Ctrio Lab · Updated 2026-10-14

App Store reviews API: get iOS app reviews as JSON

Apple has no public reviews API for other people's apps, but the App Store still serves a public customer reviews feed. It returns the most recent reviews of any app as JSON, without a key. The catch: the feed often returns an empty page, and simple scripts then report zero reviews.

Step by step

1. Get the app ID. It is the number after id in the App Store URL, for example apps.apple.com/us/app/spotify-music-and-podcasts/id324684580. If you only have a bundle ID, the official iTunes Lookup API returns the ID: https://itunes.apple.com/lookup?bundleId=com.burbn.instagram.
2. Pick the country. Reviews belong to one storefront, so us, gb and jp return different reviews. There is no "all countries" option; you need one request per country.
3. Read pages 1 to 10. Use sortby=mostrecent for the newest reviews or sortby=mosthelpful. Page 11 and later return an error or nothing.
4. Read the fields. Each entry has id, title, content (the review text), im:rating (1 to 5), im:version (the app version the reviewer used), author.name, updated (the date) and im:voteCount. Every value is a string inside label.
5. When a page is empty, try the other spellings. The three parts page=, id= and sortby= can come in any order, customerreviews can be written customerReviews, and sortby=mostrecent can be written sortBy=mostRecent. That gives 24 URLs for the same page.

Copy and paste script (Node.js 18+)

// node appstore-reviews.mjs 324684580 us > reviews.json
const [id = '324684580', country = 'us'] = process.argv.slice(2);
const perms = (a) => a.length <= 1 ? [a] : a.flatMap((x, i) => perms([...a.slice(0, i), ...a.slice(i + 1)]).map(p => [x, ...p]));
const spellings = (page) => ['sortby=mostrecent', 'sortBy=mostRecent'].flatMap(sort =>
  perms([`page=${page}`, `id=${id}`, sort]).flatMap(p =>
    ['customerreviews', 'customerReviews'].map(base => `https://itunes.apple.com/${country}/rss/${base}/${p.join('/')}/json`)));
const reviews = new Map();
for (let page = 1; page <= 10; page++) {
  for (const url of spellings(page)) {
    const res = await fetch(url);
    if (res.status !== 200) continue;
    const entries = [].concat((await res.json()).feed?.entry ?? []);
    if (!entries.length) continue; // empty cached copy: try the next spelling
    for (const e of entries) reviews.set(e.id.label, {
      id: e.id.label, date: e.updated.label, rating: Number(e['im:rating'].label),
      version: e['im:version'].label, author: e.author.name.label,
      title: e.title.label, text: e.content.label, votes: Number(e['im:voteCount'].label),
    });
    break;
  }
}
console.log(JSON.stringify([...reviews.values()], null, 2));

We ran this script on 2026-10-14 for five popular US apps. It takes under a minute per app, because it may try up to 24 URLs for each of the 10 pages.

How often the feed is empty (2026-10-14)

The empty pages move around. When we read the same app again a few minutes later, different pages were empty, and pages that were empty before had reviews. So no single pass reliably returns all 500. If you need every recent review, run the script on a schedule and keep the review IDs you have already seen.

Common problems

• Zero reviews for a popular app: this is the cached empty copy described above, not a block. Try the other spellings or try again later.
• Only 500 reviews: the feed never goes past 10 pages. For older reviews there is no public source; the App Store Connect API has full history only for apps you own.
• One country at a time: loop over country codes; each storefront has its own reviews.
• Strings everywhere: ratings and vote counts come as strings such as "5". Convert them before you average.
• The marketing RSS generator: Apple's RSS builder for top charts and new apps does not include reviews. Use the customer reviews feed.

App Store reviews on a schedule, as a dataset

We also run the Apple App Store Scraper on Apify, a paid hosted version of this method. You paste app IDs, App Store URLs or bundle IDs and a list of countries, and it returns one row per review with rating, title, text, version, author and date, plus app details and keyword search results if you want them. It tries the equivalent feed URLs for you, filters by date, and a new-reviews-only mode returns just the reviews added since the last run, which suits a daily schedule. It costs $0.08 per 1,000 results.

Open Apple App Store Scraper Hacker News Who is hiring as JSON

FAQ

Sources: iTunes Search and Lookup API; App Store Connect API; our own requests on 2026-10-14.