Subscriptions
Subscriptions are recurring in-app payments that renew automatically each week, month or year until the user cancels.
An auto-renewable subscription charges the user at the start of each period until they cancel, often after a free trial or an introductory offer. Both stores handle billing, renewals, upgrades between tiers, grace periods for failed payments and cancellations, and both take a commission. As of November 2026, Apple charges 30% in a subscriber's first year of paid service and 15% after it, or 15% throughout for members of its Small Business Program, and Google takes 15% on subscriptions in most markets.
The core metrics are active subscribers, monthly recurring revenue, trial starts, trial-to-paid conversion, renewal rate and churn. Prices and conversion differ sharply by country. RevenueCat's 2026 subscription report puts the median monthly price at $9.99 in North America against $3.75 in India and Southeast Asia, and trial-to-paid conversion at 34.2% against 15.2%.
Two things trip up analysis. Annual plans pull revenue forward and churn in lumps at renewal, so monthly views of an annual-heavy app look spiky. And a growing number of apps sell subscriptions on the web, where store data cannot see them. For estimates built from store charts, note that the top grossing chart mixes subscriptions with one-time purchases. The store commission entry covers the fee schedules in detail.
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