Star rating is the single most visible number on an app's product page. On iOS it appears under the app name on search results; on Google Play it's on the tile too. The delta between a 4.5-star app and a 4.0-star app can be 20-30% on browse-to-install conversion, even when the rest of the listing is identical.
Across MWM's catalog of rated apps (those with at least 100 ratings), the median average rating is 4.28 / 5 — lower than most operators assume. About 1 in 3 indexed apps sits below 4.0. Only 3.9% of apps achieve the 4.9-5.0 range. The distribution clusters between 4.0 and 4.7, with a long tail of low-rated apps and a sharp falloff above 4.9.
Counter-intuitively, rating barely tracks with app size. Apps with under 10K downloads have median rating 4.36. Apps with over 10M downloads also have median rating 4.36. The "more downloads = more haters = lower rating" pattern doesn't hold across the catalog — successful apps generally maintain their rating quality, and tiny apps with engaged niches tend to have slightly higher medians. The U-curve bottoms at 4.23 in the 100K-1M tier.
Both stores weight recent ratings more heavily than old ones. A 4.8-star app with 50,000 lifetime ratings can still suffer if its last 100 ratings average 3.2 — the algorithm surfaces that decline, and the new reviews are what prospective users see first. This is why review velocity (how many new reviews per week) matters as much as the absolute number.
Median star rating by category — flatter than you might expect
| Category | Median | P25 | P75 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lifestyle & Well-being | 4.32 | 3.69 | 4.67 |
| Game | 4.25 | 3.82 | 4.54 |
| Productivity & Tools | 4.23 | 3.67 | 4.56 |
| Media & Entertainment | 4.35 | 3.9 | 4.62 |
| Education & Knowledge | 4.32 | 3.79 | 4.62 |
| Social & Communication | 4.22 | 3.69 | 4.55 |
Apple allows developers to reset the displayed rating on a new version, which is occasionally used to recover from a bad patch. Google Play always shows a lifetime rolling average. Both stores let you prompt users for a rating using a native in-app API — use it thoughtfully; over-prompting annoys users and triggers negative reviews.