Methodology & FAQ

A record of which apps Google Play will not let people install, and where. We test the catalogue continuously across the 217 countries and territories Google Play serves, and publish what we find: every app we hold, every storefront it is and is not offered in, and the date each reading was taken.

It is run by GreatFire, which has been monitoring online censorship since 2011. The sister project AppleCensorship does the same for the App Store.

What we are arguing from all this is set out separately, at Why this matters.

A crawler asks Google Play for each app, once per country, as a visitor in that country would. Play answers one of three ways: it serves a page with an Install button, it serves a listing without one, or it does not serve the app at all. Only the first counts as available.

Every answer is stored with its timestamp, so each figure on this site can be traced to the readings behind it. A single reading is not treated as a change of status: a storefront has to answer the same way consistently, over more than 24 hours, before we record that an app was removed or restored. That rule exists because Play returns transient errors, and a monitor that believed every one of them would publish removals that never happened.

We have been testing Play this way since November 2023. Coverage is uneven and openly so — some countries have been tested far more deeply than others, so an app missing from a storefront we have barely crawled is a thinner claim than one missing from a storefront we crawl daily. Every count on the site names its own denominator for this reason.

Yes, in the sense this project means by the word, and it is worth being exact because the claim is about Google's system rather than a guess about any one app.

Google operates a separate Play catalogue for each country and decides which one you see. Whatever the reason an app is missing from yours — a government order, a policy decision in Mountain View, a developer who never offered it there — the effect on you is identical and Google is the party enforcing it. You are shown a catalogue with holes in it and you are not told the holes are there. That withholding, at the scale of a whole country, is what this site calls censorship.

What the data cannot tell you is why any particular app is missing, and we do not pretend otherwise. An app absent from one country and offered in 216 others is a strong signal; an app offered in three countries and absent from the rest is probably a regional product. The site publishes both figures for every app so the distinction is yours to draw. Where Google or a government has stated a reason, we say so and link to it — which is rarely, because neither publishes app-level removals by country.

No, for two reasons.

The first is that an escape hatch is no use to someone who does not know they need it. Play does not tell you an app exists and is being withheld — it shows you a catalogue and that catalogue looks complete. Nobody sideloads an app they have never heard of. Publishing what is missing is the part sideloading cannot do for itself, and it is what this site is for.

The second is that the hatch is narrowing. From 2026, Android requires apps installed outside Play to be signed by a developer Google has verified, rolling out first in Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand. A developer who will not or cannot register with Google — which includes anyone a government has reason to pursue — loses the sideloading route along with the Play route. See Why this matters for the detail and the sources.

Yes. Search for it by name from the header of any page, or go straight to its page if you know the package name — the id= part of its Play URL, like com.whatsapp. Every storefront on an app's page has a Test button beside it, which asks Play then and there and shows you what it answered, along with the Play link so you can check the same thing by hand.

A single test is a reading, not a verdict. It takes consistent answers over more than 24 hours before a status change is recorded, for the reason given above.

There is no download button, but there is a documented JSON API, which does more than a spreadsheet would:

• /api/apps/{packageName}/status — every storefront's latest reading for one app, with dates. It answers cross-origin, so it works from a script or straight from a browser console.
• /api/explore — the engine behind Explore: filter every app we hold by storefront, category, audience and availability, and read the counts back.
• /rss — removals as they are published.

Field definitions, and how often each figure moves, are in llms.txt. What we do not publish is a bulk dump of the underlying readings — there are millions of them — so if your research needs that, ask us.

Tell us, and include the page and the app or country you were looking at. Readings can be wrong — Play answers differently to different requests, and our crawler sees only what it is shown — and a report that names the page is one we can check against the stored readings.

If you are a developer and an app of yours is listed as unavailable somewhere you did offer it, that is worth telling us too. It is also, on its own, a finding.

Contact us and we will do our best to reply promptly.