tensorust/app-store-review-times

App Store review times from real App Review decisions

86 real Apple App Review decisions on our developer account (21 apps), from 2026-09-10 to 2026-10-23, with the submitted time, the decision time and the wait in hours. This is the data behind our monthly report "App Store review times, October 2026".

Headline numbers from the report: median wait 59.9 hours over all 86 decisions (39 approved); October 2026 alone, 55 decisions with a median of 74.6 hours. Brand-new apps in October waited a median of 187.8 hours; updates to live apps 28.4 hours; in-app purchase items only 12.2 hours.

How it was collected

• Every App Review decision email on our developer account (from no_reply@email.apple.com), pulled from our mailbox on 2026-10-17 and 2026-10-24.
• Wait = the decision email's sent time minus the "Submitted" timestamp in the email (Pacific time).
• Duplicate emails for the same submission and outcome count once.
• One account, 21 apps: a real sample, not an industry average. Several September and early-October new-app submissions ended in guideline 4.3 rejections, which pulls the new-app numbers up.

Columns

column	meaning
app	app name
kind	new (first submission of an app), update (a version and/or in-app purchase items for an app already on the store), iap (in-app purchase items only). For decisions after 2026-10-12, update covers both versions and IAP items and is not split further.
outcome	ok (approved) or issue (rejected or returned with an issue)
submitted	submission time from the email, ISO 8601 with Pacific offset
decided	decision email sent time, ISO 8601 UTC
hours	decided minus submitted, in hours

Source and updates

Report with charts: https://tensorust.com/reports/app-store-review-times/2026-10/ . Method: https://tensorust.com/methods/#app-store-review-times . Latest CSV: https://tensorust.com/reports/app-store-review-times/2026-10/decisions.csv . New monthly issues are listed at https://tensorust.com/reports/ .

How to cite

Tensorust Research (2026). App Store review times, October 2026. https://tensorust.com/reports/app-store-review-times/2026-10/

@misc{tensorust2026appreview,
  author       = {{Tensorust Research}},
  title        = {App Store review times, October 2026},
  year         = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://tensorust.com/reports/app-store-review-times/2026-10/}},
  note         = {CC BY 4.0}
}