Three ways to get your reviews

If you need to know how to download Google Play Store reviews for your own app, Google offers three routes, each suited to a different job. All of them require access to the app in Play Console.

  • Read and filter them in Play Console: best for day-to-day reading and replying.
  • Download CSV reports from Google Cloud Storage: best for analysis and history.
  • Use the Reply to Reviews API: best for connecting reviews to your own tools.
Source

Google's Play Console help page on viewing, exporting and replying to reviews.

View and analyse your app's ratings and reviews (Play Console Help)

1. In Play Console

  1. Open Play Console and select your app.
  2. Go to Ratings and reviews, then Reviews.
  3. Use the filters, which Google says include app version, and sort by rating, date or helpfulness.
  4. Search the reviews for specific words.

The Play Console mobile app offers the same, with filters for date, rating, app version and more. This is the right place to read recent reviews and reply, but it is not designed for analysing thousands of them.

2. Download CSV reports

For analysis, use the reports Play Console makes available in Google Cloud Storage. Google describes them as CSV files that are generated daily and accumulated in monthly files. Find the link to your app's Cloud Storage bucket in Play Console's download reports area, then download the reviews files you need.

  • Download every monthly file you want to analyse, not just the latest, so you can see trends.
  • Keep the review date, rating, app version, language and text.
  • Check for duplicates across files before counting.
  • Store the raw files unchanged and work on a copy.
Ratings data is separate

The Ratings page has its own Download CSV button for chart data. That gives rating trends, not review text.

3. The Reply to Reviews API

Google's Reply to Reviews API lets you retrieve and reply to reviews using your own or third-party services. It is subject to quotas, and Google provides a form to request an increase. Use it when you want new reviews to flow into a support tool, a dashboard or an analysis pipeline without manual downloads.

What to do with them

A file of reviews is only useful once it is organised. Classify each review into topics such as login, payments, search, delivery, performance and crashes, give each mention its sentiment, and compare topic negative share month by month and before and after each release.

Method

App review analysis: a method for product teams.

App review analysis a method for product teams
By version

How to analyse Play Store reviews by app version.

How to analyse play store reviews by app version

Free review snapshot

Want this done for your own reviews?

No commitment. We use your details only to send your snapshot and follow up. Privacy policy

Google's review summaries

Play Console also shows review summaries: the top positive and critical themes from reviews written in English, for apps with enough similar reviews about more than one theme. Users may see representative summaries on your store listing. They are a useful quick read, but not a substitute for analysing every review, including those in other languages.

Summaries

Google Play's AI review summaries.

Google play s ai review summaries

Common questions

Can I download reviews for an app I don't own?

Play Console exports and the API cover apps you have access to as a developer. Competitor reviews are visible on their store listing, but Google does not provide an export of them.

How far back do exports go?

Download every monthly file available to you and keep them; your own archive is the safest way to keep a long history.

Do exports include my replies?

Check the columns in your files. Many teams store replies separately to track response times.

Can I filter by country or language?

Use the filters available in Play Console, and the language and other columns in the export files, to split reviews for analysis.

Checklist

  • Developer access to the app in Play Console.
  • Monthly CSV files downloaded and archived unchanged.
  • Duplicates and edited reviews handled.
  • Reviews classified by topic with sentiment.
  • Results compared by month and by release.

Storing reviews for analysis

Keep one table with a row per review: review ID, date, version, language, rating, text and your own classification columns. Append each new month's export and update edited reviews by ID. A single, deduplicated table makes month-by-month and version-by-version comparisons simple.

Doing this with Falcon

Falcon classifies every Google Play review of your app into themes, sub-themes and specific issues with the sentiment of each mention, kept separate from your store reviews but on the same taxonomy. Negative share by topic and month shows which problems are new or growing, and every issue opens the reviews behind it, with the supporting words highlighted.