Review Insights · Google Play
Wondery: Must-Hear Podcasts
Wondery LLC · 9,420 ratings · ★ 4.2
4.2
★★★★★
9,420 ratings
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Top complaints - extracted from 69 negative reviews
Recurring phrases mined from 1-2★ reviews. The bigger the percentage, the more users have the same problem. Fix the top 2-3 in your version and you have product-market fit on day one.
1
"listen"
17 negative reviews mention this · 25% of all complaints
★★★★★ "update: updated app worked great then I get renewed for a year only to find out that wondry is ending in a few months?! love the content, hate the app!! when they updated the app I had to sign in again and my list was gone and my continue t…" - Riley Munin
2
"wondery"
17 negative reviews mention this · 25% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Trying to unsubscribe is not bloody easy, would NOT recommend this app or wondery itself, anybody who makes you jump through hoops to unsubscribe is just plain dodgy. Will be blocking them in my bank app and in my emails, bye bye wondery." - tracy tot
3
"podcasts"
17 negative reviews mention this · 25% of all complaints
★★★★★ "After two podcasts I'm listening to disappeared off the platform mid listen this week I'm moving on. It's been a good run." - Lindsey Nation
4
"episode"
15 negative reviews mention this · 22% of all complaints
★★★★★ "content is excellent and in the past I have had need to listen via episode download. unfortunately this isn't working anymore and looking at other reviews it's been going on since last year! which indicates they have no intention of fixing …" - sweeneytodd
5
"content"
14 negative reviews mention this · 20% of all complaints
★★★★★ "update: updated app worked great then I get renewed for a year only to find out that wondry is ending in a few months?! love the content, hate the app!! when they updated the app I had to sign in again and my list was gone and my continue t…" - Riley Munin
6
"podcast"
14 negative reviews mention this · 20% of all complaints
★★★★★ "After two podcasts I'm listening to disappeared off the platform mid listen this week I'm moving on. It's been a good run." - Lindsey Nation
7
"subscription"
13 negative reviews mention this · 19% of all complaints
★★★★★ "I have canceled this subscription but I am still being charged 🤬" - Lil Kim_310
8
"work"
12 negative reviews mention this · 17% of all complaints
★★★★★ "update: updated app worked great then I get renewed for a year only to find out that wondry is ending in a few months?! love the content, hate the app!! when they updated the app I had to sign in again and my list was gone and my continue t…" - Riley Munin
9
"other"
11 negative reviews mention this · 16% of all complaints
★★★★★ "content is excellent and in the past I have had need to listen via episode download. unfortunately this isn't working anymore and looking at other reviews it's been going on since last year! which indicates they have no intention of fixing …" - sweeneytodd
10
"play"
11 negative reviews mention this · 16% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Edit: downloads now show up in your download tab, but nothing else will download, and it still won't play offline. Utterly pointless. Love the content, but I dislike the app. It is not very intuitive. There is also a download feature on the…" - Sophie Wooloff
11
"phone"
10 negative reviews mention this · 14% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Horrible app. The content is ok but the app itself severely affects the way my phone operates. I have a Samsung S24 Ultra and it will consistently drain my battery about 10x faster than the next heavy battery usage app. I have to keep it in…" - Jim Beaudry
12
"every"
10 negative reviews mention this · 14% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Wondery offers a large number of podcasts and vodcasts on a large and diverse number of topics. It only gets two stars because you can't make a playlist. The moment I learn that the ability make playlists has been added I will be giddy to g…" - Jamie Butterweck
📋 All 69 negative reviews
Every 1-2★ review we fetched. Use the copy button to grab them all for your own analysis (paste into ChatGPT/Claude with a prompt like "summarize core user problems, group by theme, ignore bugs, focus on missing features").
update: updated app worked great then I get renewed for a year only to find out that wondry is ending in a few months?! love the content, hate the app!! when they updated the app I had to sign in again and my list was gone and my continue to listen to was gone. this is frustrating!
content is excellent and in the past I have had need to listen via episode download. unfortunately this isn't working anymore and looking at other reviews it's been going on since last year! which indicates they have no intention of fixing the issue which is really disappointing. have changed rating from a 4 to a 1.
I have canceled this subscription but I am still being charged 🤬
gonna miss the app 😢
Why does it have to be so hard to get back to all the episodes in a season
Horrible app. The content is ok but the app itself severely affects the way my phone operates. I have a Samsung S24 Ultra and it will consistently drain my battery about 10x faster than the next heavy battery usage app. I have to keep it in restricted mode otherwise it'll eat anything left.
Trying to unsubscribe is not bloody easy, would NOT recommend this app or wondery itself, anybody who makes you jump through hoops to unsubscribe is just plain dodgy. Will be blocking them in my bank app and in my emails, bye bye wondery.
I was charged a fee before my trial was over!
Costs too much for too much slop. Horrible to cancel, they make it as hard as possible.
still can't listen to things even after you've paid to use the app
Edit: downloads now show up in your download tab, but nothing else will download, and it still won't play offline. Utterly pointless. Love the content, but I dislike the app. It is not very intuitive. There is also a download feature on the app, so you can listen without signal, but the app itself needs internet access to open at all. Also unhelpful, so you cannot download a podcast and then listen on a flight, because you can't open the app in flight mode
Super slow app, crashes frequently. No other app runs this slow. An app for podcasts should not be this intensive to run.
Review of Wondery Not A very Good Murderer by Ronan Farrell. At the very least CeCe's an indulgent has been socialite bordering on narcissism. At the best of times a pathological liar that holds Farrow's reporting for far too long. In this production sounding more like Scaminfluencers than what Farrell by covering this protagonist is sacrificing his fine reputation and for what? Money? I started instead to listen to Leon Neyfakh's superior FIASCO PC on the Iran Contra Affair. So should you!
Downloads simply won't work. I keep getting an insufficient storage message when I have hundreds of GBs free. Loading screens take far too long. Content is great but the user experience destroys it. Won't be renewing after my free trial runs out.
Got the app to sign up for plus, it's saved me the money I guess because the tab to sign up won't even open. What a failure this app is and a disservice to every wondery creator.
Constant crashes, causing playback to stop within the first few minutes of long form podcasts. Even with restarting and updating app the only work around is to skip the first 5 minutes of the show. I regret paying for this and have cancelled my auto-renewal
Drains battery and crashes constantly
won't allow me to log in. Downloading the app, I try to sign in with Google and it tells me my account is already linked, and to go back to login - where this process is repeated. please get a software tester, jfc.
Crashes CONSTANTLY. (3-4 times per podcast episode) Read reviews before paying!
garbage
I love Wondery but the app drains my battery like nothing I've ever experienced before.
Although we love all of the Wondery podcasts and have had Wondery Plus for several years. The app itself is awful when you are trying to listen offline via downloads, which is the main reason we upgraded to Wondery Plus. It's finicky in that you need to have data connectivity to access the downloads, but then once you start listening, you have to turn it off. it's been an ongoing issue on various devices. Our main reason for this app is no ads download feature to listen on road trips.Frustrated
Don't bother downloading anything. You have to connect to the Internet to access your downloaded podcasts. And if you connect, leave the app open, then listen to one podcast offline, as soon as you unlock your phone to listen to another episode, the app automatically logs you out. it used to just do the first thing which was frustrating enough but I could get around it if I opened the app before leaving Internet access but now there's no work around. Also now the app just doesn't load podcasts.
would love to love this app, but it just doesn't work! trying to listen to armchair expert and it's stopping every 4-7 minutes for no reason. back to Spotify, I guess 🙄 just came back to add that I'm a wondery plus subscriber who has to listen to ads on Spotify. so..yeah. great work, wondry!
Love the content but app keeps pausing. I cancelled my subscription, not worth the frustration.
this app has caused my battery to die horribly fast. the background battery usage is so astronomically high my phone died within 3 hours of listening to a podcast while at work
Just plain broken. At first I thought it was me or my phone, but reading others here it looks like it a common issue. For me, it just plain doesn't open in android auto. Just a spinning circle. I tried every step that they recommended. Nothing worked. It's a shame because the podcasts are good but the app is trash. Glad I'm only on the trial. Back to my old podcast player. I'll just skip ads manually. What a shame though. This has potential but they don't seem to care. Nothing but apologies
keeps crashing when I'm out working and can't restart it every half an hour. randomly logs me out and needs wifi connection rather than data to log back in so I have to wait until lunch to do so. only staying for Red Handed Shorthands
Attempting to charge £45 for an annual subscription, when your app struggles to output your own content. thanks, no thanks.
I love listening to Morbid which is literally the only reason why I subscribed to Wondery. The app itself is horrible its constantly closing and malfunctioning for such a popular app the really should figure out how to make the app work better!
App crashed almost constantly, I cancelled and uninstalled in less than 4 hrs
Huge battery drain. If I restrict battery usage at all, the app will stop after a few minutes give me a message saying not to restrict battery. The only way I can listen without having to push play every few minutes is to allow the app to drain my battery. It has gotten progressively worse so I have little choice but to cancel my subscription and uninstall. I enjoy the podcasts but can no longer use this app. when I looked up the battery issues, this seems to be an issue with many users
love the podcasts but I have an android and if I do anything else on my phone while listening it just stops playing. have to go in and wait while it loads and hit play over and over again. I cancelled my subscription after awhile.
trying to listen was hard. . kept getting kicked off every few min...so uninstalled and reinstalled a couple of times... nothing changed
JULY 2025: EXTREMELY slow and cumbersome, IF it opens. It usually does not. I pay for an app that does not work only to avoid commercials. If I could listen to the wondery podcasts I pay for, commercial free, on another app, I would. ALL the free apps work better. Years of "we're sorry" answers to bad reviews dating back to 2020 all mention that the app crashes, freezes, & does not open. It only gets worse with time. They fix nothing. Absolute garbage.
Pros: Huge library and lots of great shows Wondery + means no ads Cons: Wondrey finally added Android auto compatibility. No surprise, it doesn't work. just a spinning wheel that never loads. If you like to gamble, download Wondrey. It's a roll of the dice every time you open it. Much like an old man's Johnson, it only works sometimes. lots of loading, loading and more loading. Really builds suspense waiting for my next episode to start.
The content on this platform is incredible but this app continues to be ATROCIOUS. I have used it for well over a year and it loads 50% of the time. Unfortunately, I'm just not going to be able to renew my subscription at this point because it is consistently terrible. The entire job of this app is to be able to PLAY the content that you have provided and very simply put, you can't even do that. 🤷🏻♀️
Glad I only paid for a month. I feel bad for creators who have contracts w/ Wondery & are stuck w/ them. The content is great but the app is TERRIBLE/HEAVY. It crashes constantly. You have to manually play each episode; rarely will it automatically start the next one in a series. Now, it's refusing to play anything even after uninstall/reinstall. My phone keeps giving me warnings that W+ is taking up too much memory/processing power, slowing other apps & functionality of my very powerful phone.
I'm sorry but this company is garbage with how theyanage their shows. I'd be fine if I had to listen to more ads to listen to older podcasts, but going out of my way to download this proprietary app and then still not being able to listen to something they're spending server space to host regardless is garbage. if you like a wondery podcast, be sire to download and save the whole podcast somewhere, they'll lock it behind a mandatory paywall later.
I really enjoy the podcasts and content, but the app itself makes the listening experience frustrating. Even when I’ve already downloaded an episode-knowing I’ll have poor connection-it still just spins when I open the app, instead of resuming where I left off. On top of that, the audio doesn’t pause when my navigation gives directions. Honestly, I’ve had a better user experience with a free podcast apps. I expect more from Amazon, and I’m thinking of canceling my subscription.
I've restarted my phone, forced stopped the app, tried to play different files, and nothing. I'm just getting a rotating arrow as if it's loading. nothing will play. just started my subscription too. will update is they let me out of my recurring payment.
paid for a year subscription for it to rarely work. It kicks me out mid episode or just spins the last few days.
I can't connect to the podcast I am listening to. I subscribed to wondery and now it juat spins to connect. It needs to be fixed or you will loss me a paying customer
I really wish I would have read the reviews before I paid for a subscription because the app hasn't been loading for the past two days. WITAF. ETA: I was advised to uninstall and reinstall the app. Am I going to have to do this every five days?! It not loading again today, June 30. Again, I wish I'dve read the reviews before I paying for a year subscription. The rate at which this app crashes is absolutely unacceptable and you should be incredibly embarrassed to even offer subscriptions.
crashed in middle of podcast unable to get back in. very frustrating 😔
Content is good, but the app is terrible. It frequently stops in the middle of playing an episode or refuses to start playing content altogether. Reinstalling the app won't fix the problems. I'm about to cancel my subscription
I feel like the selection got worse with time
garbage lying app
I chose to Uninstall after it required me to make a subscription decision
this app buffers too much and drains the phone battery worse than Amazon music. it ran better in the beginning. all the updates just make me hate this app more and more.
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Sentiment summary
78%
Positive (4-5★)
6%
Neutral (3★)
16%
Negative (1-2★)