How a cleaner app hit #1 on Canada's Tools chart with a five-day budget
What it is An Android cleaner that finds large files, deletes duplicate photos and uninstalls unused apps. No in-app purchases; it earns from ads.
Why it took off Before launch it farmed good reviews and likes, then picked Canada, Sweden and Japan, where the Tools chart bar is low, and concentrated about 600K installs into five days, pushing a new account straight to #1 in its category. The product itself did nothing.
DHow you could follow it Don't copy the cleaning. The only thing worth learning is market selection: for a new package, pick the two or three mid-sized markets with the lowest Tools chart bars and push volume there together. Trade chart position for organic installs, and pick a category where four or five others aren't pushing at the same time.
- Data (updated daily) · first launch 2026-09-24 · 11-07 installs 725,959
Android · Total installs worldwide Data 2026-10-29 → 2026-11-07 (10 days, 10 observations). Google's detail page only refreshes install counts every other day, so a flat day doesn't mean nobody installed.Android · Ratings count (cumulative) Data 2026-10-31 → 2026-11-07 (8 days, 8 observations)
Clean Pro - AI Cleaner is one more Android cleaner that finds large files, deletes duplicate photos and uninstalls unused apps. Its features match dozens of similar apps. It launched in Sep 24, and from Oct 30 to Nov 3 it got about 600K installs in five days. On Nov 3 and 4 it was #1 on Canada's Google Play Tools free chart. Once the volume stopped, ratings dropped. Below: what it is, where the installs came from, where the money comes from, who else was on the same chart, and whether it's worth following.
A five-star "it is great" with 360 people marking it helpful
On its Google Play page in the Canada store, the top review is a five-star from Oct 19 with three words: "it is great". Below it reads "360 people found this review helpful" (Google Play, 11-06).
In Oct 19 the app had only about 10-20 K installs in total (third-party estimate, 16K). A three-word review getting 360 "helpful" votes from roughly ten thousand users is unlikely to be from real users. Around the same time there was a batch of "very nice" and "good" reviews, each with one or two hundred likes. When the store first showed a rating in Oct 31, there were 574 ratings in total: 502 five-star, 71 two-star, and none at three, four or one star (Google Play rating distribution, 10-31). Organic ratings don't look like that (inference, high confidence).
Polish the storefront first, then open the tap. That's the whole playbook.
What it is
The store page lists three features: large-file cleaning (sort by date, preview, batch delete), photo management (find duplicate and similar photos, old screenshots) and app management (sort by size, uninstall unused apps). The name includes "AI", but the description contains no AI features. There are no in-app purchases, and the store page doesn't mark it as containing ads. However, the privacy policy says collected data is used to "improve product experience and ad effectiveness", while the data safety section says "no data shared with third parties" (Google Play and easycleanapp.org, 11-06).
Files by Google and Samsung's built-in device care both offer these features for free, with no ads. Users don't install this one because it cleans better.
How fast it grew
| Date | Total installs | Score | What happened |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 24 | Launched | ||
| Oct 20 | About 16k (estimated) | Review farming had already started | |
| Oct 27 | About 75k (estimated) | A few thousand to over ten thousand a day | |
| Oct 31 | 170k | 574 | First rating shown: 4.63 stars |
| Nov 3 | 667k | 932 | +500K in three days; #1 on Canada's Tools free chart |
| Nov 6 | 726k | 1,120 | Only +60K in three days; dropped to #3 in Canada |
(From Oct 31 these are Google Play's cumulative install counts; the earlier two rows are third-party estimates. The tier shown on the store page is "500K+".)
Two numbers say the most. First, in the three days in Nov 3 it added nearly 500K installs, but ratings rose by only 100, roughly one rating per 5000 installs. Organic growth wouldn't look like that. Second, the rating fell from 31 in Oct 4.63 and by Nov 6 the Canada store page showed 3.5, with one-star reviews rising from 0 to over 160.
On the charts, it first appeared in Oct 29 at #4 on Sweden's Tools free chart, charting on 22 lists that day. In Nov 2 it hit #2,3 in Canada, and on Nov 4 #1 in Canada; its best Tools ranking in Japan was #3, in the US #10, and its best overall Canada app chart position was #17. At peak it sat on 41 charts at once, falling to 6 in Nov 21.
Where the traffic comes from
Bought installs, all in five days. The install curve is a clean block: it starts in Oct 30, peaks in Nov 3, then falls every day from hundreds of thousands to twenty thousand. No new version, no press, no creator videos. Searching its name on TikTok returns a different app, and X had no discussion of it in the last 30 days. I couldn't find which channel it bought on: its package name doesn't appear in the Meta ad library. Comparable cleaners each run twenty to thirty ads on Meta, and not finding it in Google or in-app ad networks doesn't mean it didn't buy there (unverified).
Pushed in from other apps. One Nov 2 review reads: "This application comes after the downloading of an expired application", meaning it arrived after installing another app. A US Q&A site also has a Samsung user saying their phone kept popping up ads urging them to install various cleaners, naming "Clean Pro, Space Cleaner, Storage Clean" (can't confirm they're the same package). The most common cleaner creative is a scary interstitial reading "your storage is almost full" (inference).
Chose charts with low bars. It went after Sweden, Canada and Japan first, not the US. Those countries' Tools charts need only tens of thousands of installs a day to crack the top spots. Once in the top of the category chart, the store's chart page and "similar apps" send a bit more organic traffic. The name "Clean Pro - AI Cleaner" and package name phonecleaner.junk.storage.cleaner pack in cleaner, junk and storage, catching store search.
Where the money comes from
It can only be ads. There are no in-app purchases, and reviews from real users are almost all about ads: "app full advertisement e.g perfumes etc" (10-31), "Full of ads" (11-03), "took over my entire phone so it was unusable" (10-31), "seems like it's trying to take over my phone" (11-03), "stop giving me options to clean up my phone" (11-03). "Taking over the phone" usually refers to off-app ads such as lock screen takeovers, full-screen pop-ups or notification-bar pushes (inference; the exact format is unverified).
Acquisition in Canada, Sweden and Japan isn't cheap. Sustaining five days of 600K installs means either the ad revenue covered the spend, or it was a burst, earn what you can, then swap to the next account (inference). Volume stopping abruptly after Nov 3 fits either case.
Who made it
The developer is BleymarStudio. The store page's "About the developer" says BLEYMAR FERNANDEZ STUDIO LLC, with an address in Midvale, Utah, US, including "Unit A319", which looks like a mail-forwarding address (unverified). The company website bleymarstudio.lat describes itself as a "computer systems design and integration studio", which has nothing to do with making apps. The app's own site easycleanapp.org won't load its homepage, and only the privacy policy page is readable. That policy says it is shared by "Clean Pro / Easy Clean" and mentions collecting battery health and voltage data, yet the store page has no battery features at all. It's one template with the name swapped.
The same account has two more apps: a mini-game, Fractal Storm (August), with a few hundred installs, and a cleaner, Easy Clean (early October), with over ten thousand installs. Mini-game to warm up the account, small cleaner to test, then Clean Pro scaled up: this is a common sequence for accounts like this (inferred).
On the same chart there are several identical ones.
Nov 6, the Canada Tools Top Free chart's top 25 included 8 cleaners:
| Rank | App | Installs | Last 7 days | How long they'd been listed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | Phone Clean Fix(Luvasa Distro) | 278k | +278k | 15 days |
| 3 | Clean Pro(BleymarStudio) | 726k | +651k | 43 days |
| 4 | Hyper Cleaner(JTR Labs) | 977k | +809k | 28 days |
| 11 | Cleanup: Phone Storage Cleaner(Codeway) | 36.5M | +959k | About a year |
| 13 | Daily Cleaner | 1.09M | +92k | 254 days |
| 16 | Smart Clean Pro(JTR Labs) | 1.15M | +667k | 49 days |
| 24 | CleanMas(BetterFly Games) | 13.7M | +851k | 329 days |
| 25 | Junk Cleaner | 730k | +81k | 53 days |
(Google Play Canada Tools Top Free chart and installs, 11-06)
Phone Clean Fix launched a month late and is already being outpaced. JTR Labs alone has two apps climbing the same chart at once. There are 62 clean-named utility apps launched within the last 90 days, and together they've racked up over 540 million installs in 7 days. Above them sit established players like Codeway and iKame, companies with subscription revenue and Top Grossing placements, plus legacy cleaners with hundreds of millions of installs.
So Clean Pro has nothing its rivals don't. The only difference from the other packages next to it is which day it started spending and which countries it spent in.
If it were you
Bottom line: Not worth following. It's not a product opportunity, it's a paid-acquisition chart push, and four or five companies are running the same template on the same chart.
Who it fits: Teams already going global with tools, with paid acquisition accounts, ad monetization experience, and the ability to ship and swap accounts in bulk. For them there's nothing new here. At most, it confirms that tool charts in Canada, Sweden, and Japan can reach the top three with tens of thousands of installs.
Who it doesn't fit: Indie developers and small teams. This game is about budget, accounts, shipping speed, and tolerance for Google Play policy. Product quality barely matters. Review farming, undisclosed ads, and pop-ups outside the app each get you delisted if caught.
What to do: If you want one lesson from it, it's about market selection. Don't start new packages in the US. Check how many daily installs the top ten of a few mid-sized markets' tool charts need, pick two or three with the lowest bar, and concentrate spend there to trade chart position for some organic volume. For the category, avoid cleaning. Choose a tool category with an equally clear function but where no four or five companies are pushing at the same time.
How it acquires users: Mainly paid. Start with countries where category charts are easiest to crack, like Canada, Sweden, Japan, and the Netherlands. Ratings have to be backed by real functionality. Its example shows that a 4.6-star rating bought up front won't survive a week of real users.
Before: No window to speak of. The cleaner category has had this playbook running for a long time. This batch of 9–October launches likely has a lifespan of a few weeks to a few months (inferred).
What would show I got it wrong: ① It stays in the top ten of the Canada and Sweden tool charts after late November, with daily installs not dropping to a few thousand. That would mean ad revenue from accounts like this pays back more than expected, which is worth running the numbers on seriously. ② Developers start adding subscriptions, changing features, and ratings recover, meaning they plan to run it long-term, not just push and leave. ③ The reverse: it and several chart neighbors get delisted or disappear together within a month or two. That is the normal end for this kind of playbook.
Research notes: competitor table, acquisition evidence, full research report
- Competitors
Name Where Launched Scale How it differs from this one Hyper Cleaner / Smart Clean Pro(JTR Labs) Android 2026-10 / 2026-09 977K / 1.15M installs, +7K / +809K over 667 days (googleplay database) Almost no difference: same period, same market (Canada Tools chart), same playbook Phone Clean Fix(Luvasa Distro) Android Around 2026-10-22 278K installs, all within the last 7 days (googleplay database) A later batch. 11-06 is #2 on the Canada Tools chart, stacked ahead of Clean Pro Cleanup: Phone Storage Cleaner(Codeway) Android 2025-11 36.5M installs, +7K in 959 days, has charted in Top Grossing (googleplay database) Mature company with long-term paid acquisition and subscription revenue. Clean Pro has no in-app purchases and is a new account doing a short-term push CleanMas(BetterFly Games) Android 2025-12 13.7M installs, 7 days +851k (googleplay library) Older cohort of similar apps, already at the tens-of-millions level AI Cleaner: Clean up Storage(iKame) Android 2026-03 11M installs (googleplay library) A large Vietnamese publisher with an identical feature list, subscriptions, and past Top Grossing chart placements Files by Google / Samsung Device Care Big-company features Years ago Built into or preinstalled on Android, tens of billions of devices (exact figure unverified) Free, no ads, covers all of Clean Pro's features. Clean Pro gets users through ads, not features - Where users come from
- Inferred Paid acquisition chart push: from 10-30 to 11-03, about +600K installs in five days, then daily adds fell from 166K to 20K. On 11-03, nearly 500K installs came in, but only 102 ratings were added (googleplay database)
- Inferred Bought reviews / bought review likes: at the first appearance of ratings there were 574, only 5-star 502 and 2-star 71, the rest 0. Short reviews like "very nice" and "it is great" have 147 and 353 helpful votes. The average later dropped from 4.63 to 3.90 (googleplay app_snap / review)
- Confirmed Picked low-bar markets to chase category charts: 10-29 first charted as #4 on the Sweden Tools chart, then #1 on Canada Tools and #3 in Japan, at most charted on 41 charts at once (chart_rank)
- Inferred Ads in other apps (scary "storage full" creatives): On JustAnswer, Samsung users say they were pushed by ads to install Clean Pro, Space Cleaner, and other cleaners. Can't confirm it's this package. Meta's ad library shows nothing for this package
- Inferred Store search keywords: the name and package stack cleaner / junk / storage / AI cleaner (Play listing)
Why Clean Pro - AI Cleaner (com.phonecleaner.junk.storage.cleaner) surfaced
Channel: Google Play · Developer BleymarStudio (legal entity BLEYMAR FERNANDEZ STUDIO LLC, Midvale, Utah, USA) · store launch 2026-09-24 · research day 2026-11-06
Bottom line
It didn't run on the product. It's one package in a batch of Google Play "phone cleaner" reskins from 2026 9 through November: a new developer account under a US LLC, listing a cleaner with standard features (large files, duplicate photos, app management). A batch of reviews was bought in its first few weeks. In late October it began concentrating spend in Canada, Sweden, Japan, and other markets with low chart bars, and within 7 days it reached #1 on the Canada Tools Top Free chart. Nearly all installs were bought, and the money most likely comes from ads (reviews say "ads everywhere" and "took over my phone"). The store listing doesn't mark it as containing ads and has no in-app purchases. In the same week and on the same chart, JTR Labs' two cleaners and Luvasa Distro's Phone Clean Fix ran identical playbooks. It's just one of them.
1. How the data moved (googleplay database, app_snap / app_day / app_day_ext / chart_rank)
| Date | Cumulative global installs | Score | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10-20 | 16,180 | – | AppstoreSpy estimate, first observation |
| 10-27 | 74,698 | – | AppstoreSpy estimate, about 7K–13K daily installs |
| 10-29 | 74,734 | None | We started tracking; over 10-28/29 the count barely moved (daily adds 18) |
| 10-31 | 170,468 | 574 | +96k over two days |
| 11-03 | 667,442 | 932 | +497K over three days, averaging about 166K per day |
| 11-06 | 725,959 | 1,120 | +59K over three days, averaging down to about 20K per day |
- +7 over 651,225 days (card). Installs clustered in the 10-30 to 11-03 window, 5 days, then volume clearly tapered. It's the shape of a one-wave paid push, not the slow curve of organic growth.
- The ratings are off: at the first appearance of ratings there were 10-31 574, distributed as 5-star 502, 2-star 71, and the other three tiers all 0 (app_snap.histogram). Real users don't leave that distribution. It looks batch-produced. Afterwards only 35–145 ratings were added per day. On 11-03, nearly 500K installs came in but only 102 ratings were added, about 1:5000, far below organic users. The volume was bought, and those users neither stayed nor rated.
- Early reviews were almost all one- or two-word five-star reviews like "very nice," "good," and "it is great," yet they carried 147, 353, and 133 "helpful" votes (review table, ca region). The likes were fake too.
- The average went from 4.63 (10-31) down to 3.90 (11-06), and 1-star ratings rose from 0 to 163. Once real users arrived, their reviews said: "took over my entire phone so it was unusable" (10-31), "seems like it's trying to take over my phone" (11-03), "app full advertisement e.g perfumes etc" (10-31), "Full of ads" (11-03), "stop giving me options to clean up my phone" (11-03), "Doesn't work as described" (11-03).
- Charts: 10-29 first charted at #4 on the Sweden Tools chart, on 22 charts at once. 11-02 Canada Tools #2,11-03, 11-04 Canada Tools Top Free #1, Japan Tools #3, US Tools best #10; Canada overall best 17. 11-06 fell to Canada #3 and US #24, and the number of charts it sat on dropped from a peak of 41 to 21 (chart_rank).
- Monetization: no in-app purchases on Play (offers_iap=False), and it isn't marked as containing ads (ad_supported=False), but users say there are many ads and it takes over the phone. Ad monetization (interstitials, lock-screen and notification pop-ups) is most likely, with the store label under-reporting. Unverified.
2. Who they are
- Developer page: BLEYMAR FERNANDEZ STUDIO LLC, [email protected], 7304 S Cottonwood St Unit A319, Midvale, UT (Play listing, "About the developer"). The address has a Unit number, which looks like a mail-forwarding address (unverified). The official site bleymarstudio.lat describes a "computer systems design and integration studio," which has nothing to do with cleaning apps. The app's own site, easycleanapp.org, returns 403. This is the common pattern on Play now: a newly registered US LLC with a template website.
- The same account has 3 more apps: Clean Pro (500K+), Easy Clean - AI Cleaner (com.easyclean.trash.cleaner.storage, 10K+, updated 10-03), and Fractal Storm (a mini-game with 100+ installs, updated 08-26) (Play developer page). AppBrain says this account has been active since 2026. Mini-game to warm up the account, then a cleaner (Easy Clean) to test, then Clean Pro scaled up: that's the common sequence for accounts like this.
- The com.phonecleaner.* package prefix shows up across 4 other developers' cleaners in the database (ngaoschos, Animeni, Amobear, Ludo Land). They're unrelated, which shows the package name itself is a stacked SEO keyword.
3. Competitors: who else is doing the same thing
At the same time, on the same chart, everything around it is its kind. 11-06 has 25 cleaners in the top 8 of the Canada Tools Top Free chart (v_chart):
| Rank | App | Developer | Installs | 7 days | Days listed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | Phone Clean Fix | Luvasa Distro | 278k | +278k | 15 |
| 3 | Clean Pro | BleymarStudio | 726k | +651k | 43 |
| 4 | Hyper Cleaner | JTR Labs | 977k | +809k | 28 |
| 11 | Cleanup: Phone Storage Cleaner | Codeway | 36.5M | +959k | 350 |
| 13 | Daily Cleaner | Music Media Studio | 1.09M | +92k | 254 |
| 16 | Smart Clean Pro | JTR Labs | 1.15M | +667k | 49 |
| 24 | CleanMas | BetterFly Games | 13.7M | +851k | 329 |
| 25 | Junk Cleaner | CardAccount | 730k | +81k | 53 |
The database has 90 tool apps with "clean" in the name that listed within 62 days, adding 7M installs over 5.42 days combined (googleplay app_profile). Bigger veterans: Phone Cleaner - AI Cleaner (Brain Trust, 102M), Clean Master Ultra Security (89.7M), iKame's AI Cleaner (11M), CleanX (4M). Big-company features: Files by Google and Samsung's device care both include junk cleaning, large file removal, and duplicate photo detection. Clean Pro has no feature they don't already have.
Compared to these, Clean Pro has no product differentiation: its feature list (large files, duplicate photos, app management) is identical to Codeway Cleanup and iKame AI Cleaner, and the "AI" in the name doesn't correspond to any visible AI feature. What's different is only when and where it spent.
4. Where users come from
- Paid chart push (inferred, high confidence): the shape of 5 days of +600K, the ratio of installs to ratings at 5000:1, and a first-day batch of 5-star reviews with inflated likes all point to paid acquisition. I couldn't find where it was spent:
- Meta's ad library (metaads.app_link) has no record of this package name. Similar apps com.fc.ai.aicleaner and com.dg.cleanup.space are running 20–35 live ads on Meta. Google and TikTok ad libraries aren't tracked here, so no results there doesn't mean no ads.
- Cleaner apps are usually promoted through rewarded and interstitial ads inside other apps (the scary "your storage is almost full" creatives). A JustAnswer thread has a Samsung user complaining about constant ads pushing various cleaners, naming "Clean Pro, Space Cleaner, Storage Clean" (justanswer.com/android-devices/w6wjh-…, can't confirm it's this package).
- Pick markets, go for small charts: Start with Sweden (where it's 10-29 ranked #4), Canada, and Japan. Their utility category charts have low entry barriers. Once you land near the top of a category chart, store charts and "similar apps" recommendations bring in a chunk of organic installs on their own. This is the most common playbook for cleaners, VPNs, and PDF readers on Google Play.
- Store search: the name "Clean Pro - AI Cleaner" and the package phonecleaner.junk.storage.cleaner are keyword-stuffed for "cleaner / junk / storage / AI cleaner" searches (rankings not verified).
- Content, creators, press: searching "Clean Pro AI Cleaner" on TikTok turns up a different app called AI CleanPro; x-radar shows 30 posts in the last 0 days; no press coverage. No content channel.
5. Why it took off
- The demand never goes away: "storage almost full" is a constant pain point for Android users. Cleaners are one of the most mature categories on Play for paid acquisition that pays back, and the creatives are easy to produce with high conversion.
- The money comes from ads: the app is free with no in-app purchases. Reviews complaining about "too many ads" and "taking over my phone" suggest it pushes ads both inside and outside the app. Install costs in markets like Canada, Sweden, and Japan aren't cheap, so sustaining 5 days at 600k implies ad revenue covers it, or it's a short push before switching to a new account (unverified).
- Easy to copy, quick to reskin: open a new LLC account, template a website, buy fake reviews, and concentrate paid installs on small-country utilities charts. At least 3–4 others, like JTR Labs and Luvasa Distro, are doing exactly the same thing in the same Canadian utilities chart.
- The product itself isn't the reason: its features are no different from dozens of competitors, and once real users arrive the rating drops by 0.7.
6. How many people have seen it
Almost no one knows about it yet. No public revenue, no press, 0 posts on X. It only shows up on auto-generated chart pages from Sensor Tower, Appfigures, and Similarweb. But this playbook has long been crowded on Play.
7. What to borrow
- "Mid-sized markets where utilities charts are easy to enter (CA, SE, JP, NL)" plus "5 days of concentrated spend" can push a new account into the top 3 of a category chart. Our database surfaces opportunities like this every day.
- The risks are obvious too: a crashing rating, or Play policy violations (misleading ad disclosures, disruptive ads, fake reviews), could get the app pulled at any time. Accounts like this usually last only a few weeks to a few months, which is why they keep reskinning.
8. Still unclear
- Which channel the spend went through (Google UAC, AppLovin/Unity in-app ads, or Meta), and what a single install cost.
- Which ad-monetization SDK it uses, and whether it runs policy-violating ads like lock-screen or overlay ads. Also why Play doesn't label it "contains ads."
- Who is behind BLEYMAR FERNANDEZ STUDIO LLC, and whether it's the same team or media buyer as JTR Labs and Luvasa Distro.
- Why 11-03 spend stopped: did they pause, run out of budget, or prepare the next account?
Sources
- googleplay database (agent-im server): app, app_snap, app_day, app_day_ext (AppstoreSpy estimates), chart_rank, v_chart, review, app_profile, 2026-10-29 to 11-06
- metaads database app_link (2026-11-01 to 11-06)
- Play listing page play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.phonecleaner.junk.… (About the developer, last updated 2026-10-30, 500K+ install tier)
- Play developer page play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=BleymarStudio
- www.bleymarstudio.lat/ (company website); www.appbrain.com/dev/BleymarStudio/ (search summary: 3 apps, active since 2026)
- www.justanswer.com/android-devices/w6wjh-samsung-520-plus-ad… (user says ads pushed them to install cleaners like Clean Pro; can't confirm it's the same app)
- TikHub TikTok search, x-radar search (2026-11-06, no relevant results)