What Is SDK Data?
SDK data reveals which libraries live inside an app, observed from the binary itself. How it's collected, how it differs from technographics, and who uses it.
- written by
- Adewale ThomasMixRank
- published
- 15 October 2026
- reading time
- 6 min
- filed under
- Technographics & SDK Intelligence
SDK data is information about which software development kits are built into mobile and desktop applications. It is collected by analyzing app binaries, matching each kit's fingerprints against a catalog of known SDKs, and recording which apps ship which kits, and when. Product teams, investors, and sales teams use it to see an app's technology choices without asking the developer.
What Is SDK Data?
An SDK, or software development kit, is a library a developer bolts into an app to add functionality: analytics, payments, chat, advertising. SDK data is the record of which of those libraries live inside which published apps. Two things set it apart from other technology data. It is observed from the compiled app itself, not declared anywhere public, and it carries history, so you can see when a kit arrived and when it left.
How SDK Data Works
- 01Collect the app package: APK and IPA files, plus desktop builds, are gathered from public app stores and direct distribution pages.
- 02Inspect the binary: Each package is decompiled and searched for SDK fingerprints: class names, resource files, permission requests, network endpoints.
- 03Match against a catalog: Fingerprints are matched to known SDKs. Ours is hand-cataloged, which matters because obfuscation and shared libraries make raw pattern matching noisy.
- 04Record the observation: Every match is stored with the date it was seen, so the record says "app X contains SDK Y as of this date," not just "app X uses SDK Y."
- 05Repeat and diff: Apps are re-checked on a schedule. A kit that appears for the first time is an install. One that disappears and stays gone is a removal.
- 06Publish with history attached: The output is a per-app, per-SDK timeline rather than a static list.
SDK Data vs. Technographic Data
| SDK data | Technographic data | |
|---|---|---|
| What it measures | Third-party libraries inside applications | Technologies running on websites |
| Where it's observed | The compiled app binary | Site code, headers, and page content |
| What it tells you | What an app's product team chose to build with | What a company's web and marketing stack runs on |
| Who reaches for it first | Mobile SDK vendors, app-focused investors, product strategy | Martech and sales-intelligence teams |
| MixRank coverage | 24M+ apps decompiled, 100K+ SDKs hand-cataloged, history back to 2008 | 160M+ sites, 2,700 technologies hand-curated, history back to 2012 |
| Refresh | Hourly | Hourly |
Real Use Cases of SDK Data
The installed base as a lead list. If you sell an SDK, every app shipping your closest competitor is a qualified account: they have the budget, the integration capacity, and a standing reason to reconsider. That list, refreshed hourly, is a pipeline rather than a guess.
Removal dates as an early churn signal. When an SDK disappears from an app, the vendor who lost that customer usually finds out weeks later, if at all. An install-and-removal timeline shows the departure as it happens, and a cluster of removals across one category reads like a product problem report written by the market.
Verifying a product claim before a deal. Investors and acquirers can check what an app actually ships: which libraries sit in the binary today, when they arrived, and whether the listing's claims match the code. The binary does not pitch.
Key Benefits of SDK Data
It shows decisions nobody published. An app listing tells you what the marketing team wants you to see. The binary tells you what the product team actually shipped. If a payments SDK shows up in a competitor's app, that is a fact about their roadmap, observed directly.
The timeline is the signal. A static list tells you who uses what. The install and removal dates tell you who is switching. An analytics kit disappearing from a competitor's app is usually visible before any announcement. Our history runs back to 2008, so category-level shifts play out over years, not snapshots.
It joins cleanly with other signals. SDK choices read differently next to hiring. A company installing a machine-learning SDK while posting ML engineer roles is executing, not experimenting. Cross-referencing the two is where SDK data stops being a list and starts being intelligence for business teams.
Freshness keeps it honest. We re-check apps hourly, so an install or removal lands in the data in the next cycle instead of waiting for a monthly rebuild.
Bottom Line
If your question is about what apps actually contain and how those choices change over time, SDK data is the only source that answers it from the artifact itself. Start with one SDK you care about and pull its install and removal history. The timeline will tell you more in ten minutes than a quarter of static lists. Want to learn more about our SDK data? Visit our Mobile App and SDK dataset page to get started.
Adewale Thomas
Adewale Thomas writes about how technology and workforce data answer the questions buyers actually ask, instead of the ones marketing hopes they wonder about. At MixRank, he spends his time between sales-call transcripts, query logs, and the datasets themselves.
