Replying to Store Reviews: Google Play and the App Store
Plenty of developers spend hours agonizing over how to respond to a single low-star review. What actually trips people up more often, though, is the basic mechanics — how many characters you get, whether you can edit a reply once it's posted. This post covers the character limits, editing and deletion rules, and rating reset conditions for Google Play and the App Store, based on their official help docs, plus a few example replies for common situations. If you want to think about how to design the review request itself before you get to this stage, see our in-app review prompt timing guide.
Google Play: 350 characters, plus API quotas
The Google Play Developer API docs explicitly cap replies at 350 characters. If you're planning to automate replies through this API, you'll also want to know the quotas: GET requests are limited to 200 per hour and POST requests to 2,000 per day, with the option to request a higher limit. The docs also note that this API only surfaces reviews for production versions of your app, and that ratings left without any comment text aren't accessible through the API at all.
You can rewrite a reply as many times as you want, but the user only gets notified once — the first time you reply. So if you post something quick and improve it later, the user doesn't get a fresh notification about the edit. Reply permissions can also be delegated per app to a specific teammate, so you can have someone handle replies without giving them full console access.
App Store: no stated character limit
You'll find claims online that App Store replies cap out at 5,970 or 10,240 characters. But Apple's own help page doesn't mention a character limit at all. Rather than trusting either number, it's safer to work off the principle of keeping replies short and on-point.
What is documented clearly: replies can take up to 24 hours to appear on the store, showing as "pending" in App Store Connect until then. You can edit or delete a reply at any time, and it doesn't have to be the same person who wrote it originally — anyone on the team with the right role can edit it. Edited replies get an "edited" label. The required role for this is Account Holder, Admin, or Customer Support.
Can you reset your rating?
Apple offers a rating reset option when you release a new app version. It only resets the star average — existing review text stays put. It applies across all countries and regions simultaneously, and once you release the new version, you can't restore the old rating. For universal apps, the reset only applies to the platform version you reset it for, and app bundles specifically can't be reset at all. This action requires Admin or App Manager permissions.
Whether Google Play has an equivalent rating reset feature isn't something we could confirm through official help docs. Community posts and comparison articles suggest Google doesn't offer this, but we couldn't find an official page that states this outright, so we're leaving it as unconfirmed rather than asserting it doesn't exist.
Both stores ban manipulating reviews
Google's user ratings, reviews, and installs policy bans incentivizing reviews, ratings, or installs with money or goods. Apple's App Review Guidelines 5.6.1 states that responses shouldn't include personal information, spam, or marketing, that you should use the provided API to prompt reviews, and that custom review prompts are disallowed. 5.6.3 separately bans manipulating any App Store experience element — charts, search, or reviews. On paid or fake reviews specifically, the opening of Section 3 (Business) states that developers found doing this can be expelled from the Apple Developer Program.
Example replies by situation
| Situation | Suggested direction |
|---|---|
| 1–2 star bug report | Ask for reproduction details and mention, briefly, if a fix is planned for the next update. "Sorry for the trouble — could you let us know your device and version? We'll look into it for the next update." |
| Difficulty/balance complaint | Clarify whether it's intentional design or something you plan to change. "We're looking into the section you mentioned and plan to adjust the balance in an upcoming update." |
| Payment/ad complaint | Apologize if it didn't behave as stated in policy and point to a support channel. "If it behaved differently than our policy states, that's on us — please reach out through Contact and we'll follow up." |
| Positive review | A short thank-you is enough. "Really glad you're enjoying it — more updates coming soon." |
The common thread here is not to slip marketing copy or requests for personal information into a reply that's unrelated to the review itself — Apple's Guideline 5.6.1 bans exactly that, and Google can treat spammy replies as a content policy violation too. Even with a negative review, responding without getting defensive and acknowledging the problem first tends to read as more credible to other prospective users browsing the page.
Turning replies into a routine
It's more effective to check reviews on a short cycle than to batch them all at once. Catch 1–2 star reviews as soon as they come in, check whether the issue is a bug you can realistically fix in an upcoming release, and reflect that in the reply itself. A vague "we'll look into it" invites the same complaint again from the next reviewer, so it helps returning users more if the reply is clear about whether a fix is actually planned.
If more than one person handles replies, keeping the tone consistent matters too. Since Google Play lets you delegate reply permissions per app, agreeing on a few situational templates in advance keeps tone from swinging wildly between reviews. On the App Store side, since anyone with the right account role can edit a reply, an awkward first draft can always be smoothed out by a teammate later.
Wrapping up
Google Play locks its 350-character limit and API quotas into official documentation, while the App Store doesn't publish a character cap at all — instead documenting a 24-hour propagation delay and the ability to edit or delete. Rating resets are officially only an Apple feature; whether Google offers an equivalent is unconfirmed. Both stores clearly ban manipulated or incentivized reviews, so the safest approach is to keep every reply an honest response to what the review actually says.