A review API lets you collect, manage, and display customer reviews from various platforms across your website product pages, mobile app, and marketing channels. Review APIs can strengthen your brand reputation by simplifying the process of sharing social proof with customers, no matter where they interact with your company.
“For our first six months of launch, what moved the needle the most is sharing screenshots of reviews,” says Michelle Razavi, cofounder of the protein snack brand Elavi, on Shopify Masters. “People look at what other people are saying to drive a purchasing decision.”
With a review API, you can update reviews in real-time to make sure the content is relevant and consistent for shoppers. Read on to discover what a review API is, how it works, and which tools to consider.
What is a review API?
Application programming interfaces (APIs) allow different software applications to communicate, defining the rules and protocols for exchanging data. Review APIs provide a flexible way to manage reviews. Instead of relying on a default widget, your code can retrieve, post, filter, and aggregate product review data programmatically. The data it moves can include star ratings, written comments, photos, and videos.
Review APIs offer flexibility for businesses that need more control over how customer reviews are collected and displayed. This is useful for teams running a headless storefront, building a custom internal dashboard, or syncing reviews across multiple channels. With the right credentials (keys or passwords that authorize direct access), your team can collect data for a specific product, post a new review, filter by rating, or pull aggregate scores to display in multiple locations.
It’s helpful to distinguish a review API from a review platform or a widget:
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Review platform. This is a software product for collecting, moderating, storing, and reporting on your reviews—often accessed through a dashboard.
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Review widget. This is what your review platform displays: a block of reviews you drop onto a product page with minimal setup.
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Review API. This is the software infrastructure that provides access to the review data within a platform. It exposes the same data a widget displays so developers can build their own set of rules for collection and display.
Under the umbrella of review software, an API provides the raw data developers work with, while a widget provides a finished block of review content. Review platforms often include built-in widgets that collect and display reviews without using code. While building with an API provides your team with more control over how and where reviews are displayed, it also requires more work.
Review API tools and platforms
If you’re interested in incorporating deep customizations into your store—like custom review displays or syncing reviews into your email platform—here are several review APIs to consider.
Shop Product Reviews
Shop Product Reviews is Shopify’s built-in way to collect reviews from within the Shop app. It’s not a developer API, but it fits into an API workflow. Reviews sync with supported partner apps, so reviews collected in Shop flow into those apps and back, which means the data becomes accessible via their APIs. Reviews collected this way are marked with a “Verified by Shop” badge to tell shoppers the review came from a verified purchase.
For third-party options, you can also browse review apps in the Shopify App Store. Many handle API integration behind the scenes, so you don’t need to code. Apps like Yotpo and Okendo integrate with Shopify Flow to run automated workflows triggered by new reviews, negative reviews, or reviews with images and videos. Pricing: Shop Product Reviews is free and built into the Shop app.
Yotpo
Yotpo offers broad API access, including a dedicated user-generated content (UGC) API for reading and creating reviews and a Core API for syncing products, orders, and customers. It also has an App Developer API for building public integrations, and an insights endpoint to analyze trends, return sentiment, and report on rating distributions as JSON. A high rate limit—5,000 requests per minute—plus published headless setup tutorials make Yotpo a fit for custom storefronts using Hydrogen or React. The rate limit can save time for developers maintaining headless storefronts, since Hydrogen and React load reviews directly through the API itself.
Pricing: A free plan covers up to 50 orders per month, with paid tiers that scale by order volume.
Judge.me
Judge.me gives every store public and private tokens from its dashboard—one for displaying reviews on your storefront, one for reading and writing data behind the scenes. It also has OAuth 2.0 (a standard that lets a store grant outside app permission without a password) for third-party apps. Because those tokens come with every account, core API access isn’t locked behind a premium developer tier.
Pricing: A free plan offers unlimited review requests. The paid tier offers additional features for $15 per month, such as AI integration and customizable widgets, regardless of store size.
Okendo
Okendo’s Attributes feature collects structured, product-specific ratings—like sizing accuracy or durability—that you can surface through the API. This is useful for apparel and beauty brands that want more than a star score. Okendo also offers real-time webhooks and is built with Shopify Plus and headless storefronts in mind. Full API access is reserved for Okendo’s Advanced tier and above.
Pricing: A free plan is available for up to 50 orders per month. API access is available as an add-on or as part of the custom-priced Advanced or Enterprise tiers.
Stamped
Stamped’s REST API returns more than reviews. Alongside its reviews endpoints, it has separate endpoints for Q&A, Net Promoter Score, and survey responses. This allows you to get a fuller picture of customer feedback through code—useful if you’re tracking sentiment beyond a star rating.
Pricing: Order-based Reviews plans start at $23 per month for up to 200 orders and scale by volume. API access is reserved for Stamped's top Enterprise tier, which is custom-priced.
Google Reviews API
Businesses can use the Google Reviews API, part of the Google Business Profile API, to access and manage customer reviews from their verified Google Business Profiles. The API lets you retrieve business reviews from Google and Google Maps, respond to them, and feed that data into a reputation management workflow.
You can use the API to automate review monitoring, trigger alerts for negative reviews, and audit customer sentiment across multiple locations. This data can be routed to customer support or local management, so teams can respond to negative reviews quickly. The API only provides access to Google Business Profiles you own or manage; you can’t retrieve reviews from competitors or unaffiliated profiles.
Pricing: This API is available to registered users at no extra charge.
Review API FAQ
How is a review API different from review software?
Review software is the full product that collects, moderates, and stores reviews, usually displaying them through a widget. A review API provides programmatic access to that review data, so you can build custom collection and display logic instead of relying on a default widget.
Do ecommerce businesses need a review API?
Not always. Review apps typically come with built-in widgets that collect and display business reviews without any code, which covers a lot of stores. An API becomes essential when you’re running a headless storefront, building a custom internal dashboard, syncing customer reviews across multiple channels, or managing a very large catalog.
What can you build with a review API?
You can build review displays for headless storefronts and internal dashboards that aggregate review data to identify areas for improvement. Other common uses include building automated responses to negative feedback as well as syncs that push review content into your email, SMS, or CRM workflows.
