Review Insights · App Store
UK ETA
Home Office · 1,394 ratings · ★ 3.3
3.3
★★★★★
1,394 ratings
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Top complaints - extracted from 57 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
"passport"
18 negative reviews mention this · 32% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Camera feature is broken. Camera feature to scan passport is broken, making the app useless" - Harrison eckert
2
"photo"
15 negative reviews mention this · 26% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Absolute Rubbish. Ridiculously awful. App struggles to take photos or scan chip. If you can’t get it to work there is no workaround available. Double check even after you get the confirmation email you may still have problems at the gate." - Jimmyjoejeeter
3
"work"
13 negative reviews mention this · 23% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Absolute Rubbish. Ridiculously awful. App struggles to take photos or scan chip. If you can’t get it to work there is no workaround available. Double check even after you get the confirmation email you may still have problems at the gate." - Jimmyjoejeeter
4
"scan"
9 negative reviews mention this · 16% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Absolute Rubbish. Ridiculously awful. App struggles to take photos or scan chip. If you can’t get it to work there is no workaround available. Double check even after you get the confirmation email you may still have problems at the gate." - Jimmyjoejeeter
5
"chip"
9 negative reviews mention this · 16% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Absolute Rubbish. Ridiculously awful. App struggles to take photos or scan chip. If you can’t get it to work there is no workaround available. Double check even after you get the confirmation email you may still have problems at the gate." - Jimmyjoejeeter
6
"doesn"
9 negative reviews mention this · 16% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Doesn’t work. Been trying to get the app to work for days now. Just get a system busy message at all times of the day. Tried many different times." - Grundalienlicker
7
"hours"
8 negative reviews mention this · 14% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Horrible. Have been trying for hours just to start the process. I have deleted and restarted and all I get is “Sorry it’s busy try again in a couple hours.”" - Wald-Vogel
8
"people"
8 negative reviews mention this · 14% of all complaints
★★★★★ "System crashed. Currently unusable, this is costing a fair amount of airline/consumer money as it has been down since for at least 33 hours now and there were at least 20 people on our flight last night who couldnt get on" - Ydpydlt
9
"terrible"
8 negative reviews mention this · 14% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Terrible app with no customer service interface to help travelers. When the app is down, it is just down. Just a screen that says try again later. There is no interface to help travelers with questions. If this is a necessary process to travel to the UK then this needs to be managed properly." - KatPalma
10
"through"
8 negative reviews mention this · 14% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Doesn’t work. It takes forever to get through all of the steps. Scanning your face, finding the barcode takes forever to get it to work. I finally managed to get all of that to work, and I get towards the end where you have to enter the country where you…" - Sbll
11
"days"
6 negative reviews mention this · 11% of all complaints
★★★★★ "App down for 3 days and I can’t travel as a Canadian passport holder. You should really fix an app if you’re trying to use it as a gateway for visitors to enter the country" - AlyshaMalik
12
"country"
6 negative reviews mention this · 11% of all complaints
★★★★★ "App down for 3 days and I can’t travel as a Canadian passport holder. You should really fix an app if you’re trying to use it as a gateway for visitors to enter the country" - AlyshaMalik
📋 All 57 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").
Absolute Rubbish
Ridiculously awful. App struggles to take photos or scan chip. If you can’t get it to work there is no workaround available. Double check even after you get the confirmation email you may still have problems at the gate.
Camera feature is broken
Camera feature to scan passport is broken, making the app useless
Disfunctional
Poor design & pathetic performance. No way to go back when it can’t read passport.
App down for 3 days and I can’t travel as a Canadian passport holder
You should really fix an app if you’re trying to use it as a gateway for visitors to enter the country
Doesn’t work
Been trying to get the app to work for days now. Just get a system busy message at all times of the day. Tried many different times.
Horrible
Have been trying for hours just to start the process. I have deleted and restarted and all I get is “Sorry it’s busy try again in a couple hours.”
System crashed
Currently unusable, this is costing a fair amount of airline/consumer money as it has been down since for at least 33 hours now and there were at least 20 people on our flight last night who couldnt get on
Needs some serious improvement
I feel like, in the year 2026, there shouldn’t necessarily be a need for a several hour wait on the website and the app if the app is “busy.” Waiting on the queue on the website while also waiting for the app to work (where it tells me to wait “a few hours” before trying again). Perhaps an update of the system to make it more accessible and efficient is in order, as it doesn’t really make sense why something like this would need a wait time or wouldn’t allow over a certain amount of people to use it at the same time. Maybe it works fine after the wait, but I waited long enough to make this review and still have hours to go, so I wouldn’t know. The wait itself is frustrating enough for one star, and hopefully will be some kind of incentive to work on improving their system.
Always busy!
App has been busy for 2 days. Waiting for the website-it’s busy too!
Terrible app with no customer service interface to help travelers
When the app is down, it is just down. Just a screen that says try again later. There is no interface to help travelers with questions. If this is a necessary process to travel to the UK then this needs to be managed properly.
Waste
Waste of time and money. App continually crashes. They say you need to wait 3 processing days for your ETA, but it takes days to apply.
Not working
System not working.
App issues
I can’t open the App since two days ago. The message said Sorry the system is busy tray later
App does not work at all
I will change my review when I get my ETA and the app works
I’ve tried using the app multiple times across multiple days and it always says.
The UK ETA app is busy at the moment please try again later.
We recommend waiting a few hours before you try again.
I have a flight to the UK next week and this is really making things difficult
I’ve tried using the app multiple times across multiple days and it always says.
The UK ETA app is busy at the moment please try again later.
We recommend waiting a few hours before you try again.
I have a flight to the UK next week and this is really making things difficult
Not working . Don’t go. UK
Not working it is a shame for uk.
Garbage
Won’t read the chip won’t take a photo
Terrible
Horrific experience. Have been waiting over 8 hours with 4 kids at the train station. No one to talk to for customer support. PAY to speak to someone over the phone. SCAM.
Completely unusable due to crashes
The app is completely unusable - it crashes every time you get to the biometric scanner. Have tried deleting and redownloading multiple times.
Very buggy
It took me at least 16 attempts, a few hours, multiple attempts on the online alternative, and paying twice (once via the website and once via the app) before I finally got it to work. My 15 year old son’s online application was instantly approved while mine was not, which convinced me to give this incredibly frustrating app yet another try. In the meantime we got to the point of contemplating him visiting London while I just waited in the airport. I can see from the reviews I’m not the only one who has struggled to use this. Please fix the bugs!
Glitchy and frustrating
Must have been managed by school dropouts. So glitchy and frustrating.
Doesn’t work
It takes forever to get through all of the steps. Scanning your face, finding the barcode takes forever to get it to work. I finally managed to get all of that to work, and I get towards the end where you have to enter the country where you are going. We are going to the United Kingdom. It’s a drop-down, and you can’t type in your own country. You have to select from the list England, United Kingdom, Great Britain are not one of the selections. So I can’t move on. Absurd.
Slow does not scan passport image
Almost missed my flight
Nightmare
A nightmare for people with essential tremor to use. The photos are taken too quickly and then declined.
Useless
Imposible
The worst
My photo won’t take. I’ve tried it a million different times and it either won’t upload to the app or the app won’t take it for whatever reason. There is also no line I can contact to get help with this either. Terrible experience.
Passengers paying for flaws
This is a terrible app created to make the user do the work of immigration staff and pay a fee for doing it for them. In addition, LHR by design does not have “sterile” airside transit unlike many airports around the world and foreign transit passengers have to pay for this flaw. Typical British style of asking others to pay for them to loot in broad daylight. These thieves never reform.
Nothing but bugs and frustration
I spent hours trying to use this app. It’s awful. It doesn’t accept any pictures of my passport photo page. It has no useful help. Just a total waste of technology.
Waste of time
This app has one purpose, to get an eta for travel. It doesn’t even work for that. The app was incapable of scanning my passport, which I know works because I had to scan it for a Ryanair flight a week ago. It also was unable to submit my documentation once I skipped the scan. This whole process is a waste of time and money and shouldn’t be required of people transiting through UK airports.
Difficult app
Needs help from IT specialist. Cumbersome
App issue
I cant pay with my card, there is no place to put the card number…
Bad.
Garbage camera experience, would have rated 1 star anyway for forcing me to use an app.
If your payment doesn’t go through
Use Mastercard to have your payment go through because I tried using my Visa Card & it kept declining. It was terribly frustrating.
I had spent so much time inputting & re-inputting all my information into the UK ETA app (supposedly easier), but when it came time to submit my application through payment- the BEST form of payment was Mastercard!
I had spent so much time inputting & re-inputting all my information into the UK ETA app (supposedly easier), but when it came time to submit my application through payment- the BEST form of payment was Mastercard!
Terrible
And what’s the point of this again?
No email verification received
I’ve checked every mailbox in my email and haven’t received the verification to proceed. So the app stalls at the first page for me. Text option to verify would be better.
Horrible
You need a teenager to do this for you. All my attempts to take my photo, be it my face or my passport were rejected over and over. It took over 5 attempts to get it to read the chip in my passport. It was so frustrating that I gave it to my teenager to do the rest of the applications for the rest of my children. She had an easier time of it. I’m not a novice with app usage. I do all the travel arrangements for my family and this one was supremely frustrating.
Absolute Racket
UK government pocketing $22 just cuz
Just a Taste of What’s to Come
👁️
Garbage
Terrible app experience. Pic process AND the chip process were impossible with my 14 Pro.
Useless
Utterly useless app that doesn’t work
Terrible
God awful, difficulty with photo capture of passport and also of taking photo of self. Passport scan didn’t work at all.
Accurate representation of any government
It doesn’t work. Photo taking is a waste of time. Chip reading is a waste of time.
Good app but it shouldn’t be required
It’s crazy to make people download an app for 2 minutes to then delete it when it could be a mobile or desktop browser application. For that reason 1 star
This app is useless
It requires you to find a chip in your US passport but it cannot find it
Garbage
Absolute garbage app
Messy
What a pain in the "a". 15 photos to get a picture of my passport to meet requirements. Another dozen to get an acceptable face photo, then the app crashed ("try again tomorrow"). UK ETA needs some different software developers!
What a Nightmare Experience
It is impossible to take a passport photo through the app that it will accept. I, without exaggeration, took 30+ photos that it said were unacceptable. It either said there was a glare/blurry or it said it could not find my passport in the frame. The photos looked fine to me. After about 20 tries, I looked into cancelling my flight & booking a holiday elsewhere, but unfortunately discovered my flight was non-refundable. I tried submitting my application through the website but it just referring me back to the app unless I was submitting an application for someone else. After about 45 minutes of taking photos, I finally just submitted a passport photo that it said was unacceptable. I got an email less than a minute later saying my ETA was approved. Why put people through this?
Horrible. Won’t accept passport photo
It won’t accept passport photo even though it is very clear with no glare. I’ve read others have the same problem.
Bad app
Changing my routing to go through another country….
Works poorly
App works incredibly poorly. I can’t progress past taking a photo of my passport because it won’t accept any photo I took. Use the web version if you can.
WORST VISA APP IN THE WORLD! TERRIBLE!!!
It took my wife and I COUNTLESS attempts to get the app to work. I was one attempt away from cancelling my flights through Heathrow and going through Amsterdam instead. Luckily (?) it finally worked after at least 2 hours of effort on:
1. Getting it to read my US passport
2. Worst was the chip scan. I
3. Saved nothing from before, so every one of our umpteen attempts was starting from scratch and redoing the incredibly broken process.
page
4. Timed out multiple times
All other visa apps I have used put the UK app to shame. This includes those from Third World countries. UK-ETA should be embarrassed as it is a terrible reflection on the country. I have no idea how there user experience people would allow this app to be launched, even in Alpha mode.
SHAME!!!
1. Getting it to read my US passport
2. Worst was the chip scan. I
3. Saved nothing from before, so every one of our umpteen attempts was starting from scratch and redoing the incredibly broken process.
page
4. Timed out multiple times
All other visa apps I have used put the UK app to shame. This includes those from Third World countries. UK-ETA should be embarrassed as it is a terrible reflection on the country. I have no idea how there user experience people would allow this app to be launched, even in Alpha mode.
SHAME!!!
+ 7 more in the clipboard copy
Sentiment summary
54%
Positive (4-5★)
5%
Neutral (3★)
41%
Negative (1-2★)