Costco App Search Not Working? 338 Reviews (2026)

The Costco app rates 4.74 on Google Play and 4.86 on the App Store. Read the reviews written since May and you get a different app: one that cannot reliably find a product, hold a cart, or show your membership card without something landing on top of it.

We did not rank these by how often they are mentioned. We put them in the order you hit them on an actual Costco trip, because that turned out to be the clearest way to see what is going on.

How We Counted

On 10 August 2026 we pulled the 500 newest US Google Play reviews and the most recent App Store complaints for the Costco app, then swept fourteen non-English storefronts separately.

After dropping reviews too short to categorise, 338 complaints remained: 166 from Google Play and 172 from the App Store, spanning 17 May to 8 August 2026. The split was 226 one star, 67 two star, 45 three star. The non-English sweep returned a further 68 negative reviews, mostly French, Spanish, Korean and Arabic.

One number is worth stating before anything else. Only 8 of the 338, 2.4%, are complaints about Costco the shop rather than Costco the app: prices, staff, the food court, the return policy. That is the lowest share we have measured on any retailer app this year. Almost everyone writing these reviews likes the warehouse and is angry at the software.

At the Door: Something Keeps Landing on Your Membership Card

You open the app for one reason at the entrance, which is the QR code on your digital membership card. 15 reviews describe a passkey prompt appearing over it. One reviewer worked through the whole thing:

When I open it to show the membership card at the door, by the time my phone is in front of the scanner, it will pop up a passkey nagging dialog to block the QR code. I fed up and set up a passkey. Next time, the passkey popup was gone but it instead popped up a location access request, blocking the QR code again. Adding to the puzzle, after I set up the passkey, it still asked me for password when logging in.

Setting up the passkey did not end the prompts, and it did not remove the password step it was supposed to replace. Others report there is no way to dismiss it permanently:

Every time I open the app it’s asking for a passkey. I don’t have one. It won’t even let me type in a password or just use Face ID. Happens every time I select something in the menu.

Keeps prompting me to setup but doesn’t support Microsoft Authenticator. I can’t stop this annoying prompt

This is not a new build regression. Passkey complaints run from 22 May, v26.4.6, through 5 August, v26.7.2: six different releases across 75 days. If you get caught by it, open the app in the car park rather than in the queue, and give it a few seconds to settle before you hold the phone up.

In the Aisle: Search Does Not Find Things You Are Standing Next To

This is the largest cluster in the set. 60 of the 338, 17.8%, are about search, and the complaint is almost never "search is slow". It is that search returns the wrong products, or none:

If I search "frozen fruit" no frozen fruit shows up. I can even search the EXACT item name, and the item doesn't show up (while standing next to it in the store, mind you). Renders the app all but unusable.

the search option is dumber than dirt. You can search towels and it will pull up broccoli. There's no rhyme or reason to it. I have clicked the link from an email they sent, to be told the item I'm searching can't be found.

I recently searched for "washing machine" because I wanted to see if you stocked washing machine cleaner. No results. I'm pretty sure you stock washing machines so there's no reason this should come up with no results.

Read together, these describe a matcher that fails on partial terms and on category words, not one that is missing data. The towels result is the giveaway. A search engine returning broccoli for towels is not short of a product record.

The practical workaround reviewers landed on is the same one they use for other bad site search: put the term into a web search with the word Costco attached and follow the link back in. Several say so explicitly, and one has been doing it for years.

The Back Button Undoes Your Search

18 reviews describe the same navigation loop, and it makes the search problem considerably worse, because every retry starts from an empty box:

When you search a item and select one from the results if you try and go back to the search results it take you back to the apps home screen.

If you hit the back button you have to put in your search all over again and it takes you back to the begining everytime!

If you found the item, add it or note the item number before you tap anything else. Getting back to a result list is not reliable.

In the Cart: 48 Reviews Describe a Cart That Will Not Hold

48 of the 338, 14.2%, are about the cart, and they split into two failures. Items refuse to go in:

I hate that I can't just add something to the cart. it always says "unable to add to cart." It's hit or miss if it actually adds to the cart or not.

Or they go in and leave again:

cart is emptied mid-shopping if you leave it for a while, out of stock items show up in the search and error message like "generic error occurred" shows up.

Things kept disappearing from my shopping cart. I had to put everything back in at least five times.

There is a third variant that several App Store reviewers hit, where the cart holds but will not be edited: quantities cannot be changed and items cannot be removed, so an accidental extra of a bulk item has to be dealt with after ordering.

At Checkout: The Loop

21 reviews describe checkout itself failing. The most common shape is a loop rather than an error:

I've hit checkout about 9 times and it won't let me. It just cycles back to my cart page. I've been trying to buy the same items for a week now.

31 reviews across the set say the website works where the app does not, and for buying, that is the honest recommendation in these reviews. The app is fine for browsing. Reviewers who needed to complete an order finished it in a browser.

Six reviewers add a specific twist: the app demands their membership number to add an item, while they are signed in and looking at their own membership card in a different tab of the same app.

The Feature That Disappeared in 26.7

Separate from the bugs, one thing was removed, and 8 reviews noticed within three weeks. It was called Warehouse Tools:

WHAT HAPPENED TO WAREHOUSE TOOLS??? With this last "update" we lost the Warehouse Tools page... No more checking prices or in-stock at area Costcos.

Warehouse tools no longer working. I used to be able to see price of gas and search items in a particular store. Now it only shows warehouse details (location, hours).

With the newest update they removed the gas prices alongside the warehouse hours. literally only use Costco for gas and the food court

These reviews are not confused about a bug. They describe a panel that used to be there and is not, and the replacement shows location and hours only. If you used the app to check gas prices or whether a specific warehouse stocked something, that is why it stopped.

Four Languages, One Search Bug

The non-English sweep matters here because it rules out the easiest explanation, which is that American reviewers are searching badly. The same failure is described in four languages, by people typing in their own:

French

Difficile de trouver des articles exemple : écrire chandelle dans la barre de recherche me sort des ampoules et si j'écris candle 2 articles seulement vont sortir alors qu'en magasin il y a plusieurs choix

Spanish

Intento buscar un producto en el buscador para ser una compra online y sale de todo menos lo que escribi (en inglés) ejemplo: bread, egg

Korean

컨텍트 렌즈는 검색이 안되고 검색 앤진에서 찾아서 장바구니에 넣어도 계산시에 자꾸 사라집니다. 검색도 키워드 적용이 잘 안되네요.

Arabic

التطبيق يحتاج إلى تطوير افضل. الموقع بطئ واحيانا يتوقف بدون سبب. ونتمنى ان يكون سكان اند جو متوفر.

The French reviewer typed the French word for candle and got light bulbs, then typed the English word and got two results for a category the shop stocks widely. The Korean reviewer hit both of the main clusters in one sentence: search does not find contact lenses, and items found another way vanish from the cart at payment. The Arabic reviewer is asking for the same thing as the Americans below.

A French-language reviewer also reproduced the back button loop word for word:

French

La fonction page précédente du cellulaire renvoie souvent à l'écran d'accueuil de magasinage au lieu de la liste d'articles que l'on regardait, il faut recommencer la recherche.

The Comparison Reviewers Keep Making

19 reviews mention Sam's Club by name, and almost none of them are about prices. They are about scan and go:

I cannot find items or purchase them while I'm walking around in the warehouse. You can do that with the Sam's Club app. It takes too long to walk thru the entire warehouse. If you have limited time to shop, it becomes unreasonable to find what you need. Every warehouse has location identifiers (row numbers, section numbers, shelf numbers, etc.) used to stock and track inventory. Why can't the app display those to the customer? Sam's app does.

That is a feature gap rather than a defect, and it is the one thing in this set that would change what the app is for. It also explains why the search complaints run so hot. If the app cannot tell you where something is or let you pay with it, search results are the only in-store value it has, and search results are what is failing.

What Works Right Now

• Open the app before you reach the scanner. Give the prompts somewhere to land other than your QR code.
• Search from a web search engine, not the app. Add the word Costco to the query and follow the link in.
• Note the item number when you find something. The back button will lose the result list.
• Buy in a browser. The cart and checkout failures are heavily app-side, and 31 reviewers say the website completed the order.
• Do not expect gas prices or warehouse stock in 26.7. Those were part of Warehouse Tools and reviewers report they are gone.

The Bottom Line

Costco's app carries two of the highest store ratings of any US retailer app, and both are lifetime averages built over a decade. In the twelve weeks we read, 17.8% of complaints are about a search that does not return products the shop plainly stocks, 14.2% are about a cart that empties or refuses items, and a passkey prompt has been landing on top of the digital membership card since May.

The same search failure shows up in French, Spanish and Korean reviews, which is a good sign it is the matcher and not the shopper. Only 2.4% of these reviews are actually about the warehouse. Nearly everyone writing them likes Costco, which is exactly why they are still trying to make the app work.

Read the current 1-3 star reviews yourself on the Costco app review page, check the code-computed trust summary at is the Costco app legit, see how members stop an auto-renewing membership at how to cancel Costco, see what else people use at apps like Costco, or compare the iOS listing, where a 4.86 sits on top of the same cart complaints.

Related reading: Kroger App List Not Working is the same in-store half of a shopping app failing while the delivery half works, Home Depot App Slow or Not Working covers a retailer whose in-aisle search draws the same complaints, and Grocery Apps Ranked puts the weekly shop apps next to each other on complaint volume.