# App Store Review Radar (`titan_coder/appstore-review-radar`) Actor

Every App Store review scraper hands you the same reviews again on every run — and bills you for them. This one remembers what it already showed you and delivers only reviews you have never seen. A quiet day costs nothing at all.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/titan\_coder/appstore-review-radar.md
- **Developed by:** [Radu Furtuna](https://apify.com/titan_coder) (community)
- **Categories:** Marketing, Business
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

$10.00 / 1,000 new review detecteds

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?

Actors are web data automations that power AI and operations. They run on the Apify platform to scrape websites, process data, connect APIs, and automate workflows.
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.
Actors are written with capital "A".

## 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.
The best way to integrate Actors is as follows.

- **AI agents and MCP clients** — the [Apify MCP server](https://docs.apify.com/integrations/mcp.md) at `https://mcp.apify.com` (remote, streamable HTTP, OAuth on first use).
- **Agentic workflows and local Actor development** — [Agent Skills](https://apify.com/.well-known/agent-skills/index.json) with the [Apify CLI](https://docs.apify.com/cli/docs.md): `npm install -g apify-cli`, then `apify login`.
- **JavaScript/TypeScript projects** — the official [JS/TS client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md): `npm install apify-client`.
- **Python projects** — the official [Python client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md): `pip install apify-client`.
- **Any other language** — the [REST API](https://docs.apify.com/api/v2.md).

For usage examples, see the [API](#api) section below.

For more details, see Apify documentation as [Markdown index](https://docs.apify.com/llms.txt) and [Markdown full-text](https://docs.apify.com/llms-full.txt).

# README

## App Store Review Radar 📱

**Watch a list of App Store apps and get paid-for alerts only when a genuinely NEW review appears — not a
one-shot pull, and not a bill for every check.**

Most App Store review scrapers on the Store are a one-time pull: run it, get today's reviews, done. This
one remembers which reviews it already delivered and only charges when a real, new review shows up since
the last check.

### How it works

1. Give it a `monitorId` and a list of `{appId, country}` pairs.
2. Each run fetches Apple's own public reviews feed for each app and compares against reviews already
   delivered for that app.
3. **You pay per genuinely new review** (`new-review-detected`) — checking an app with nothing new is free.
   Re-running the same monitor never re-bills a review you already got.

### Input

| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| `monitorId` | Names this monitor's durable history — required. |
| `apps` | 1–30 objects `{"appId": "284882215", "country": "us"}`. `appId` is the app's numeric Apple ID (visible in the App Store URL). `country` is a 2-letter storefront code. New apps can be added later under the same `monitorId`. |
| `notifyOn` | `new_alerts` (default) fires the webhook only when paid reviews were delivered. |
| `webhookUrl` | HTTPS only; delivers a digest of paid reviews as JSON. |

### Output

- **Dataset** — one row per delivered review: app, country, rating, title, text, reviewer, app version,
  review timestamp, App Store link. Unchanged checks don't appear in the Dataset.
- **Run status** — clear reasons on bad input or a run that ran out of time.

### Delivery and charging guarantee: **at-most-once**

For a single detected review, the dataset write and the pay-per-event charge each happen **at most
once** — never twice. This is not "exactly-once", and we do not claim it is: the right to perform an
irreversible action (dataset write + charge) is granted by Apify's only atomic primitive,
`RequestQueue.addRequest(uniqueKey)`, in a separate named journal queue `<prefix>-<monitorId>-claims`.
Apify's Key-Value Store has no CAS, no conditional write and no ETag, so a KV-based state machine cannot
guarantee it and is kept for diagnostics only.

The trade-off is deliberate: if a run crashes *after* taking the claim, that event may be **lost** (it is
closed as `dataset_unknown` / `charge_unknown` and is never re-delivered) — but you are never charged for
it twice. "We never overcharge" is worth more than "we never miss a row".

Boundaries of the guarantee, stated honestly:

- it holds **as long as the named claims queue exists**. Anyone with account access can delete or recreate
  it from the Console/API, which starts the journal from scratch — an unavoidable boundary of any durable
  storage, not a defect of the protocol;
- it applies **from the build that introduced the claim gate onward**. Runs from older builds against the
  same `monitorId` are not covered, and old builds must not keep running on it;
- `seenIds` eviction is a separate, independent source of possible re-billing (see below).

### What this does NOT promise

- Full historical backfill: each check reads only the most recent ~50 reviews Apple's feed returns for
  that app. For regular monitoring this is normally enough to catch everything new since the last run; if
  an app receives more than ~50 new reviews between two runs, the oldest ones in that burst may be missed.
  `windowFull` in the run coverage flags when a check hit that ceiling.
- Aggregate star rating changes — this actor reports individual new reviews only, not the app's overall
  rating trend.
- A change to an already-seen review's text or rating is not treated as a new event.

### A note on the source

Reviews come from Apple's public, undocumented `itunes.apple.com/.../rss/customerreviews/.../json` feed —
no login, no scraping risk, the same data a browser gets when it requests the RSS view. This is not the
official App Store Connect Customer Reviews API (that requires a developer account and only covers your
own apps); it's a public feed with no published stability guarantee, so its format could change.

# Actor input Schema

## `monitorId` (type: `string`):

Name of this monitor's durable history (a-z, 0-9, dash; up to 40 chars).

## `apps` (type: `array`):

1-30 objects: {"appId": "284882215", "country": "us"}. appId is the numeric Apple ID (find it in the App Store URL). country is a 2-letter storefront code (default 'us'). New apps can be added later under the same monitorId.

## `notifyOn` (type: `string`):

new\_alerts — post the webhook only when new paid reviews were delivered; always — post it every run; never — do not call webhookUrl at all.

## `webhookUrl` (type: `string`):

Optional. Receives a digest of delivered (paid) reviews as JSON. HTTPS only.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "monitorId": "my-apps",
  "apps": [
    {
      "appId": "284882215",
      "country": "us"
    }
  ],
  "notifyOn": "new_alerts"
}
```

# Actor output Schema

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

Every row this run produced. Key fields: appId, country, rating, title, author, reviewUpdatedAt.

## `coverage` (type: `string`):

What this run actually covered and what it charged for: per-target status and reason, rows delivered and rows billed. Enough to reconcile every charge against every row.

## `digest` (type: `string`):

A short human-readable summary of what this run found, written every run.

# 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 = {
    "monitorId": "my-apps",
    "apps": [
        {
            "appId": "284882215",
            "country": "us"
        }
    ]
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("titan_coder/appstore-review-radar").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 = {
    "monitorId": "my-apps",
    "apps": [{
            "appId": "284882215",
            "country": "us",
        }],
}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("titan_coder/appstore-review-radar").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 '{
  "monitorId": "my-apps",
  "apps": [
    {
      "appId": "284882215",
      "country": "us"
    }
  ]
}' |
apify call titan_coder/appstore-review-radar --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,titan_coder/appstore-review-radar"
        }
    }
}
```

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/Sh1JqUeE9wBJvsdMN/builds/NBy4MqE54Jdh6uqGl/openapi.json