What App Store users complain about most, by category (2026)
Reviews · · 6 min read · AppTrendKit
Short answer: being pushed to pay. Across 773 top-grossing US iPhone apps, “paywall & subscription push” is the most common theme in 1–3-star reviews (14% of them) and the #1 complaint for 308 apps, 40% of the group. Ads come second overall and lead in Games, Entertainment, Books, Music and Weather.
How we measured it
AppTrendKit reads the most recent written US App Store reviews of the apps it tracks and sorts the 1–3-star ones into themes such as ads, paywalls, bugs or billing; one review can mention several. We took every app that spent at least 4 days of October 19–26, 2026 in the top 50 of a US category Top Grossing chart and had at least 50 recent reviews analysed: 773 apps and 120,472 reviews. For each category we added up how many of its 1–3-star reviews mention each theme.
One thing to know first: written reviews skew negative. 69% of these recent reviews were 1–3 stars, while the apps' median rating is 4.7. Happy users mostly tap a star rating without writing anything, so reviews show what goes wrong, not how most users feel.
The most common complaints overall
| Theme | Share of 1–3★ reviews | #1 complaint for |
|---|---|---|
| Paywall & subscription push | 14% | 308 apps |
| Too many ads | 11% | 114 apps |
| Bugs & broken features | 10% | 148 apps |
| Billing, refunds & cancelling | 7% | 66 apps |
| Crashes & freezes | 5% | 33 apps |
| Too expensive | 5% | 29 apps |
| Missing features & requests | 5% | 5 apps |
| Customer support | 4% | 16 apps |
By category
| Category | Apps | #1 | #2 | #3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Books | 18 | Too many ads 23% | Paywall & subscription push 17% | Too expensive 17% |
| Business | 38 | Paywall & subscription push 14% | Bugs & broken features 13% | Billing, refunds & cancelling 11% |
| Education | 42 | Paywall & subscription push 23% | Billing, refunds & cancelling 10% | Too many ads 9% |
| Entertainment | 36 | Too many ads 23% | Paywall & subscription push 13% | Bugs & broken features 10% |
| Finance | 26 | Paywall & subscription push 13% | Billing, refunds & cancelling 9% | Bugs & broken features 9% |
| Food & Drink | 18 | Paywall & subscription push 24% | Bugs & broken features 10% | Billing, refunds & cancelling 9% |
| Games | 44 | Too many ads 21% | Unfair, rigged or pay-to-win 9% | Too expensive 7% |
| Graphics & Design | 24 | Paywall & subscription push 17% | Bugs & broken features 14% | Billing, refunds & cancelling 11% |
| Health & Fitness | 37 | Paywall & subscription push 24% | Billing, refunds & cancelling 9% | Bugs & broken features 9% |
| Lifestyle | 32 | Paywall & subscription push 16% | Bugs & broken features 9% | Billing, refunds & cancelling 9% |
| Magazines & Newspapers | 22 | Paywall & subscription push 19% | Too many ads 13% | Bugs & broken features 11% |
| Medical | 17 | Paywall & subscription push 30% | Bugs & broken features 13% | Too expensive 11% |
| Music | 39 | Too many ads 18% | Paywall & subscription push 17% | Bugs & broken features 11% |
| Navigation | 21 | Paywall & subscription push 17% | Billing, refunds & cancelling 9% | Bugs & broken features 8% |
| News | 32 | Paywall & subscription push 15% | Bugs & broken features 12% | Too many ads 11% |
| Photo & Video | 37 | Paywall & subscription push 17% | Too many ads 10% | Bugs & broken features 10% |
| Productivity | 40 | Bugs & broken features 10% | Paywall & subscription push 9% | Too many ads 6% |
| Reference | 25 | Paywall & subscription push 21% | Billing, refunds & cancelling 15% | Bugs & broken features 9% |
| Social Networking | 41 | Paywall & subscription push 9% | Bugs & broken features 9% | Too many ads 7% |
| Sports | 24 | Paywall & subscription push 15% | Bugs & broken features 12% | Too many ads 10% |
| Travel | 17 | Paywall & subscription push 13% | Bugs & broken features 12% | Too many ads 8% |
| Utilities | 33 | Bugs & broken features 14% | Paywall & subscription push 14% | Billing, refunds & cancelling 11% |
| Weather | 29 | Too many ads 17% | Paywall & subscription push 15% | Bugs & broken features 11% |
“Apps”: top-grossing apps in the category with 50 or more recent US reviews analysed. Categories with fewer than 15 such apps are left out.
What stands out
- Paywalls are the #1 complaint in 16 of 23 categories, and the most common in Medical (30% of 1–3-star reviews), Health & Fitness and Food & Drink (24% each) and Education (23%).
- Ads lead where apps are free to use: Entertainment and Books (23%), Games (21%), Music (18%) and Weather (17%).
- Billing complaints follow weekly plans. The four categories with the most complaints about billing, refunds and cancelling (Reference 15%, Business, Graphics & Design and Utilities 11% each) are the four where weekly subscriptions are most common, 46–64% of top grossers (see our subscription price study). In News, where 4% sell weekly plans, billing is 3% of complaints.
- Games players complain about fairness: “unfair, rigged or pay-to-win” is their #2 theme (9%), ahead of bugs.
- Productivity and Social Networking have the most spread-out complaints. No theme passes 10%, so their problems are app-specific rather than a shared pattern.
What this means if you build an app
- Charge, but don't push. The most common theme is about being pushed to subscribe, not about prices (“too expensive” is only 5%). Letting people reach one useful result before asking them to pay, and asking less often, is the most direct answer to the top complaint in most categories.
- Make cancelling obvious if you sell weekly plans. Billing, refund and cancelling complaints are highest exactly where weekly plans are common.
- Read your competitors' complaints before building. A shared complaint in your niche is a feature you can lead with. Every app page on AppTrendKit shows its review themes, and our market reports compare them across the leading apps in a niche, such as meditation apps or VPNs.
Limits
- US App Store only, recent written reviews (up to a few hundred per app), for apps on a US category Top Grossing chart in October 19–26, 2026.
- Themes come from automatic classification of review text; a review can count for several themes, and some fit none.
- Shares are of 1–3-star reviews, not of all users or all reviews.
- An app in two categories counts in each; the overall figures count it once.