App Store & Google Play Scraper — App Details, Top Charts and Reviews

What it does

App store data usually means two scrapers with two schemas: one for Google Play, one for the App Store. This actor takes Google Play package names or URLs and App Store IDs or URLs together and returns one normalized row per app, store and country: title, developer, category and genres, star rating, ratings count, rating histogram, installs range and exact install count on Play, price, in-app purchases, content rating, release and update dates, version, minimum OS, description, release notes, icon, screenshots, similar apps and more by the same developer.

It also reads Apple's official top-free and top-paid charts (up to 100 positions, any country) as chart rows, optionally with a full app row for every charting app. That is the way to discover apps, because the actor deliberately has no keyword search: both stores disallow their search pages in robots.txt.

As a review source it returns the Google Play reviews shown on the public app page, up to 20 per app, country and language, with reviewer names, avatars and user IDs stripped. With onlyNewReviewsSinceLastRun on a schedule, it builds up review history over time. Pricing is $0.80 per 1,000 app rows, $0.04 per 1,000 reviews and $0.20 per 1,000 chart entries.

How it works

1. Each entry in apps is recognized as a Google Play package or URL, or an App Store ID or URL, and scraped once per country in countries.
2. Store pages are fetched over plain HTTP, at most 2 requests at a time per store with pauses, and only pages the stores' robots.txt allows (re-checked every run).
3. Fields from both stores are mapped into one schema; anything a store does not publish, such as App Store installs or Play app size, is null.
4. Optional extras: Apple top charts from the official marketing RSS feed via charts, and anonymized Google Play reviews via includeReviews.
5. If a store shows a CAPTCHA or keeps answering 429/403, the actor stops asking that store and returns free error rows for the skipped apps.

Input example

A typical run input (JSON). Every field is also available as a form in the Apify console.

{
  "apps": [
    "com.spotify.music",
    "https://apps.apple.com/us/app/spotify-music-and-podcasts/id324684580"
  ],
  "countries": [
    "us",
    "gb"
  ],
  "language": "en",
  "charts": [
    "top-free"
  ],
  "chartSize": 25,
  "includeChartAppDetails": false,
  "includeReviews": true,
  "maxReviewsPerApp": 20
}

Output example

App, chart and review rows share one dataset and are told apart by the type column, as in this sample:

Pricing

Pay per event: you are charged only for the results you receive, with no subscription. Set a maximum total charge on any run and it stops cleanly at the cap.

Prices are read from the live Apify Store listing when this page is built. The listing is always authoritative.

Use cases

How it compares

If you need deep review history, App Store review text or modeled download estimates, a paid app-intelligence platform covers more ground. This actor is for teams that want public store-page data for both stores, cheaply and on their own schedule.

Limits and honest notes

• No keyword search. Google Play's robots.txt disallows /store/search and itunes.apple.com disallows /search*, so apps are given by package name, id or URL. Use Apple's top charts to discover apps.
• No App Store reviews. Apple's customer-review feed lives under itunes.apple.com/…/rss/…, which Apple's robots.txt disallows, so App Store rows carry rating, ratings count and histogram but no review text.
• Google Play reviews: up to 20 per app, country and language — the "most relevant" reviews shown on the public app page. Google's paging endpoint (/_/PlayStoreUi/data/batchexecute) and /store/getreviews are disallowed by its robots.txt, so there is no deep history and no newest-first sort. Scheduled runs with *Only new reviews since last run* build up history over time.
• Reviewer names, avatars and user ids are never returned, and developer e-mails are kept only when they are company mailboxes (support@, help@ … on the company's own domain). Review text is returned as written.
• Google Play does not publish app size on the web any more (size is null for Play apps); App Store rows have no installs (Apple does not publish them). Fields a store does not provide are null.
• Apple charts: top-free and top-paid apps, 1-100 positions per chart and country, from Apple's official marketing RSS feed. Google Play charts are not supported.
• Plain HTTP from Apify's servers, at most 2 requests at a time per store, with pauses. If a store shows a CAPTCHA, an 'unusual traffic' page or keeps answering 429/403, the actor stops asking that store for the rest of the run and returns free error rows for the skipped apps. No proxies, no CAPTCHA solving.
• robots.txt is re-checked at the start of every run; if a store ever disallows the pages used here, that store is skipped.
• Error rows (app not found in a country, store blocked, chart unavailable) are free. Respects your run budget: set a maximum total charge and the actor stops cleanly at the cap.

FAQ

Use it from code

Run the actor through the Apify API with the input above.

cURL

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/actor-forge~app-store-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"apps": ["com.spotify.music", "https://apps.apple.com/us/app/spotify-music-and-podcasts/id324684580"], "countries": ["us", "gb"], "language": "en", "charts": ["top-free"], "chartSize": 25, "includeChartAppDetails": false, "includeReviews": true, "maxReviewsPerApp": 20}'

JavaScript (Node.js)

// Node.js 18+ (built-in fetch). Set APIFY_TOKEN in your environment.
const input = {
  "apps": [
    "com.spotify.music",
    "https://apps.apple.com/us/app/spotify-music-and-podcasts/id324684580"
  ],
  "countries": [
    "us",
    "gb"
  ],
  "language": "en",
  "charts": [
    "top-free"
  ],
  "chartSize": 25,
  "includeChartAppDetails": false,
  "includeReviews": true,
  "maxReviewsPerApp": 20
};

const res = await fetch(
  "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/actor-forge~app-store-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items",
  {
    method: "POST",
    headers: {
      Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.APIFY_TOKEN}`,
      "Content-Type": "application/json",
    },
    body: JSON.stringify(input),
  }
);
const items = await res.json();
console.log(items.length, items[0]);

Python

# pip install apify-client   (set APIFY_TOKEN in your environment)
import os
from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient(os.environ["APIFY_TOKEN"])
run_input = {
    "apps": [
        "com.spotify.music",
        "https://apps.apple.com/us/app/spotify-music-and-podcasts/id324684580"
    ],
    "countries": [
        "us",
        "gb"
    ],
    "language": "en",
    "charts": [
        "top-free"
    ],
    "chartSize": 25,
    "includeChartAppDetails": False,
    "includeReviews": True,
    "maxReviewsPerApp": 20
}

run = client.actor("actor-forge/app-store-scraper").call(run_input=run_input)
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item)

The run-sync-get-dataset-items endpoint waits for the run (up to 5 minutes) and returns the dataset rows directly. For longer runs, start the run asynchronously and read the dataset when it finishes, as the Python example does. Replace APIFY_TOKEN with your own token from the Apify console.

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