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New Connector: Add iTunes Search API Integration for Apple App Store Aggregate Ratings Current Limitation

Not planned
Kirill Simakov User
  • Edited

The existing Apple App Store Connect connector only provides access to ratings that are accompanied by written reviews through the Customer Reviews API endpoint. Standalone ratings (star ratings without review text) are not accessible via the App Store Connect API, as Apple does not expose individual rating events for ratings submitted without reviews.

Requested Enhancement: Integrate the iTunes Search API (https://itunes.apple.com/lookup) into the Apple App Store connector to capture aggregate rating metrics that are currently unavailable through the App Store Connect API.

Available Data from iTunes Search API:

  • Average User Rating (all-time)
  • Total User Rating Count (all-time)
  • Average User Rating for Current Version
  • User Rating Count for Current Version

Example API Call:

curl -s "https://itunes.apple.com/lookup?id=<app_id>"

Business Value: Many apps receive a significant number of standalone ratings without accompanying review text. Currently, these ratings are completely invisible in our data warehouse, leading to incomplete app performance metrics. While the iTunes Search API only provides aggregate snapshots (not individual rating events with timestamps), capturing daily snapshots of these aggregates would enable:

  • Historical trend analysis of overall app rating
  • Tracking rating changes over time
  • More complete app performance reporting
  • Better alignment with what users see in the App Store

Proposed Implementation: Add a daily sync that queries the iTunes Search API and stores aggregate rating metrics with a timestamp, allowing users to build historical trend reports from these daily snapshots. 

Additional Context: This limitation affects all Fivetran customers using the Apple App Store connector, as the App Store Connect API fundamentally does not provide access to standalone ratings. The iTunes Search API is publicly available and provides the only accessible source for aggregate rating data.

References:

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Comments

1 comment

Date Votes
  • Official comment
    Frank Fivetranner

    Hi Kirill,

    Thanks for sending this in. Your request to have all ratings makes sense to me. However, the search API you linked does not seem to have any way to pull aggregate ratings for app store apps. We will continue to monitor changes to the source API to see if there is anyway we can pull in aggregate ratings, but as of now this appears to be a limitation with the App Store Connect APIs.

    Thanks,
    Frank