App Store rejection checkers compared

The comparison

Who each is for

Free Claude Code plugins and skills — start here

There are genuinely free plugins and open-source skills that check a project against the App Store Review Guidelines, and they live in the same install surface as shipcheck. This is the comparison a buyer should make first, and any paid tool that pretends they do not exist is not being straight with you.

Use one if: you want a sanity check, you are shipping a native app, or your project is simple enough that the guideline-level checks cover you.

Where they run out: the RN/Expo configuration layer, and maintenance. Keeping a policy corpus current is unglamorous continuous work that volunteer projects rarely sustain, and a stale corpus is worse than none because it reads as authoritative.

AcceptMyApp — the established general-iOS option

$29 one-time per app, $149/yr for unlimited apps, first analysis free. Combines code, metadata and screenshot checking, exports markdown aimed at AI-agent workflows, and has a real Product Hunt track record.

Use it if: you ship native iOS, you want screenshot and metadata review in the same pass, and granting a repository read scope is acceptable to you.

The friction: the code checker requires granting one-time read-only access to a GitHub repository. For plenty of teams that is routine. For a solo developer with client code or an unreleased product it is a real bar, and it is the specific bar shipcheck's architecture removes.

ReviewKit — cheapest entry, subscription shape

Free tier at 3 scans a month with a basic rule engine, $5 one-time for all four scan engines, then $19/mo Pro with history and diffs and $49/mo Team with an API.

Use it if: you want scan history and diffing across submissions, or an API for a team pipeline.

The tension: $5 is a very effective anchor, and the products are not equivalent — the $5 tier is capped and shallow. The subscription tiers also reintroduce scan caps, which is the friction one-time-payment-preferring indie developers most consistently resist.

AppDrift and RejexAI — worth monitoring

Smaller and less differentiated, roughly $9.99–39.99/mo with a free token tier in AppDrift's case. Neither has visible React Native or Expo depth.

shipcheck — the RN/Expo specialist

Three things it does that the others structurally do not:

It understands the dependency tree. It reads node_modules, Podfile.lock and every PrivacyInfo.xcprivacy in the project, and intersects that with Apple's published SDK list — which is how you find that hermes, or a transitive nanopb under Firebase, is the reason for your ITMS-91061.

Nothing leaves your machine. It runs in the Claude Code session you already have open. No account, no signup, no repository grant.

It shows the corpus is current. /shipcheck:refresh re-fetches Apple and Google policy and prints a changelog of what actually changed. Every competitor claims to check against "the guidelines"; none of them shows you evidence of currency.

Where it is the wrong tool: you are shipping native Swift or Kotlin, where the RN depth buys you nothing and AcceptMyApp is a better general checker. You want a hosted dashboard with a team seat model rather than a CLI. Or you want screenshot review, which shipcheck does not do.

What none of them can do

Static analysis catches the deterministic rejections: privacy manifests, permission strings without features, background modes without a matching capability, missing account deletion, placeholder content, metadata naming other platforms, Play Data safety inconsistencies, target API level.

It cannot catch the judgement rejections. Guideline 4.2 minimum functionality is a human deciding whether your app does enough to exist. Guideline 4.3 spam is a human deciding whether it looks like forty other apps. Guideline 3.1.2 subscription disclosure has objective parts and subjective ones. Guideline 1.4.1 medical scrutiny is a human reading your claims.

Any tool implying it can guarantee approval is selling certainty that does not exist. The honest claim is narrower and still worth money: it removes the class of rejection where the message names a guideline and you spend two build cycles working out which of 800 packages caused it.

How to choose in one minute

• Native Swift or Kotlin app? → free plugin first, AcceptMyApp if you want depth and screenshots.
• React Native or Expo? → shipcheck, because the failures are transitive and configuration-shaped. Why RN is different.
• Cannot grant repository access? → shipcheck or a local free plugin. Nothing web-based will work for you.
• Need scan history across many submissions? → ReviewKit Pro.
• Agency shipping many client apps? → compare shipcheck's $149/yr agency tier against AcceptMyApp's $149/yr unlimited; they are priced identically and differ on locality and framework depth.
• Already rejected and need to reply? → shipcheck drafts a Resolution Center reply against the cited clause. Nothing else in this list does.

Questions and answers