Play Developer API

The Google Play Android Developer API is the REST API for publishing and managing Android apps without touching Play Console: uploading a bundle, promoting a track, editing a listing, reading subscription state.

Getting it working is a two-site job. Enable the API in a Google Cloud project, create a service account there, then link that Cloud project to your developer account under API access in Play Console and grant the service account permissions in Users and permissions. Miss the Play Console half and every call returns a permission error that reads like a credential problem.

Publishing calls do not work like ordinary REST. You open an edit, stage everything against it (the bundle, the track assignment, listing text, release notes), then commit the edit as a single transaction. Nothing is live until the commit succeeds, and a commit is all or nothing. That model is unusual enough that it accounts for most of the confusion people hit on their first integration.

Not everything in the console has an endpoint. Policy questionnaires including Data safety, content rating and target audience are console-only work, so a fully automated first submission is not possible.

Quotas exist and are per project, generous for release work and tight for anything polling reviews or purchases in a loop.

See also: Play edit, Play service account, AAB.