other maps is "your price." The Czech Republic has more than 22 charging networks, each setting its own prices, plus a range of membership plans. WattBox lets you enter your car and the charging cards you hold, then calculates what a full charge costs you: your card rate, plus connection fees, plus time-based fees, plus the electricity you burn driving there. It warns you when a cheap-looking charger 20 km away actually costs more once you factor in the drive.

On top of that it packs in a lot more: route planning, 6 calculators (EV vs. petrol, winter range, battery degradation, total cost of ownership), a garage, reminders for inspection and insurance renewals, and receipts for charging on company cars. It's free and works without signing up.

A five-star review from October 30 reads: "Finally an app that sets up every operator's registration in one go, including the discount price lists. You see on the map where to charge and what it costs. Simple, super efficient!!!! Hats off, this should have existed from the start."

How hard the chart is to crack: one or two ratings a day is enough

First, put the numbers where they belong.

App Store Czech storefront, 10-28 to 11-06.

Over two-plus weeks it got 30 ratings. In the US that would count for nothing. But the Czech navigation free chart has a low bar: one to five new ratings a day keeps you in the top 20. On the same day (11-06), PlugShare sat at #41 on this chart with 1,381 Czech ratings, and Chargemap at #166. Judging by rating counts, WattBox's downloads are likely in the low thousands (estimate). It also charted on the Slovak navigation chart, but at #62 to #199, with zero ratings.

So don't read "#7 on the chart" as "it blew up." It's a new app with a clean start in a small country and a small category. What's worth watching is how people installed it on day one.

Where users came from: readers first, app second

The answer is almost all on the site, and they say it openly. The wattbox.cz partnership page says: about 27,300 visits in the last 30 days, up 50% on the prior 30 days; Google search 43%, direct 25%, paid ads 11%, Facebook and Instagram 9%. 93% are Czech, 71% use mobile. There are also 512 email subscribers and 113 contributors uploading photos and check-ins to the map.

That traffic was built page by page. The site has 109 blog posts, 205 articles and news items, a catalog of 189 car models, and bulk-generated pages by city, operator, and route (charging maps for Prague, ČEZ chargers, how to charge from Prague to Brno). It says it ranks #1 on Google for "best wallbox," and #2 for "best electric car," "how much does Tesla Supercharging cost," and "Enyaq vs. Elroq." These are the searches of people about to buy a car, or who just bought one.

On launch day, that audience was pointed to the app through several routes:

• Download links all over the site. On the homepage, in articles, and in the footer, with tracking tags on each link so you can see which spot drove the install. The web and the app share one account: cars, cards, and favorite chargers saved on the site are there when you log into the app.
• Small Facebook ad buys. Searching "wattbox" (Czech) in the Meta ad library turns up roughly 22 ads, with the campaign named "aplikace-2026-10" (App 2026, October). The copy leans on the price gap: the same ČEZ charger might cost you 22.90 or 15.90 crowns per kWh, and you can see the difference free by signing up. The gap is over 30%.
• EV owner groups and forums. Its articles get shared into the Facebook group "Czech and Slovak EV owners and enthusiasts," and show up in the electric-car section of the long-running forum Okoun.
• Trading free data for coverage. The monthly charging price index and charger reliability index say "free to cite with attribution," and the calculator can be embedded on other sites. Czech car sites tipcars and evmagazin have both mentioned it in beginner guides.

There's almost no trace of it on X, Reddit, or TikTok. We found no sign of inflated numbers or chart-gaming.

Same idea, why is Kilowatka at 0

Kilowatka was built by indie developer Jan Piskac and launched in Oct 6, two weeks before WattBox. The product is nearly identical: every network on one map, showing "what it costs with your card," with each price tagged with its source and check date. Two differences: it puts the most important number, "what a charge costs for your car," behind a paid subscription, and it has no website behind it and no readers. As of early November it has 0 Czech ratings and has never charted.

This is the comparison to remember from this piece: in a small market, getting the product right is just the entry ticket. Whether people install it on day one depends on how big an audience you built beforehand.

The other competitors look roughly like this:

WattBox doesn't take payment or start charging. It only compares prices across networks. Its angle: it runs on iPhone plus CarPlay, prices are calculated for your card, and it's the one in Czech.

Where the money comes from: very little so far

The app is free. The plan is to earn elsewhere, and the prices are already listed on the website:

• Listing on the map as a carrier-certified partner: from CZK 2,000 per month (about ¥600);
• Sponsored articles from CZK 8,000, with a median of 295 readers in the first month for new articles;
• Affiliate commissions of 3–8%, for example on home chargers;
• Expense-report receipts for company-car charging: trial until Jan 31, 2027, then the first car is free and each extra car costs CZK 2,990 per year. This is the first point where users pay.

From the outside, there's no way to tell whether these quoted prices lead to actual sales. At the current scale, revenue is very small (my estimate). The moat isn't the data either: charger locations come from official registries and prices from carriers' public price lists, so anyone can scrape them. What it has built up is content, search rankings, and the photos and check-ins that 113 contributors have uploaded to the map.

If it were you

In one line: the app itself isn't hard to build. What's hard is the year behind it. If you want to follow, follow the path of 'build a local data site first, then launch an app,' and do it in a country or category nobody has covered yet.

• Who it suits: people who already own an EV in a small country or minority-language market (or know some local consumer market well), and who are willing to spend six months to a year writing content and building search traffic. Developers who can build programmatic pages (generated in bulk by city, brand, or route) have an edge.
• Who it doesn't suit: people who want to ship an app and wait for organic installs. Kilowatka has already tried that: similar product, 0 rating. It's also not for anyone who wants quick money. Monetization right now is B2B listings and sponsored articles, which will most likely only cover costs within a year.
• How to do it: pick a country with lots of charging networks, messy pricing, and little local-language content. Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Poland are all worth a look. Note that WattBox's map already covers chargers in eight countries, including Austria, Poland, Germany, and Hungary, but its content and price comparisons only cover the Czech Republic. Your opening is local-language content and local card pricing. First, organize each network's price list into structured data and publish a monthly price index. Use model, city, carrier, and route pages to capture search. Launch the app once the site reaches tens of thousands of monthly visits, and share accounts between the web and the app. You can also change the category: fuel, parking, and home electricity plans all share the same problem, where the same thing is priced differently by each provider and nobody calculates it for you.
• How to get users: search traffic as the base; free price indexes that media can cite in exchange for coverage; rankings shared in local EV owner groups; and a small Facebook ad budget at app launch, with ad copy that puts the price gap front and center, like 'Same charger, 22.90 or 15.90?'
• Why timing matters: EV registrations in Europe keep rising (data cited by WattBox: Czech registrations in the first 10 months of this year were up 37% year on year, not independently verified), and new owners keep arriving every year. The real time pressure comes from big local media. Once a site like Kde Nabít, which already has traffic, adds an app and card-based price comparison, you're too late. So first check whether the country you're targeting already has one.
• Signs you've got it wrong: after six months of writing, the site still gets only a few thousand monthly visits and can't break into search rankings. That would mean people in that country aren't searching for these things online. Or, after the app launches, few site readers switch to it and the rating doesn't climb. That would mean price comparison isn't a high-frequency need and people still just use their own carrier's app.

One more note for anyone hunting for opportunities on the charts: the 'top 10' in a small country or niche category sometimes just means one or two new ratings a day. Look at how much the rating count grew first, then at the rank.