--- title: What's the Right Time to Ask Users to Rate My App? description: Learn when to ask users to rate your app, how to find the right moment, avoid common mistakes and write prompts that feel helpful rather than pushy. image: https://weareaffective.com/hubfs/learning-centre-images/whats-the-right-time-to-ask-users-to-rate-my-app.webp --- [Skip to content](https://weareaffective.com/learning-centre/whats-the-right-time-to-ask-users-to-rate-my-app#main-content) [![we\_are\_affective\_logo\_200](https://weareaffective.com/hs-fs/hubfs/we_are_affective_logo_200.png?width=175&height=48&name=we_are_affective_logo_200.png "we_are_affective_logo_200")](https://weareaffective.com) - [Home](https://weareaffective.com) - About Us - [Our Story](https://weareaffective.com/about) - [How We Work](https://weareaffective.com/how-we-work) - Our Services - [App Planning & Strategy](https://weareaffective.com/app-planning-strategy) - [App Design](https://weareaffective.com/app-design-agency) - [App UX Design](https://weareaffective.com/app-ux-design) - [App UI Design](https://weareaffective.com/app-ui-design) - [App Technical Architecture](https://weareaffective.com/app-architecture) - [Existing App Audits](https://weareaffective.com/app-audit) - [Case Studies](https://weareaffective.com/case-studies) - [Pricing](https://weareaffective.com/pricing) - [Learning Centre](https://weareaffective.com/learning-centre) - [Get Started](https://weareaffective.com/get-started) Expert Guide Series # What's the Right Time to Ask Users to Rate My App? Table of Contents A client of ours added a rating prompt that fired the instant the app opened. Tap the icon, watch the splash screen settle, and there it was, five stars waiting before anything had actually happened. App rating prompt timing had been treated as a build detail, something to drop in wherever the code was easiest, and the scores that came back were a fair reflection of that. > A rating is a snapshot of how someone feels, so the moment you ask decides most of the answer. The thing people forget about a rating is that it's an emotional reading taken at a single moment. It isn't an audit of your product. [It's how one person feels in the three seconds](https://weareaffective.com/user-psychology-app-design) after you interrupt them, scaled to five stars and published where everyone can see it. So the question isn't really how to get more reviews. It's where in your product someone feels genuinely pleased, and whether you've got the nerve to wait for it. This piece walks through how we think about that, what we've changed on real projects, and the moments where asking costs you more than staying quiet. ## Why Timing Changes the Rating You Get People rate their mood. If someone has just hit a goal, found the thing they wanted or had a small moment of delight, they're generous. Catch the same person halfway through a task they're finding fiddly and you get a two, and that two sits on your store listing for months. Simon puts it plainly. People are far more likely to review or rate something when they're on a high, compared with being asked at any random point in the product. Same person, same app, completely different number. #### The cost of a badly timed ask A mistimed app rating prompt costs you twice. You get the low score, and you also spend the goodwill of the interruption. Every prompt is a small withdrawal from how much patience someone has with your product, and spending that on a one star is a poor trade. There's outside support for this too. [Reputation](https://reputation.com/resources/articles/when-is-the-best-time-to-ask-for-customer-reviews-2) reports that getting the timing of a survey right can lift participation by as much as 10%, which lines up with what we see in products. The caveat is that their write-up doesn't publish a method, so treat it as a nudge in the same direction rather than a precise number. ## Finding Your App's Genuine Value Moment The value moment is the point where your product has kept its promise. Not where someone has finished setting up, and not where they've been in the app for long enough to count as engaged. The moment where the thing they came for has actually happened. #### App rating prompt timing by category It looks different depending on what you've built, and it's usually more specific than teams expect. - A skincare app, the morning someone sees their routine streak hold for a month. - A restaurant booking app, a few hours after the table, when the meal is still fresh. - A pet care app, right after a vet reminder saved someone a missed appointment. - A running app, the second a personal best is confirmed on screen. - A home interiors app, when an order is marked delivered and opened. Write yours down as a single sentence, naming the screen and the state the person is in. If you can't name the screen, you've got a research question before you've got a prompt question. Teams that skip this step end up firing on session count, which is a measure of habit rather than happiness. ## UX/UI design built around *real* psychology We design app interfaces around how people actually think and behave. User research, psychology-driven UX/UI design and technical specs delivered as one complete package. [See how we work](https://weareaffective.com/how-we-work) [Get started](https://weareaffective.com/get-started) No commitment ## Moments When You Should Never Ask We worked on a map-based fitness social network, built to connect people for runs and cycle rides. Users were dropping off at the point where they were [asked to share their precise location with a potential match](https://weareaffective.com/learning-centre/what-a-fitness-social-app-changed-when-it-realised-precise-location-was-the-wron). The request itself was reasonable, and the product couldn't work without it. The moment was wrong, because people were being asked for something high stakes before they'd had a single conversation with the person on the other end. The same logic applies to a rating. There are moments where any ask, however small, reads as tone deaf. > Ask during the worst thirty seconds of someone's week and you've bought yourself a one star. Stay quiet after a failed payment, after an error message, during a search that returned nothing, [in the middle of a multi-step flow](https://weareaffective.com/learning-centre/what-emotional-pacing-means-and-why-it-decides-whether-users-finish-a-multi-step), and anywhere near a support conversation. Stay quiet on first open, every time. Someone who has just had a bad experience with your product is the one person guaranteed to answer, and the only thing they want to tell you is that it went wrong. Suppression rules are cheap to build and they protect the thing you can't easily repair. [A store average recovers slowly, because old scores keep their weight](https://weareaffective.com/learning-centre/are-your-app-developers-making-your-technical-debt-better-or-worse) long after the bug is fixed. ## Asking Before You've Earned the Right Trust turns up the moment a product asks something of a person. Browsing a feed asks nothing, so nothing is at stake. A rating request asks for time, judgement and a public opinion with your brand attached, which puts it well above entering a nickname and well below handing over financial details. Middle of the scale, and middle of the scale still has to be earned. One of Simon's pet peeves is the notification permission pop-up that appears the instant an app opens, before anyone has seen a thing about what the app offers. We argue for [narrative onboarding instead, where you show the value and the story first](https://weareaffective.com/learning-centre/when-users-blame-themselves-for-your-confusing-app-youve-already-lost-them) and ask afterwards. A rating prompt on first open is the same mistake with a worse outcome, because the answer becomes permanent. #### What earning it looks like The client we mentioned at the start had people rating a splash screen. Once the prompt moved behind a completed, successful action, the scores started describing something real. Set a minimum before any prompt can fire. At least one completed core action, at least one return visit, and no errors in the current session. If all three aren't true, say nothing. ## Making the Prompt Feel Helpful Rather Than Demanding On a concierge app we built, we pushed for [drip-fed notifications that arrived in context](https://weareaffective.com/learning-centre/how-to-decide-what-belongs-offline-what-belongs-online-and-what-belongs-in-a-que), against the industry default of pushing everything upfront. The client took the recommendation. What came back from research was that people stopped reading notifications as warnings. A message wasn't something wrong or something to worry about, it was the next piece of helpful information, arriving when it was useful. That shift is available to a rating prompt too. The difference between a demand and an offer sits almost entirely in framing and tone of voice, which costs nothing technically and changes the response a lot. Asking permission is the strongest version of this. Rather than telling people what they need to give you, you ask. Is it okay if we ask you something? Can we take a minute of your time? People feel they have control over a product that asks, and control makes them more bought in, more engaged and more likely to stay. Give the prompt a visible, no-cost exit. A clear "not now" that genuinely means not now does more for your average rating than any amount of persuasive copy. ## The Wording That Changes Who the Favour Is For We worked on a travel app where [people who'd been on a holiday needed to rate it](https://weareaffective.com/learning-centre/fitness-app-trends-2026-what-users-really-want-from-their-workout-apps). The standard approach is a line that says rate this experience, and people read that correctly. They assume the rating is for the company's benefit, so unless something went wrong and they want to say so, they skip it. We reframed the copy to ask what they'd tell other travellers about this product. Same data, same screen, same moment. The response changed because the favour changed hands. Without really noticing, people felt they were helping other travellers rather than feeding a faceless company. #### Who benefits, in one line Read your prompt copy out loud and ask who it's for. Most default wording is openly for you, which is why it gets ignored by exactly the people whose ratings you want. - Name the person who benefits, and make it another customer. - Keep it to one short sentence with no second ask stacked behind it. - Reference the thing they just did, so the prompt reads as attentive. - Drop the word feedback, which belongs to companies rather than people. ## Telling People What You're Asking For Before You Ask On a health and wellbeing product we tested two versions of a multi-step flow. One primed people upfront with how long it was going to take. The other showed a progress bar and nothing else. Without priming, drop-off sat around 80 to 85%, usually inside the first three or four questions. With priming, completion came in at roughly 95%. We saw the same effect on a fitness app, where people had to go through a handful of orientation questions. The change we made was simply telling them how long it would take. Not technical, not clever, and people went into it prepared. > Tell people what you're about to ask and how long it takes, and far more of them finish. A rating request is a small flow, so the same rule holds. If you're sending someone to the store, say so first. If it's one tap and done, say that. The anxiety in any prompt comes from not knowing how deep the hole goes, and a single clear sentence removes it. This also sorts out the people who were never going to finish. They dismiss early, before you've logged a half-hearted three stars from someone who gave up at the second screen. ## How Often to Ask, and When to Stop Frequency is where good timing gets undone. A team gets the moment right, then fires it on every qualifying moment, and the prompt that felt attentive the first time feels like nagging the fourth. The platforms cap the native prompt for exactly this reason, and your own rules should be stricter than the cap. Here's the order we'd work through when setting frequency. 1. Decide the single strongest value moment and start there alone. 2. Set a long gap before anyone can see it again, measured in months. 3. Stop permanently for anyone who rates, on any platform. 4. Stop for anyone who dismisses twice, and treat that as an answer. 5. Reset the clock after a major release, not after every update. The people who dismiss are telling you something useful. They're engaged enough to be there and unconvinced enough to say no, which makes them worth understanding rather than worth asking again. Log every prompt you fire, including the ones that get dismissed. Without that record you can't tell a timing problem from a product problem. ## Native Prompts Versus Building Your Own The native store prompt is the one the platform supplies. Your own is a screen you design, usually leading to the store for people who are happy. Teams often assume building their own gives them more control, and it does, though it comes with real limits. | Dimension | Native store prompt | Your own prompt | | --- | --- | --- | | Wording | Fixed by the platform | Fully yours | | Frequency | Capped, and enforced | Your rules | | Rating written | In one tap, in place | Extra steps to the store | | Screening by sentiment | Against store guidance | Also against guidance | | Build cost | Hours | Days, plus upkeep | Our usual recommendation is a hybrid. Use your own design language for the moment that invites people in, and hand off to the native prompt for the rating itself, because one tap in place beats a journey to the store every time. Spend your design effort on when it appears and what it says, which is where the difference actually sits. ## Where Unhappy Users Should Go Instead Teams want a filter. Show a happy face and a sad face, send the happy ones to the store and the sad ones to a form. The stores take a dim view of screening people before the native prompt, so that route isn't open to you, and it was never honest anyway. Give unhappy people somewhere better to go, as a permanent part of the product rather than a trap door attached to the rating flow. A visible way to report a problem, a support route that answers, and a prompt after a fixed bug that lets someone know it's been dealt with. The person who had a bad experience and got looked after is a different person by the time they next see a rating prompt. This matters because a bad experience is expensive. People are far less likely to come back after one, which means the lost return visit costs you more than the lost review ever does. Put the help route one tap from the screens where things go wrong, rather than buried in settings. If someone has to hunt for it, they'll write the review instead. ## Testing Your Timing With Real Users On the concierge app, the drip-fed notification approach went in because we tested it. We ran A/B testing and research with real users, and the people getting the delayed, in-context notifications showed clearly lower stress levels than the group who didn't. That result settled an argument that no amount of opinion would have settled. Rating prompts deserve the same treatment, because the variable you're testing is cheap to change and the outcome is public. > Two moments, the same wording, and the gap between the ratings tells you more than any guess. Hold the copy steady and move the moment, or hold the moment steady and move the copy. Changing both leaves you knowing nothing. Watch the average score rather than the volume, because a prompt that fires everywhere collects plenty of reviews and drags your rating down while it does it. Then sit with five or six people and watch them use the product until the prompt appears. The face they pull in that second tells you more about your app rating prompt timing than a dashboard will, and it takes an afternoon. ## Conclusion Good app rating prompt timing comes down to a few decisions that mostly cost thinking rather than budget. Find the moment where your product has done what it promised. Wait until someone has been there more than once. Say what you're asking for before you ask. Word it so the favour is for another customer. Then stop asking the people who've already said no. None of that is technical. The travel app rewrite was a sentence. The priming change on the health and wellbeing product was a line of copy that lifted completion from around 80% drop-off to roughly 95% finishing. The fitness app orientation fix was telling people how long it would take. Small framing changes, consistently, do more than another round of feature work. Your store rating is the first thing a new customer reads about you, and it's written by people you interrupted. Choosing that moment carefully is one of the cheapest things you can do for how your brand lands. If you want a second pair of eyes on where your prompts fire and what they say, [let's talk about your app rating prompt timing](https://weareaffective.com/get-started). ## Frequently Asked Questions When is the best time to ask users to rate my app? Ask at the moment your product has kept its promise, for example right after a personal best is confirmed or an order is marked delivered. That is when someone feels genuinely pleased, and a rating is really just a reading of how they feel in that instant. Why does timing matter so much for the score I get? People rate their mood rather than auditing your product, so the same person can give you a five or a two depending on when you interrupt them. Catch someone mid-task while they are struggling and that low score sits on your store listing for months. What exactly is a 'value moment' and how do I find mine? It is the point where the thing the user came for has actually happened, not where they finished onboarding or simply logged enough sessions. Write yours down as a single sentence naming the screen and the state the person is in, and if you cannot name the screen you have a research question to answer first. What's wrong with triggering the prompt on app open? Nothing has happened yet, so there is no feeling to capture and the user is being interrupted before they have received any value. It reads as a build convenience rather than a considered decision, and the ratings tend to reflect that. Is it a good idea to fire the prompt after a certain number of sessions? Session count measures habit, not happiness, so it tells you someone keeps coming back but not whether they are pleased right now. It is the fallback teams reach for when they have skipped the work of identifying a genuine value moment. What does a badly timed prompt actually cost me? It costs you twice. You get the low score, and you also spend a little of the goodwill and patience the user has for your product, which is a poor trade for a one star. Are there moments when I should simply not ask at all? Yes. If someone is mid-task, frustrated, or dealing with something that has gone wrong, staying quiet is better than asking. Not every session needs a prompt, and silence protects both your score and the relationship. How much difference does better timing really make? Reputation suggests that getting survey timing right can lift participation by as much as 10%, which matches what we see in products. They do not publish a method behind that figure, so treat it as a nudge in the right direction rather than a precise target. ## Related Articles [![What's the Difference Between Reviews and User Feedback](https://weareaffective.com/hubfs/learning-centre-images/whats-the-difference-between-reviews-and-user-feedback.webp)](https://weareaffective.com/learning-centre/whats-the-difference-between-reviews-and-user-feedback) ### [What's the Difference Between Reviews and User Feedback](https://weareaffective.com/learning-centre/whats-the-difference-between-reviews-and-user-feedback) A four and a half star average sits at the top of the App Store listing, and underneath it sits a... by [Simon Lee](https://weareaffective.com/learning-centre/author/simon-lee) [![Whats the real cost difference between local and remote app development](https://weareaffective.com/hubfs/learning-centre-images/whats-the-real-cost-difference-between-local-and-remote-app-development.webp)](https://weareaffective.com/learning-centre/whats-the-real-cost-difference-between-local-and-remote-app-development) ### [Whats the real cost difference between local and remote app development](https://weareaffective.com/learning-centre/whats-the-real-cost-difference-between-local-and-remote-app-development) A brand asks two agencies to quote on the same app build. One comes back at £40,000, the other at... by [Simon Lee](https://weareaffective.com/learning-centre/author/simon-lee) [![Why a Resident Concierge App Deliberately Didn't Automate the Concierge Away](https://weareaffective.com/hubfs/learning-centre-images/why-a-resident-concierge-app-deliberately-didnt-automate-the-concierge-away.webp)](https://weareaffective.com/learning-centre/why-a-resident-concierge-app-deliberately-didnt-automate-the-concierge-away) ### [Why a Resident Concierge App Deliberately Didn't Automate the Concierge Away](https://weareaffective.com/learning-centre/why-a-resident-concierge-app-deliberately-didnt-automate-the-concierge-away) A property developer came to us with a concierge app for a new high-rise block, a budget already... by [Simon Lee](https://weareaffective.com/learning-centre/author/simon-lee) [![We Are Affective](https://weareaffective.com/hubfs/we_are_affective_logo_mark.svg)](https://weareaffective.com) 20-22 Wenlock Road London, N1 7GU United Kingdom +44 20 4572 8062 [hello@weareaffective.com](mailto:hello@weareaffective.com) Services [App planning & strategy](https://weareaffective.com/app-planning-strategy) [App design](https://weareaffective.com/app-design-agency) [App UX design](https://weareaffective.com/app-ux-design) [App UI design](https://weareaffective.com/app-ui-design) [App technical architecture](https://weareaffective.com/app-architecture) [Existing app audits](https://weareaffective.com/app-audit) Legal [Privacy policy](https://app.termly.io/policy-viewer/policy.html?policyUUID=b8fa9921-7518-4fb5-8ddd-9dc7f5977ed2) [Terms](https://app.termly.io/policy-viewer/policy.html?policyUUID=8b6a6ad5-91bd-4176-a5f7-6d36b0398f70) Case studies [TravAI](https://weareaffective.com/case-studies/travai) [Meditech](https://weareaffective.com/case-studies/harley) [WorkingWeight](https://weareaffective.com/case-studies/workingweight) [SkinSync](https://weareaffective.com/case-studies/skinsync) [Three Lochs](https://weareaffective.com/case-studies/three-lochs) [Drift](https://weareaffective.com/case-studies/drift) About us [Our Story](https://weareaffective.com/about) [How We Work](https://weareaffective.com/how-we-work) Guides [Creating an app](https://weareaffective.com/how-to-create-an-app) [Building an MVP](https://weareaffective.com/building-an-mvp) [Cost and budgeting](https://weareaffective.com/app-development-cost) [App technology](https://weareaffective.com/app-development) [Planning and strategy](https://weareaffective.com/app-planning-strategy) [User research](https://weareaffective.com/app-user-research) [Onboarding design](https://weareaffective.com/app-onboarding-design) [User psychology](https://weareaffective.com/user-psychology-app-design) [Launch and growth](https://weareaffective.com/app-launch-growth) Copyright © 2026, weareaffective.com. All rights reserved.