Why App Reviews?

Apple and Google use completely different APIs, formats, and auth methods. App Reviews handles all of this behind a simple Python API -- no API keys required.

from app_reviews import AppStoreSearch, GooglePlayReviews, Country

# Search for apps
results = AppStoreSearch().search("whatsapp", country=Country.US, limit=5)
print(results[0].name, results[0].icon_url)

# Fetch reviews
reviews = GooglePlayReviews().fetch("com.whatsapp", countries=[Country.US])
for review in reviews:
    print(f"{review.rating}* {review.body[:80]}")

Highlights

Install

pip install app-reviews

Or with uv:

uv add app-reviews

Quick Start

Apple App Store

from app_reviews import AppStoreReviews, Country

client = AppStoreReviews()
result = client.fetch("324684580", countries=[Country.US, Country.GB])

for review in result:
    print(f"[{review.country}] {review.rating}* {review.title}")

Google Play Store

from app_reviews import GooglePlayReviews, Country

client = GooglePlayReviews()
result = client.fetch("com.instagram.android", countries=[Country.US])

for review in result:
    print(f"[{review.country}] {review.rating}* {review.body[:80]}")

Review

fetch() returns a FetchResult containing Review objects:

Review IDs

id is the raw identifier assigned by the source, passed through unchanged. Treat it as unique within a (store, source) pair rather than globally, use source to tell provenance apart, and key any deduplication on (store, source, id).

Ids are not necessarily comparable across sources. On the App Store they definitely differ -- RSS ids are numeric while Connect ids are opaque, with no mapping between them -- so the same review fetched via appstore_scraper and appstore_official carries two different ids. Google Play appears to use a single identifier space for both providers.

For App Store Connect specifically, customerReviewResponses requires a Connect customerReviews.id. RSS ids are numeric and Connect ids are opaque, with no mapping between them, so an appstore_scraper id cannot be used to reply.

Search & Lookup

Find apps by keyword and look up app metadata -- no authentication required.

Search

from app_reviews import AppStoreSearch, GooglePlaySearch, Country, AppMetadata

# App Store -- returns list[AppMetadata]
results: list[AppMetadata] = AppStoreSearch().search("fitness tracker", country=Country.US, limit=10)
for app in results:
    print(f"{app.name} by {app.developer} ({app.rating}*)")

# Google Play -- returns list[AppMetadata]
results: list[AppMetadata] = GooglePlaySearch().search("fitness tracker", country=Country.US, limit=10)
for app in results:
    print(f"{app.name} by {app.developer}")

Lookup

# Look up by bundle ID (App Store) or package name (Google Play)
# Returns AppMetadata | None
app = AppStoreSearch().lookup("com.burbn.instagram")
if app:
    print(f"{app.name} - {app.icon_url}")

app = GooglePlaySearch().lookup("com.whatsapp")
if app:
    print(f"{app.name} - {app.rating}*")

AppMetadata

Both search() and lookup() return AppMetadata objects:

Authentication (Optional)

For higher limits and more data, use the official APIs with your developer credentials.

Requires an Apple Developer Program membership ($99/year).

from app_reviews import AppStoreReviews, AppStoreAuth, Country

auth = AppStoreAuth(
    key_id="ABC123DEF4",
    issuer_id="12345678-1234-1234-1234-123456789012",
    key_path="/path/to/AuthKey.p8",
)

client = AppStoreReviews(auth=auth)
result = client.fetch("324684580", countries=[Country.US, Country.GB])

Requires a Google Play Developer account ($25 one-time).

from app_reviews import GooglePlayReviews, GooglePlayAuth, Country

auth = GooglePlayAuth(service_account_path="/path/to/service-account.json")

client = GooglePlayReviews(auth=auth)
result = client.fetch("com.instagram.android", countries=[Country.US])

Advanced Usage

from app_reviews import AppStoreReviews, RetryConfig

retry = RetryConfig(
    max_retries=5,       # default: 3
    backoff_factor=1.0,  # default: 0.5
    timeout=60.0,        # default: 30.0
    retry_on=[429, 503], # default: [500, 502, 503, 504, 429]
)

client = AppStoreReviews(retry=retry, proxy="http://proxy.example.com:8080")
result = client.fetch("324684580", countries=["us"])

from app_reviews import GooglePlayReviews
from app_reviews.exporters.json import export_json
from app_reviews.exporters.csv import export_csv
from app_reviews.exporters.jsonl import export_jsonl

client = GooglePlayReviews()
result = client.fetch("com.instagram.android")

export_json(result.reviews)   # JSON array string
export_csv(result.reviews)    # CSV string with headers
export_jsonl(result.reviews)  # one JSON object per line

Limitations

• Free scrapers have limits:

  • App Store RSS: ~500 most recent reviews.
  • Google Play scraper: rate-limited and may not return all reviews.

• No historical data:

  • Only the most recent reviews from public endpoints

• Official APIs require developer accounts:

  • Apple ($99/year), Google ($25 one-time)

Documentation

Read the full docs includes guides on the Python API, authentication, export formats, and architecture.

Contributing

git clone https://github.com/firattamurcw/app-reviews.git
cd app-reviews
uv sync --group dev
make test

See CONTRIBUTING.md · Security Policy

Acknowledgements

The Google Play scraping logic (parsing AF_initDataCallback datasets, field index paths) is based on the work done in google-play-scraper by JoMingyu. We re-implemented it on top of our own HTTP layer to support retries and proxies, but the data-structure knowledge originates from that project.

License

MIT