App Store Review Statistics 2026: Rejections, Removals and Fraud

These app store rejection statistics come straight from the figures Apple and Google publish about their own review process: how many submissions they reject, why, how long review takes and how many apps they remove. We used Apple's 2023 to 2025 App Store Transparency Reports and Google's annual safety reviews, and we show our working wherever we turned a count into a percentage.

App review statistics at a glance

About one in four App Store submissions is rejected, and most rejections are about quality rather than rule breaking. The table below collects the published figures from Apple and Google for the most recent full years. Each row says which year the data covers.

One caution before reading anything into the rate. Apple counts submissions, not apps. An app that is rejected twice and approved on the third try is three submissions. So "23% of submissions rejected" does not mean 23% of apps never make it.

How often does Apple reject apps?

Apple rejected 2,093,244 of the 9,100,620 submissions it reviewed in 2025, which works out to 23.0%. In 2024 it rejected 1,931,400 of 7,771,599, or 24.9%, and in 2023 it rejected 1,763,812 of 6,892,500, or 25.6%. Apple publishes the counts. The percentages are our arithmetic.

The total number of rejections keeps rising because the number of submissions keeps rising. The share being rejected has drifted down slightly over three years. Whether that reflects better tooling, better-prepared developers or a change in how Apple counts is not something the report explains, so we will not guess.

What this means for you: plan for at least one rejection on a new app. It is a normal part of the process, and a launch date that assumes approval on the first submission is a launch date that slips.

Why apps get rejected

Performance is the biggest reason by a wide margin. Apple's guidelines are organised into five sections, and the Performance section (guideline 2, which includes app completeness, crashes, beta features and accurate metadata) was cited 1,354,418 times in 2025.

The section counts add up to about 2.7 million, more than the 2.09 million rejected submissions. Apple's footnote explains why: a submission can be rejected for breaking more than one guideline.

Apple adds one more figure on its App Review page: on average, over 40% of unresolved issues relate to guideline 2.1, App Completeness. That covers crashes, placeholder content, broken links and missing information for the reviewer, such as a demo login.

What this means for you: the most common rejection is avoidable with testing and preparation, not with legal advice. A crash on the reviewer's device, a "coming soon" screen or a login the reviewer cannot get past are the classic causes. The mobile app testing guide and the App Store publishing guide cover the preparation step by step.

How many rejected apps are approved after fixes?

In 2025, 387,087 submissions were approved after a rejection, equal to 18.5% of that year's rejections. In 2024 the figure was 295,109, or 15.3%, and in 2023 it was 277,923, or 15.8%.

These numbers are lower than many people expect, and the reason is again the counting. Many rejected submissions are superseded by a new build rather than resubmitted as is, and a large share of rejections are fraud or spam that will never be approved. For an honest app with a fixable problem, the usual path is to correct the issue, reply in App Store Connect and resubmit.

What this means for you: a rejection costs time, not the app. The cost is a resubmission cycle plus however long the fix takes, which is why the preparation step pays for itself.

How long does App Review take?

Apple says App Review typically reviews at least 50% of submissions in less than 24 hours and 90% in less than 48 hours. It also says review times may be delayed if a submission is incomplete.

Google does not publish a comparable review-time figure in the sources we used, so we have not quoted one. In our experience the first review of a new Google Play app, and particularly a new developer account, can take longer than later updates, so leave slack before a launch.

What this means for you: two days per review cycle is a sensible planning figure for Apple. Add a second cycle for a first launch and the risk of slipping a launch date mostly goes away.

How many apps are removed from the stores?

Apple removed 166,899 apps from the App Store in 2025, about double the 82,509 it removed in 2024. Fraud was the top cited reason, with 90,608 removals under section 3.2(f) of the Developer Program License Agreement. Second was guideline 4.0, Design, with 72,271 removals, which Apple says reflects ongoing cleanup of outdated apps.

By category, utilities led removals with 31,594, then games with 30,429, lifestyle with 13,166 and productivity with 13,116. Business apps accounted for 10,984 and finance for 8,488.

Developers appealed 26,305 removals and 423 apps were restored. Canada was the tenth largest source of appeals with 430, and fifth for restorations with 14.

What this means for you: the outdated-app cleanup is the number a small business should notice. An app that still works but has not been updated in years is at risk of removal for that reason alone. Our rebuild or update guide explains how to decide what to do with an older app, and our maintenance and support service keeps it current.

How many developer accounts are terminated?

Apple terminated 193,035 developer accounts in 2025, almost all of them (192,702) for fraud. That compares with 146,747 in 2024. In its May 2026 announcement Apple also said it rejected more than 138,000 developer enrollments in 2025.

Google reported banning more than 80,000 bad developer accounts that tried to publish harmful apps in 2025, down from more than 158,000 in 2024. Google credits the drop to stronger checks deterring bad actors, including developer verification and mandatory pre-review checks.

What this means for you: both stores are tightening identity checks on developers, and Google's developer verification rollout extends that to apps outside Google Play from 2027. Register your developer accounts in your company's name, with accurate details, and keep the account in your control rather than your developer's. We cover ownership in our questions to ask an app developer.

What Google Play reports

Google prevented over 1.75 million policy-violating apps from being published on Google Play in 2025, down from 2.36 million in 2024, according to its annual safety review on the Google Security Blog.

The 255,000 figure is worth noticing for honest developers. It is about apps asking for more access to sensitive data than they need, which is often a careless default rather than bad intent. Google points developers to Play Policy Insights in Android Studio and the Data safety section to catch this before submission.

What this means for you: request only the permissions your app actually uses, and make sure your Data safety form and privacy policy match what the code does. Our free app privacy policy generator helps with the policy, and the mobile app security guide covers the rest.

How much fraud do the stores stop?

Apple says the App Store prevented over $2.2 billion USD in potentially fraudulent transactions in 2025, and more than $11.2 billion over the past six years. Its transparency report gives the exact 2025 value as $2,232,110,720.

• 1.1 billion fraudulent customer account creations rejected, and 40,440,557 customer accounts terminated (Apple, 2025)
• More than 5.4 million stolen credit cards stopped from being used (Apple, 2025)
• Close to 195 million fraudulent ratings and reviews blocked out of over 1.3 billion processed (Apple, 2025)
• 28,000 illegitimate apps detected on pirate storefronts (Apple, 2025)
• 160 million spam ratings and reviews blocked, and an average 0.5-star drop prevented for apps targeted by review bombing (Google, 2025)

All of these are the stores' own figures, published by the stores. No independent party audits them, which is worth keeping in mind when reading them.

What this means for you: if your app takes payments through the store, much of this protection comes with the fee. If it takes payments directly, for physical goods or services, fraud prevention is your job and your payment provider's.

Checklist: pass App Review on the first submission

Based on where the rejections actually come from, this is the order we check things in before submitting.

• The build has been tested on a real device running the current iOS or Android version, with no crashes on launch or on the main flows.
• No placeholder text, test data, "coming soon" screens or dead buttons remain.
• Every link works, including support and privacy policy links.
• A working demo account and clear notes for the reviewer are in the review information field.
• The App Privacy details (Apple) and Data safety form (Google) match what the app and its SDKs collect.
• Permissions are limited to what the app uses, each with a clear explanation string.
• Account deletion is available inside the app if users can create an account.
• Digital goods use the store's in-app purchase system where the rules require it.
• Screenshots and the description show what the app does today, not what is planned.
• The age rating questionnaire is answered, including Apple's new social media questions.
• The build meets the current SDK and target requirements in our deadlines guide.

How we compiled these statistics

We checked every figure on October 23, 2026, against the primary source. Apple's numbers come from its App Store Transparency Reports for 2023, 2024 and 2025, its App Review page and its Newsroom. Google's come from its annual safety posts on the Google Security Blog for 2024 and 2025.

• Calculated by us: rejection rates and the share approved after rejection. Apple publishes the counts, not the percentages.
• Excluded: third-party estimates of rejection rates, review times from developer surveys, and any figure we could not trace to Apple or Google.
• Not available: Google does not publish a submission count, a rejection rate or a review-time figure in the sources we used, so the Google section has no equivalent rows.
• Caveat: both stores self-report these numbers.

We will update this page when Apple publishes its 2026 transparency report and Google publishes its next annual safety review. For the wider market numbers, see our mobile app statistics 2026 page.