Rating Methodology

This page explains what every number on a Grand Screen app page means and where it comes from. There are only two, and one of them is not ours.

The Google Play rating

The star rating shown on most app and game pages is the aggregate rating published on Google Play, together with the number of ratings behind it. We retrieve it through the Google Play Data API and display it unchanged.

We do not adjust, weight or recalculate it. When you see 4.6 on one of our pages, that is Google’s 4.6, as of the date the page was last refreshed.

Read it with the review count next to it. A 4.8 from 120 ratings and a 4.8 from two million ratings are not comparable, and we show both figures so you can tell them apart.

The Grand Screen visitor rating

Visitors can rate a title on our pages. Where enough people have done so, we show that average separately and label it as a visitor rating.

Being honest about the size of this dataset: it is roughly 1,200 ratings spread across about 200 titles. Most pages in the catalogue have none at all. Where a visitor rating exists, it usually rests on single-digit numbers of votes. It is a signal, not a measurement, and it should never outweigh the Google Play figure.

One rating per visitor per title is enforced by IP, which stops casual repeat voting but is not proof against a determined effort.

There is no expert score

Grand Screen does not publish an editorial or expert score, and no page on this site carries one. An expert score would require us to install, use and assess each title ourselves. With more than 18,000 titles in the catalogue we do not do that, so we do not claim a number that would imply we had.

An earlier version of this page described a weighted expert-scoring formula across five criteria. No such score was ever calculated or displayed. That text was inaccurate and has been removed.

Pros, cons and FAQ blocks

These are generated automatically from the Google Play listing with the help of large language models. They summarise public information; they are not conclusions drawn from testing. The pros and cons lists can also be voted on by visitors, which reorders them but does not change where they came from.

See how this catalogue is built for the full picture.

What we do not accept

• We do not take payment from developers to raise a rating, alter a listing or secure placement.
• We do not remove unfavourable Google Play reviews from a page at a developer’s request.
• Advertising on this site is served by third-party networks and has no bearing on any figure shown.

Something wrong?

If a rating or figure on a page is stale or incorrect, tell us and we will refresh or remove it.