What Apple and Google actually document about developer replies

Apple does not publish a limit

The two figures in circulation, 5,970 and 10,240, are both unsourced. Neither appears in App Store Connect Help, the ratings and reviews pages, the API reference, or Apple's OpenAPI spec, where the response body is declared as a plain string with no constraint. A server-side limit may exist and be findable by testing, but Apple has not documented one.

About 350 characters

"Replies of more than approximately 350 characters will be rejected. HTML tags will be stripped."

Google's own two pages word this differently. The API reference says replies of more than approximately 350 characters will be rejected. The Reply to Reviews guide says replyText can contain at most 350 characters, with no hedge. Write to 350 as a hard ceiling, because one of the two pages says it is one.

Neither figure is documented

Apple documents no length for review bodies or for responses, so the two cannot be compared from primary sources.

Only the 350 reply figure is documented

A widely repeated claim is that users get 500 characters while developers get 350. The 350 is real. The 500 appears only in user-generated Google Play Community threads, and the official help page on rating and reviewing apps carries no character count at all.

One

"Only one response per review appears on your App Store product page."

One. A new reply updates the existing one

"You can write one public reply for each user review of your app."

Edit and delete, with no documented time window

"You can publicly respond to a review, edit your response, and delete your response for your app on the App Store."

You do not have to be the person who wrote the response to edit it, and edited responses carry a notation showing they were edited.

Edit any time. Deletion is not documented

"You can edit your reply to a review at any time."

No deletion mechanism appears in Play Console Help, and the Reviews resource exposes only get, list and reply. There is no delete method. As documented, a Play reply is editable forever but not removable.

Yes to both

"When you respond, the reviewer is notified and has the option to update their review."

Your response stays publicly visible even if the customer later edits their review.

Yes. Push notification and email

"After you reply to a user's review, they receive a push notification and an email notification."

The email includes your app name, the review date, the user's rating and review, your reply, and a link to contact you.

Up to 24 hours

"Responses may take up to 24 hours to appear on the App Store. Until then, they'll show as pending in App Store Connect."

The API exposes this as a state of PUBLISHED or PENDING_PUBLISH, so it is machine-readable.

Not documented

Google documents no publication delay for replies. It does document a hold on new ratings, which is a different thing and is often conflated with this one.

Account Holder, Admin, or Customer Support

"Required role: Account Holder, Admin or Customer Support."

Three roles, and App Manager is not one of them. Nor are Marketing, Developer or Finance. This is the mismatch that leaves reviews sitting unanswered for a week, because the person watching them often holds App Manager and assumes the button is missing rather than withheld.

Anyone with the Reply to reviews permission

"To reply to reviews from Play Console, make sure you have the 'Reply to reviews' permission."

It is a discrete permission rather than a role.

App Store Connect API only

"POST /v1/customerReviewResponses"

Create and delete exist. There is no PATCH endpoint in the OpenAPI spec, so editing via the API is not documented. The public iTunes RSS review feed is read-only and exposes no developer responses.

Android Publisher v3, Reply to Reviews

"POST https://androidpublisher.googleapis.com/androidpublisher/v3/applications/{packageName}/reviews/{reviewId}:reply"

Requires the androidpublisher OAuth scope. Google notes the API enforces quotas as a courtesy to other developers.

No, but Apple never says so

customerReviews returns reviews. A star tapped in an in-app prompt with no text attached is not one, so it never appears, and your API count comes back far below the rating count on your dashboard. Apple states this nowhere: not on the resource page, not on the endpoint, not in the attributes. The closest thing is the resource abstract calling it "a customer's rating and written review", which implies text without requiring it. Six Apple Developer Forums threads between 2021 and 2024 asked exactly this and none got an answer.

No, and Google says so plainly

"Also, note that the API shows only the reviews that include comments. If a user rates your app but does not provide a comment, their feedback is not accessible from the API."

One sentence, and it is the sentence missing from Apple's documentation. Same rule on both stores, written down on only one of them. Neither store offers any endpoint that returns an aggregate rating count or average, so there is no supported way to reconcile the two numbers.

Not documented

Apple states no language requirement, and does not say whether a response appears in every storefront.

Not documented for replies

Google auto-translates reviews shown to you in Play Console, which is the reverse direction. Its suggested replies are available only for recent English reviews when the Console itself is in English.

Apple documents no effect

Apple offers editorial guidance only: keep responses concise, respectful, and free of personal information or marketing language. It claims no ranking or rating benefit.

Google documents no effect

The only documented consequence is punitive. Google's comment posting policy states that using the feature is a privilege rather than a right, and that failing to follow the guidelines can suspend an app or a developer account.