Google Play's reviews API only returns the last 7 days: how to keep your history

If you've tried pulling your Android app's reviews through the Google Play Developer API, you've probably noticed something odd: last month's reviews aren't there. That's not a bug. The reviews API only returns recent reviews, and if you don't save them as they come in, they're gone from the API for good.

What the API actually returns

Google's Reply to Reviews documentation lists the limits:

• Only the last week. “You can retrieve only the reviews that users have created or modified within the last week.”
• Only reviews with text. Star ratings without a comment never show up in the API.
• Quotas. 200 read requests per hour and 2,000 replies per day per app. You can ask Google for more.
• Short replies. A reply can be at most 350 characters.

Three ways to keep your history

1. Save reviews as they arrive

Call reviews.list at least once a day (more often for busy apps) and store every review in your own database, keyed by its reviewId. Reviews can be edited, so update existing rows instead of only inserting. This is the only way to get reviews through the API with their text, device and app version as soon as they're written. Setting it up takes a service account with the right permissions.

2. Download the monthly reviews reports

Play Console also publishes reviews reports as monthly CSV files. Find them in Play Console under Download reports → Reviews, or copy the Cloud Storage URI (it starts with pubsite_prod_rev) and download them with gsutil.

1. Good for

   A one-time export of old reviews, or a monthly archive for analysis in a spreadsheet.

2. Not good for

   Alerts. The data is collected daily but published a few days later, so you'll hear about a bad release too late.

3. Read them in Play Console

Play Console's Ratings and reviews page shows older reviews and lets you reply. It's fine for a few reviews a week, but there's no search across apps, no grouping into problems and no alerts.

What we recommend

Combine 1 and 2: download the reviews reports once to backfill your history, then poll the API every few hours to save new reviews the day they arrive. Add an alert for new 1★ and 2★ reviews, and you'll know about a broken release before it shows in your rating.