# Google Play Reviews — Rating, Text, Author and Date (`alaudinburki/google-play-reviews`) Actor

Read an Android app's Google Play reviews as flat rows — rating, text, author, date and helpful count. Completes the app-store review delta: Apple shipped long ago, Google Play did not, and it needs a browser.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/alaudinburki/google-play-reviews.md
- **Developed by:** [alaudin burki](https://apify.com/alaudinburki) (community)
- **Categories:** Business, Developer tools
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $5.00 / 1,000 results

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

An Actor is a serverless cloud program that runs on the Apify platform. It has two run modes.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.

Apify vocabulary and the platform model are defined once, in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md.

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.

Do not guess an integration path. Every one of them is in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md: the Apify MCP server, Agent Skills with the Apify CLI, the JavaScript and Python clients, the REST API, and the account-free path for an agent with no human to sign in. It also carries the rule on stating cost before the first paid run.

For examples already wired to this Actor's own input schema, see the [API](#api) section below.

Each client library has reference documentation the quickstart does not restate: [JavaScript/TypeScript](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md) (`npm install apify-client`) and [Python](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md) (`pip install apify-client`).

# README

## Google Play Reviews — Rating, Text, Author and Date

Read an Android app's Google Play reviews as flat rows — rating, text, author, date and helpful count.

### The half that was missing

"App-store review delta" shipped Apple's RSS long ago (actors 132 and 136). **Google Play did not**, and
that gap was recorded rather than papered over. This Actor closes it.

### ⚠️ A browser is required

Google Play's review cards do not exist in the served HTML — they appear only after JavaScript runs. A
plain request returns the page without a single review.

### What you get

`appId`, `reviewId`, `author`, `date`, `rating`, `text`, `helpfulCount`, `id` — plus a `by-app` dataset
with the rating average and the star distribution.

### Sample output

```json
{ "appId": "com.instagram.android", "author": "Zexx Khan", "date": "September 4, 2026",
  "rating": 5, "helpfulCount": 339, "text": "Instagram is a great app, and I use it a lot. However..." }
```

### Limitations — read before buying

- **Google Play shows a SAMPLE of reviews, chosen by Google.** It is not the full corpus, and scrolling
  loads more but not everything.
- **`rating` is the reviewer's own star score.** A review with no star stays `null` — it is never
  defaulted to 0.
- **`by-app.ratingAvg` is the average of the reviews you retrieved**, NOT the app's Store rating. Those
  are different numbers and conflating them would be wrong.
- **`date` is Google's display string** (`September 4, 2026`), not an ISO timestamp, because that is what
  the page renders.
- **`helpfulCount` is a snapshot** and changes over time.
- Google changes its markup; a run that extracts nothing **fails loudly** rather than returning an empty
  dataset.

### Pricing

Pay per result.

### Fields

| Field | Type | What it holds |
|---|---|---|
| `reviewId` | string | Identifier of this review at the source. |
| `text` | string | Plain text content of this record. |
| `stars` | number | Number of stars recorded upstream. |
| `helpful` | string | How many users marked the review helpful. |

# Actor input Schema

## `appIds` (type: `array`):

Android package names, e.g. com.instagram.android.

## `maxReviewsPerApp` (type: `integer`):

How many reviews to take from each app.

## `maxItems` (type: `integer`):

Stop after this many rows.

## `scrolls` (type: `integer`):

How many times to scroll to load more results.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "appIds": [
    "com.spotify.music"
  ],
  "maxReviewsPerApp": 40,
  "maxItems": 1000,
  "scrolls": 3
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `results` (type: `string`):

One row per item, with the 4 fields listed under Views.

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "appIds": [
        "com.spotify.music"
    ],
    "maxReviewsPerApp": 40,
    "maxItems": 1000,
    "scrolls": 3
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("alaudinburki/google-play-reviews").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = {
    "appIds": ["com.spotify.music"],
    "maxReviewsPerApp": 40,
    "maxItems": 1000,
    "scrolls": 3,
}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("alaudinburki/google-play-reviews").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "appIds": [
    "com.spotify.music"
  ],
  "maxReviewsPerApp": 40,
  "maxItems": 1000,
  "scrolls": 3
}' |
apify call alaudinburki/google-play-reviews --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,alaudinburki/google-play-reviews"
        }
    }
}
```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/P9nBLyD0Lq8fHpt4U/builds/nL2nfnAaNT4muWNtI/openapi.json