App Reviews Classifier

Scrapes App Store and Google Play reviews for any list of apps and, by default, adds typed classification columns to every review using jev, a non-generative classifier. You get a dataset you can pivot on immediately: main issue, severity, and boolean-style flags — no prompt engineering, no LLM bill.

Classification columns cost about one tenth of LLM-based alternatives.

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
apps	array of strings	required	App Store numeric ids or URLs (310633997, https://apps.apple.com/us/app/whatsapp-messenger/id310633997) and Google Play package ids or URLs (com.whatsapp, https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.whatsapp). All digits or an apps.apple.com URL means App Store, anything else Google Play.
countries	array of strings	["us"]	Two-letter store country codes. Every app is scraped in every country.
language	string	"en"	Google Play review language (ignored for the App Store).
maxReviewsPerApp	integer	500	Per app and country, 1–20000.
classify	boolean	true	Add the classification columns.
questions	object	preset	Custom jev question schema replacing the preset (see below).
confidenceThreshold	number	0.8	Rows with any choice/score confidence below this get review_needed: true.

Output

One dataset item per review.

Field	Description
platform	"appstore" or "googleplay"
appId	Numeric App Store id or Google Play package id
reviewId	Store review id
date	ISO 8601
rating	1–5
title	App Store only, null on Google Play
text	Review body
author	Reviewer name
version	App version reviewed
country	Store country code
thumbsUp	Google Play only, null on the App Store
replyText	Developer reply, Google Play only
url	Link back to the review / reviews page

When classify is on, each question adds a column named after the question:

Question	Type	Column
issue	choice	issue (label) + issue_confidence
severity	score	severity (0–3) + severity_confidence
mentions_crash	noul	mentions_crash (probability 0–1)
mentions_payment	noul	mentions_payment
mentions_support	noul	mentions_support
mentions_update	noul	mentions_update
would_churn	noul	would_churn

Plus review_needed (true when any choice/score confidence is under confidenceThreshold). issue labels: crash_bug, login_account, payment_billing, performance, ads, support, ux_design, feature_request, content_quality, praise, other.

Reviews with empty text get null classification columns and are not charged. A review whose classification failed after retries gets a classification_error string and is not charged either.

Custom questions

Replace the preset with up to 50 of your own:

{
  "is_refund_request": { "type": "noul", "instructions": "the reviewer asks for a refund" },
  "topic": { "type": "choice", "instructions": "what the review is about",
             "criteria": { "price": "cost or value for money", "speed": "how fast the app is" } },
  "urgency": { "type": "score", "instructions": "how urgent is this",
               "criteria": ["not urgent", "somewhat urgent", "drop everything"] }
}

choice criteria is an object of {label: description}, score criteria is a list of descriptions from low end to high end. Bad schemas fail before anything is scraped.

Pricing (pay per event)

Event	Charged
Review scraped (built-in dataset item)	Once per review row written, USD 0.0001
Review classified	Once per review successfully classified, USD 0.0005

Set classify: false to pay only for scraping.

Requirements

Set TYPESAFE_API_KEY as a secret environment variable on the actor (only needed when classify is true). Get one at typesafe.ai.

Limitations

• App Store: 500 newest reviews per country, maximum. That is the ceiling of Apple's public RSS feed, not of this actor. Add more countries to get more reviews; there is no way to reach older history through this endpoint.
• App Store reviews have no thumbs-up count or developer reply.
• Google Play returns reviews in one language/country at a time; both are inputs.
• jev sees the first 2,000 characters of a review.

Run it locally

npm install
node test.js                                    # self-check, hits all three live APIs
APIFY_LOCAL_STORAGE_DIR=./storage node --env-file=.env src/main.js

with storage/key_value_stores/default/INPUT.json holding the input and .env holding TYPESAFE_API_KEY=....