Data study · App Store + Google Play · June 19, 2026
We read 4,002,367 of the most recent reviews across the top apps. The verdict is split down the middle: on the App Store 43.3% are 5★ and 36% are 1★ — the 2–4★ middle is barely 20.7%. Recent reviews run far harsher than lifetime ratings, and that gap is where the story is.
4,002,367
recent reviews analyzed — 1,161,833 App Store, 2,840,534 Google Play.
3.15★
App Store avg (recent)
3.86★
Google Play avg (recent)
Recent-review sentiment, not lifetime store ratings — see methodology.
79.3%
of App Store reviews are 5★ or 1★ — people love it or hate it. The 2–4★ middle is just 20.7%. Reviews are bimodal, not bell-curved.
3.15 vs 3.86
average recent score — the App Store runs ~0.71★ harsher than Google Play (36% vs 21.1% one-star).
3
Food delivery & payments dominate the most-criticized apps — Domino's Pizza USA, Pizza Hut - Delivery & Takeout, Venmo draw mostly 1★ recent reviews.
4.0M
recent reviews analyzed across 104 top apps, both stores — a live read on what users are saying right now, not a lifetime average.
Star ratings don't cluster around the middle — they pile up at the extremes. Both stores are U-shaped, but the App Store's 1★ spike is far taller. A 3★ review is the rarest kind there is.
App Store — 1,161,833 recent reviews
Google Play — 2,840,534 recent reviews
Average recent score — App Store vs Google Play
21.1% one-star · 2,840,534 reviews
36% one-star · 1,161,833 reviews
Ranked by the share of recent reviews at the extremes. Read these as a live mood, not a verdict on quality: a daily-use app with a recent outage can sit near the bottom while its lifetime rating stays high.
Most loved — highest share of 5★ recent reviews
| App | Store | 5★ share |
|---|---|---|
| 抖音极速版 | App Store | 97.8% |
| Video Editor & Maker - InShot | Google Play | 86.2% |
| 红果短剧 - 海量热门短剧随心看 | App Store | 84.8% |
| PUBG MOBILE | Google Play | 84.6% |
| Free Fire: Fire Kickoff | Google Play | 84.1% |
| Wells Fargo Mobile® | App Store | 81.4% |
| Subway Surfers | Google Play | 80.6% |
| Paytm: Secure UPI Payments | Google Play | 78% |
| ChatGPT | Google Play | 77.9% |
| Google Play services | Google Play | 77.7% |
Most criticized — highest share of 1★ recent reviews
| App | Store | 1★ share |
|---|---|---|
| 王者荣耀 | App Store | 93.6% |
| 酷狗音乐 - 就是歌多 | App Store | 80.8% |
| Domino's Pizza USA | App Store | 79.8% |
| 火影忍者 | App Store | 76% |
| 金铲铲之战 | App Store | 75.8% |
| 淘宝特价版 | App Store | 74.4% |
| Pizza Hut - Delivery & Takeout | App Store | 74.2% |
| Venmo | App Store | 74.2% |
| 抖音 | App Store | 68.8% |
| McDonald's | App Store | 68.7% |
Average recent-review score across the analyzed apps in each category. Games and creative tools earn the warmest recent reviews; business, finance and the big social/entertainment apps take the hardest hits.
“We are really happy to say that he have been an excellent driver, very friendly and helpful”
App Store
“You can find almost every song you want to listen too. Have been using for many years and have a playlist for every mood and occasion. Spent several hours looking at and finding new artist and songs for my playlist.”
App Store
“Good but bro don’t separate us from social I’m tired I can’t chat with my brother”
App Store
“This is by far THE BEST STRATEGY GAME i've ever played as in no other strategy game can compete.I have read other peoples coments saying some of the stuff takes to lomg to build but i feel bad for them bcs they are just impatient people …”
Google Play · 69 found helpful
“Overloaded with Ai slop especially in shorts. I wish you could disable them completely and remove them from fyp recommendations. Without premuim its constant repetitive adds that are unskippable. Youtube seems more concerned with keeping…”
App Store
“Nothing but a marketing tool for fakebooks financial gain. It’s used to be better years ago.”
App Store
“I cant open pinterest with my data it open only on wifi as if my phone is also iPhone 14”
App Store
“latest update has slowed down the apps performance. Please update immediately.”
App Store
Verbatim recent reviews pulled live from the dataset (most-helpful and lowest-scoring), lightly truncated. English-language sample of a multilingual corpus.
Crawlora pulls the most recent reviewsof the top apps by popularity — Apple’s RSS feed returns roughly the 500 newest reviews per app per storefront; Google Play is read newest-first. So every figure here is recent-review sentiment, which is systematically lower than an app’s lifetime star rating: people who just hit a bug, an outage, a price hike or a bad update are over-represented in the newest reviews. The 3.15★ / 3.86★ averages and the “most-criticized” ranking are a read on current mood, not overall quality — Domino’s or Venmo charting near the bottom here still carry high lifetime ratings in the app catalog.
Per-app and per-category figures cover the 104 top apps we sampled (≥80 reviews to rank), attributed by app id. Star counts are exact (bucketed by score); samples are verbatim, English-filtered from a multilingual corpus.
Query a single app’s reviews
# Most-helpful recent 1-star reviews of an app (App Store)
curl "https://api.crawlora.net/api/v1/datasets/apps-reviews/search?store=ios&app_id=310633997&min_score=1&sort=helpful_desc" \
-H "x-api-key: $CRAWLORA_API_KEY"Cite this
Crawlora (2026). App Reviews Dataset. 4,002,367 recent reviews; App Store avg 3.15★, Google Play avg 3.86★. https://crawlora.net/datasets/apps-reviews.
The same figures as plain HTML tables — easy to copy, and machine-readable for search engines and AI answer engines that can't parse a chart.
| Category | Avg ★ | 5★ % | 1★ % | Reviews |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arcade | 4.58 | 80.6% | 5.6% | 1,990 |
| Photography | 4.45 | 77% | 8.2% | 7,164 |
| Art & Design | 4.43 | 73.6% | 7% | 3,582 |
| Casual | 4.38 | 74.8% | 9.6% | 3,383 |
| Productivity | 4.18 | 72.3% | 15.2% | 18,760 |
| Action | 4.14 | 72.4% | 17% | 11,144 |
| Tools | 4.10 | 69.3% | 16.2% | 8,756 |
| Sports | 4.08 | 69.3% | 17.7% | 6,567 |
| Strategy | 3.99 | 64.5% | 18.5% | 5,970 |
| Education | 3.98 | 59.6% | 14.3% | 12,149 |
| Communication | 3.85 | 61.9% | 21.3% | 27,860 |
| Maps & Navigation | 3.79 | 64% | 25.2% | 2,587 |
| Music | 3.69 | 54.7% | 22.5% | 9,500 |
| Shopping | 3.60 | 55.3% | 27% | 20,363 |
| Video Players & Editors | 3.60 | 56.6% | 26.8% | 3,383 |
| Adventure | 3.59 | 55.2% | 26.7% | 1,592 |
| Music & Audio | 3.59 | 52.8% | 24.9% | 3,184 |
| Social | 3.58 | 56.5% | 28.7% | 14,527 |
| Finance | 3.55 | 56.6% | 29.4% | 5,042 |
| Travel | 3.35 | 53.2% | 34.8% | 10,000 |
| Food & Drink | 3.34 | 50.6% | 34.4% | 7,394 |
| Lifestyle | 3.14 | 39.4% | 32.4% | 12,684 |
| Games | 3.00 | 39.2% | 40.2% | 11,802 |
| Social Networking | 2.96 | 39.3% | 40.7% | 19,499 |
| Utilities | 2.87 | 39.8% | 46.7% | 1,000 |
| Photo & Video | 2.82 | 34.6% | 43.3% | 30,256 |
| Entertainment | 2.72 | 31.9% | 45% | 32,631 |
| Book | 2.55 | 34.8% | 56.4% | 500 |
| Business | 1.86 | 13.5% | 67.4% | 2,796 |
| App | Store | 1★ % | Reviews |
|---|---|---|---|
| 王者荣耀 | App Store | 93.6% | 500 |
| 酷狗音乐 - 就是歌多 | App Store | 80.8% | 500 |
| Domino's Pizza USA | App Store | 79.8% | 500 |
| 火影忍者 | App Store | 76% | 500 |
| 金铲铲之战 | App Store | 75.8% | 500 |
| 淘宝特价版 | App Store | 74.4% | 500 |
| Pizza Hut - Delivery & Takeout | App Store | 74.2% | 500 |
| Venmo | App Store | 74.2% | 500 |
| 抖音 | App Store | 68.8% | 500 |
| McDonald's | App Store | 68.7% | 499 |
| ADP Mobile Solutions | App Store | 67.4% | 2,796 |
| Google Pay: Save, Pay, Manage | App Store | 66.2% | 500 |
Recent app reviews are strongly polarized, not bell-curved. Across 4,002,367 recent reviews of the top apps, 79.3% of App Store reviews are either 5-star (43.3%) or 1-star (36%) — the 2–4 star middle is only 20.7%. Google Play skews more positive (61.7% 5-star, 21.1% 1-star) but is polarized too.
Because this dataset captures the most RECENT reviews (Apple's RSS feed returns ~500 newest per app; Google Play is newest-first), not an app's lifetime ratings. Recent reviews over-represent users with a current complaint — an outage, a bad update, a pricing change — so recent-review sentiment runs well below the lifetime star average shown in the app catalog. That gap is the signal: it surfaces what people are unhappy about right now.
In this snapshot, food-delivery and payment apps dominate the most-criticized list — 王者荣耀, 酷狗音乐 - 就是歌多, Domino's Pizza USA, 火影忍者 all draw a majority of 1-star recent reviews, typically over outages, fees and failed orders. Games and AI assistants lead the most-loved list (e.g. ChatGPT).
Call GET /datasets/apps-reviews/search with an x-api-key header. Filter by store (ios|android), app_id, country and min_score, and sort by recent, score or helpfulness. It returns normalized JSON and bills pay-on-success — no crawl to run.
Pull recent reviews for any app — by store, country, score or helpfulness — from the App Store and Google Play through one REST API. Clean JSON, no parsing, pay on success. Track sentiment, mine complaints, or benchmark competitors.