Review Insights · App Store
HappyCow - Vegan Food Near You
HappyCow · 32,026 ratings · ★ 4.9
4.9
★★★★★
32,026 ratings
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Top complaints - extracted from 17 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
"google"
5 negative reviews mention this · 29% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Dead App. I've been a HappyCow user for almost 10 years with over 1000 points. Listings are outdated and/or contain incorrect information. A quick Google search is more accurate. Want to add a new listing or correct false information? Cool, your requ…" - shiggym
2
"vegan"
5 negative reviews mention this · 29% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Horrible. They have a messaging feature, yet they will restrict access when you use it! Stick with Google maps for vegan food reviews" - hdhdhhdhdhhdjdjdj
3
"restaurant"
5 negative reviews mention this · 29% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Censorship. They don’t let you give one start to vegan and vegetarian businesses. That’s dictatorship. You can’t censor your customers who paid for your app. That’s why as a vegan since I installed this app whatever vegan restaurant I have been it was …" - Elly1080
4
"been"
4 negative reviews mention this · 24% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Dead App. I've been a HappyCow user for almost 10 years with over 1000 points. Listings are outdated and/or contain incorrect information. A quick Google search is more accurate. Want to add a new listing or correct false information? Cool, your requ…" - shiggym
5
"happycow"
4 negative reviews mention this · 24% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Dead App. I've been a HappyCow user for almost 10 years with over 1000 points. Listings are outdated and/or contain incorrect information. A quick Google search is more accurate. Want to add a new listing or correct false information? Cool, your requ…" - shiggym
6
"search"
4 negative reviews mention this · 24% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Dead App. I've been a HappyCow user for almost 10 years with over 1000 points. Listings are outdated and/or contain incorrect information. A quick Google search is more accurate. Want to add a new listing or correct false information? Cool, your requ…" - shiggym
7
"options"
4 negative reviews mention this · 24% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Annoyed I spent money on this. The filtering is non existent. You can’t filter by vegetarian options available or open now. It’s clunky and I found it unusable during my trip to Japan. Opened it twice and was so frustrated by the experience I didn’t use it again." - Lunabun
8
"disappointing"
4 negative reviews mention this · 24% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Wish I hadn’t paid for this. I’ve been vegetarian for 30 years and vegan for about 15. During this time, I heard about this app but always managed fine in the various places I lived and traveled (international and domestic). I finally ended up paying for the app abou…" - Elbybara
9
"years"
3 negative reviews mention this · 18% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Dead App. I've been a HappyCow user for almost 10 years with over 1000 points. Listings are outdated and/or contain incorrect information. A quick Google search is more accurate. Want to add a new listing or correct false information? Cool, your requ…" - shiggym
10
"response"
3 negative reviews mention this · 18% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Dead App. I've been a HappyCow user for almost 10 years with over 1000 points. Listings are outdated and/or contain incorrect information. A quick Google search is more accurate. Want to add a new listing or correct false information? Cool, your requ…" - shiggym
11
"vegetarian"
3 negative reviews mention this · 18% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Annoyed I spent money on this. The filtering is non existent. You can’t filter by vegetarian options available or open now. It’s clunky and I found it unusable during my trip to Japan. Opened it twice and was so frustrated by the experience I didn’t use it again." - Lunabun
12
"paid"
3 negative reviews mention this · 18% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Can’t sign up. I can’t get past the sign up page. It just keeps loading and does nothing. Super happy I paid for this " - niy134
📋 All 17 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").
Dead App
I've been a HappyCow user for almost 10 years with over 1000 points. Listings are outdated and/or contain incorrect information. A quick Google search is more accurate. Want to add a new listing or correct false information? Cool, your request will sit in a queue and never be approved. The community is TRYING to maintain the website/app and there is 0 response. This is just pathetic. I also tried to leave a review but it said I didn't "own" the app. So I deleted and it said I needed to pay $4.99. Hilarious. And I did, just so I could tell you how bad this has gotten. Try a different app like Spinach or stick to Google.
Can’t sign up
I can’t get past the sign up page. It just keeps loading and does nothing. Super happy I paid for this
You have to pay now???
I use this app all the time and now it cost $4.99. That crazy
False advertising.
Says it shows for dairy free places and then you pay and it doesn’t offer that option. What a scam. Trash
Horrible
They have a messaging feature, yet they will restrict access when you use it! Stick with Google maps for vegan food reviews
Censorship
They don’t let you give one start to vegan and vegetarian businesses. That’s dictatorship. You can’t censor your customers who paid for your app. That’s why as a vegan since I installed this app whatever vegan restaurant I have been it was not good even though the stars looks good. Don’t download this instead search it yourself in google. Doesn’t worth it!
Map is broken.
Every time when I zoom-in or out and there is no restaurants around, the app sends me all the way to the closes city w/ restaurants. Then J try to move map to my destination and the app resets the state and sends me back.
Wish I hadn’t paid for this
I’ve been vegetarian for 30 years and vegan for about 15. During this time, I heard about this app but always managed fine in the various places I lived and traveled (international and domestic).
I finally ended up paying for the app about 2 months ago when I found myself in a village in Basque country where there was rarely vegetarian food on menus and a number of restaurants that did have more veg options were closed. No options were listed on HappyCow. Walking around, I eventually found a restaurant that offered a salad that could be made vegetarian or vegan and it was delicious. I took the time to submit this restaurant and meal to HappyCow, as I was very thankful to have found it and wished it had been something I’d found when checking the app. My submission was rejected because the restaurant serves primarily non-vegetarian food, which was disappointing.
I continued to try to use the app in France and Spain over the next several weeks. HappyCow never once helped me find a vegetarian or vegan place to eat. There were either 1-2 listings with one or two bad reviews or there were simply no listings.
I felt like I was using an app that had been abandoned. It was a ghost town.
I’ll keep using Yelp and Google to find vegetarian/vegan food - I’ve had much more luck with these free tools.
Edit in response to developer response: I appreciate that this is a small team; however, the app was a disappointment for me, a vegan, and my personal experience is that Yelp and Google are more accurate and up to date.
I finally ended up paying for the app about 2 months ago when I found myself in a village in Basque country where there was rarely vegetarian food on menus and a number of restaurants that did have more veg options were closed. No options were listed on HappyCow. Walking around, I eventually found a restaurant that offered a salad that could be made vegetarian or vegan and it was delicious. I took the time to submit this restaurant and meal to HappyCow, as I was very thankful to have found it and wished it had been something I’d found when checking the app. My submission was rejected because the restaurant serves primarily non-vegetarian food, which was disappointing.
I continued to try to use the app in France and Spain over the next several weeks. HappyCow never once helped me find a vegetarian or vegan place to eat. There were either 1-2 listings with one or two bad reviews or there were simply no listings.
I felt like I was using an app that had been abandoned. It was a ghost town.
I’ll keep using Yelp and Google to find vegetarian/vegan food - I’ve had much more luck with these free tools.
Edit in response to developer response: I appreciate that this is a small team; however, the app was a disappointment for me, a vegan, and my personal experience is that Yelp and Google are more accurate and up to date.
Disappointing search function
Poor UX design, especially when moving the map somewhere you’re not currently located
HappyCow promotes eating disorders
On July 27 HappyCow sent out a newsletter that featured an extremely frail and unhealthy looking woman who clearly had an eating disorder. The photos of this woman were very disturbing. I emailed them to ask for an explanation and apology and no response. I’m not sure what they have to gain by featuring people with eating disorders but I am no longer interesting in using an app from a company who’s values don’t align with mine.
Forcing portrait orientation on iPad makes it unusable
I have an iPad with a magic keyboard attached which means that I use landscape screen orientation. HappyCow does not care. The app forces portrait orientation as if the iPad is just a larger iPhone. It is not. This outdated app pairs nicely with its outdated restaurant data that would take months to bring up to date for just a single neighborhood that I care about. And what’s the point? Yelp exists. Google Maps exists. Apple Maps even exists and is more current. HappyCow is just an old relic from an earlier generation of the Internet. It is no longer relevant or useful, and it shows.
Terrible app
Very difficult to use. Disappointing.
Disappointing and inaccurate
I went to a restaurant listed on here, I get there after walking for 20 mins, restaurant is no longer at that location. Today, I went to another restaurant here listed as “vegan” and to my surprise, there was not a single vegan option after again, driving for 10 mins. I just deleted the app after having it for 2 years, wasting my time and money.
Annoyed I spent money on this
The filtering is non existent. You can’t filter by vegetarian options available or open now. It’s clunky and I found it unusable during my trip to Japan. Opened it twice and was so frustrated by the experience I didn’t use it again.
Not updated
This is a good basic resource but it’s not updated and you can find more options just by a simple web search.
Doesn’t show proper hours, many places need reservations, doesn’t show proper titles
^^^^^
Offends me, as a vegan
I’ve been wondering why this app shows so few restaurants w vegan options near me, when I know that they exist. Then today I tried to add a review to a great place w vegan options. The app PREVENTED me from giving the restaurant five stars(!), saying that rating is reserved for fully vegan restaurants.
This is the kind of judgemental/paternalistic nonsense that gives us vegans a bad name. And it’s counterproductive. I guarantee that Happy Cow’s obscure rating rules have zero effect on the incentives of a non-veg restaurant to become mostly or fully veg. Such restaurants don’t even know that HC exists. But the rules do disincentivize adding options to HC that actual vegans (me) would find helpful.
As it is, I find a lot more options by searching in Yelp for the word “vegan” in the reviews.
This is the kind of judgemental/paternalistic nonsense that gives us vegans a bad name. And it’s counterproductive. I guarantee that Happy Cow’s obscure rating rules have zero effect on the incentives of a non-veg restaurant to become mostly or fully veg. Such restaurants don’t even know that HC exists. But the rules do disincentivize adding options to HC that actual vegans (me) would find helpful.
As it is, I find a lot more options by searching in Yelp for the word “vegan” in the reviews.
Sentiment summary
98%
Positive (4-5★)
1%
Neutral (3★)
1%
Negative (1-2★)