App Store rejected your app. Here is how we get it approved.
Time is money. App Store and Play Store rejections kill launch timelines and burn submission cycles. We diagnose the actual rejection cause, fix it, and resubmit cleanly. Audit-first. Flat-fee rescue scoped from the audit's findings. The longest rejection cycle we have seen cleared dual-store approval in 4 weeks.
Audit-first · Flat-fee · Senior-led · 30-day stability window
Rescue outcome
4-week dual-store approval on a healthcare app
A React Native therapy app had been failing App Store review for months over privacy manifests, permission rationale, and HIPAA-adjacent content policies. We audited first, rewrote the submission surface, resolved the reviewer dialog, and cleared both Apple and Google review in 4 weeks. Per-engagement numbers from a recent rescue.
Read the full case →If any of these sound familiar, we can probably fix it
Apple's review guidelines have five categories: Safety, Performance, Business, Design, Legal. Most rejections we see come from these patterns.
Privacy manifest or permission rationale rejections
Apple's PrivacyInfo.xcprivacy file requirements have tightened. Permission descriptions in Info.plist that worked last year are now flagged as insufficient. Third-party SDKs report tracking domains you did not know about.
Third-party SDK or tracking domain disclosure
Apple and Google both require declaration of every SDK that collects data and every tracking domain it contacts. The list grows every release. Submissions get rejected for SDKs the team forgot were still in the build.
Payment policy violations on subscription or digital goods
App Store guideline 3.1 (and Google's equivalent) require IAP for digital subscriptions and digital content. Apps that route digital purchases outside the store, or even hint that users can subscribe at a website, get rejected on increasingly strict interpretations of the policy.
Healthcare or HIPAA content getting flagged on guideline 5.1.3
Apple's review team applies tighter scrutiny to apps that handle health data. Missing user consent flows, unclear data-handling disclosures, or third-party analytics that aren't HIPAA-compliant get flagged. We have 5 years of experience in this category.
Metadata, screenshots, or content guideline rejections
App Store metadata, screenshots, in-app content, and content moderation surfaces all get reviewed. Adult content, gambling, controlled substances, and user-generated content rules are enforced by humans whose mood is not consistent.
Crashes on first launch in App Review's test environment
Reviewers test on devices and OS versions the developer often does not. Crashes in the reviewer's environment, even when they don't reproduce locally, are rejection reason 2.1 (App Completeness). We diagnose and fix the actual crash, then resubmit.
How a rejection rescue actually runs
Four stages. Clear, concrete steps. Every step has a deliverable you can point to.
Paid Technical Audit
Mandatory first step. Read-only repo access. Standalone product. You walk away with a written report whether or not you move forward with the rescue.
We read the full rejection message, the rejection history (every prior submission and its response from review), and the codebase. We map the reviewer's actual concern to the actual code path that's causing it. The audit produces a severity-ranked finding list, a rejection root-cause analysis, and a resubmission plan. Five working days, fixed-fee.
Resubmission plan
We turn the audit's findings into a flat-fee rescue scope. You see the exact fix list, the resubmission strategy, and the dollar number before any rescue work starts.
Some rejections are fixed in the code. Some are fixed in the metadata. Some are fixed in the reviewer dialog, where you explain to App Review why the existing implementation is correct. The rescue plan covers all three. You always know the ceiling before we start.
Executed fixes and resubmission
Hands-on takeover. Read/write repo access if needed. Daily builds. We fix in the order the audit prioritized.
Critical reviewer-blocker fixes first. Privacy manifest, permission rationale, third-party SDK declarations, payment routing. Then resubmission with a reviewer dialog that explains every change. We have walked apps through dual-store approval cycles where the previous team got rejected six times in a row. The key is the reviewer dialog as much as the code.
Handoff and stability window
Handoff docs to your team, plus a 30-day stability window. Then you pick your next path.
Your team takes the wheel with a handoff package: runbooks for the App Store / Play Console submission flow, the reviewer dialog patterns that worked, the metadata requirements that mattered. A 30-day stability window follows handoff: we respond to anything the rescue surfaced in production. After that you pick: maintain in-house, contract someone, or graduate to a Partner retainer.
Outcomes from a recent rescue
Per-engagement numbers from a React Native healthcare therapy app rescue.
4 weeks
Dual-store approval after submission
0.7★ → 4.4★
App Store rating turnaround
$8k+
Published rescue pricing starts here
How much does an App Store rescue cost?
Audit-first, quoted fast. Flat-fee rescue scope from the audit's findings. No estimates, no stretched engagements.
App Store Rejection Rescue
Starting at $8,000 · audit first, then quoted
Audit-first ($2,500 Quick Scan or $5,000 Full Audit). Flat-fee rescue scoped from the audit's findings. Deposit + milestones. 30-day stability window after handoff.
Rescue scope is locked after the audit. If the findings show a deeper architectural problem behind the rejection, we re-scope as a Build or a Partner, not a stretched rescue.