The honest answer to how often apps get rejected: neither store publishes a rate.
There is no published app store rejection rate. Apple does not give one, Google does not give one, and every percentage quoted for your chance of app rejection is either derived from two numbers that do not divide or simply made up. What Apple does publish is a count of rejected submissions, a weekly review volume, a review turnaround figure and one figure about causes. All four are below, with the date each was read. If you want the causes rather than the odds, start with why apps get rejected.
So this page does two things. It lists every figure the two stores actually publish about review outcomes, quoted in their own words. Then it says plainly where no figure exists, and leaves the gap empty instead of filling it.
See which figures existThe short version
Four published numbers, and no rejection rate in either store.
Apple publishes four things that touch this question: that on average 90% of submissions are reviewed in less than 24 hours, that on average over 40% of unresolved issues relate to one guideline, that more than 1.9 million app submissions were rejected in 2024, and that nearly 500 reviewers look at over 130,000 apps a week. Google publishes the names of its rejection states and a warning about review length. It publishes no counts at all.
A rate needs a top and a bottom that mean the same thing. These do not. So this page stops short of dividing them and spends its space on the part you can act on, which is the causes.
What Apple actually publishes about App Review
Start with the page Apple sends developers to. Its App Review page, read on 3 October 2026, carries exactly two figures. On average, 90% of submissions are reviewed in less than 24 hours. And on average, over 40% of unresolved issues are related to guideline 2.1, App Completeness, which covers crashes, placeholder content and incomplete information.
Read the second one twice, because it is the figure most often repeated wrongly. It is a share of unresolved issues, not a share of submissions and not a share of rejections. It ranks the mistakes. It says nothing about how likely you are to make one. If you have seen 40% quoted as an app store rejection rate, that is not what the sentence says.
Two more numbers sit on Apple's own App Store page at apple.com/app-store, read the same day. Every week, nearly 500 reviewers around the world review over 130,000 apps. And in 2024, more than 1.9 million app submissions were rejected, for reasons Apple describes as including privacy violations and fraudulent activity. Both are counts. Neither is a rate.
One more thing, if you are chasing an older figure. The old Apple address ending in app-store/review/rejections now bounces straight to the App Review page, and the issue list there carries no percentage other than the 40% line. A page citing that old address is citing a redirect, which is worth checking before you trust the number attached to it.
Apple, App Review: review status and common issues
Check it
Published, or not published
Six figures people ask for. Two of them do not exist. Tap one to see the wording and where it was read.
Where a row says not published, this page prints no number. That is the whole method.
Why those numbers do not make a rejection rate
The temptation is obvious. Take over 130,000 apps a week, multiply by a year, divide more than 1.9 million rejected submissions into it, and a percentage appears. That percentage is not printed here, and it is not printed by any primary source either.
It fails three ways. The periods differ, because one is a current weekly volume and the other is a calendar year that has closed. The units differ, because Apple says apps reviewed in one sentence and app submissions rejected in the other, and a single app can be submitted many times, so the rejected figure counts attempts rather than products. And the populations differ, because rejected submissions include fraud and spam attempts that were never real apps competing with yours.
There is a fourth problem inside the console itself. App Store Connect has three rejection shaped statuses: Rejected, Metadata Rejected and Developer Rejected. The last one means you pulled the build yourself. Any rate built by counting status changes would count your own cancellations as rejections. That comes from the app and submission statuses reference in App Store Connect Help, read on 3 October 2026.
Which is why the question worth answering is not your odds but your exposure. You cannot move a number nobody measures. You can move the completeness problems that Apple says dominate unresolved issues, and reducing the odds is where that work starts.
What a rejection is actually called, store by store
Neither store rejects an app the way the word suggests, which is part of why the counting is so loose. Apple splits it. A submission holding any rejected item takes the status Unresolved Issues, while Rejected, Metadata Rejected and Developer Rejected apply to the app or the build. Items inside one submission can be accepted while others are not, so you either edit the failed items and resubmit, or remove them and release the rest.
Google splits it differently. Play Console Help, read on 3 October 2026, separates App rejected, which applies only to an app in Draft that you are publishing for the first time, from Update rejected, which applies to a change to an app already live. Both offer the same two routes: fix the issue and resubmit, or submit an appeal. A first release that fails leaves the app status at Draft, so the listing never appeared at all.
Timing is the sharpest asymmetry between them. Apple publishes a turnaround figure. Google publishes a warning instead: certain apps are subject to extended reviews, which may result in review times of up to 7 days or longer in exceptional cases, and certain developer accounts get the same closer look. Google does not publish a typical review time at all, which is worth planning around rather than hoping about.
If you are holding a rejection right now, the next move is procedural rather than statistical. Apple's own page says the App Review Board takes appeals and asks for one appeal per submission that did not pass review, and appeal app store rejection walks through that route in order.
Google Play Console Help, Publish your app: statuses and review times
There is no published figure for AI built apps either
The version of this question we are asked most is whether an app an AI wrote gets rejected more often. There is no published figure. Neither store reports review outcomes by how the code was written, so any percentage attached to generated apps was invented by whoever typed it. The wider question has its own page: does apple accept ai generated apps.
What exists instead is a rule, and it is specific. Guideline 4.2.6 of the App Store Review Guidelines, read on 3 October 2026, says apps created from a commercialized template or app generation service will be rejected unless they are submitted directly by the provider of the app's content. The rule is about who presses submit. It is not about what wrote the code.
That shapes how a builder should behave. Newly uploads your build to App Store Connect and TestFlight and stops there, because under 4.2.6 the submission has to come from you as the owner of the content. Android works differently: the same project goes to Google Play internal testing and also produces a standalone production APK, and Google's rule is about policy compliance rather than about who submits.
So the honest shape of the risk for a generated app is the shape it is for any other app. Completeness, metadata, a reachable privacy policy, and a reviewer who can get into your app. The tool you built it with is not on that list, and no published number says otherwise.
Every figure people ask for, and whether it exists
| The figure people want | Apple | Where we read it, 3 October 2026 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Share of submissions rejected | not published | not published | no primary source for either store |
| Count of submissions rejected | more than 1.9 million in 2024 | not published | apple.com/app-store |
| Volume reviewed | over 130,000 apps a week | not published | apple.com/app-store |
| Review turnaround | 90% of submissions in under 24 hours | no typical time, 7 days or longer for extended reviews | Apple App Review page, Play Console Help |
| Most common cause | over 40% of unresolved issues, guideline 2.1 | not published | Apple App Review page |
What to do with this if a tool wrote your app
If you are shipping something an AI built, the figures above are the whole evidence base, and they say nothing about you in particular. The levers are the ordinary ones. A build that does not crash, finished screens rather than placeholders, a privacy policy on a live URL, and review notes with a demo account that works.
Newly is an AI app builder. You describe the app in plain English and it writes a real React Native and TypeScript project you own, runs it on cloud iOS and Android simulators while it builds, then uploads to App Store Connect and TestFlight and publishes to Google Play internal testing. It is $25 a month on effort based credits, with no free plan. It does not press submit for you on iOS, and that is deliberate rather than missing: guideline 4.2.6 puts the submission on the owner of the content.
So the last mile is yours on both stores. Fill in the App Review Information section in App Store Connect, including a demo account if anything sits behind a sign in, and complete the App content page in Play Console under Policy and programs. Apple's own list of common issues is mostly made of blanks left in those two places, which is the one part of this question that has a sourced answer.
Questions people ask about app rejection rates
There is no published one. Apple publishes a count rather than a rate: more than 1.9 million app submissions rejected in 2024, on its own App Store page, read 3 October 2026. It also publishes that nearly 500 reviewers see over 130,000 apps a week. Those two figures cover different periods and different units, so no honest percentage comes out of dividing them. Any rejection rate you find quoted is derived or invented.
Build it, then submit it yourself
Describe the app, let the agent build it and run it on cloud simulators, then take the upload into App Store Connect and press submit with your own hands. The thing that moves your outcome is completeness, not a rejection rate nobody publishes.
Start building