The subscription funnel playbook
What published data says about how iOS subscription apps convert, edge by edge — install to first open to onboarding to paywall to trial to paid to retained — and which levers have the largest documented effect.
What this is
A subscription app is a sequence of edges — install, first open, onboarding, paywall, trial, first charge, renewal — and most of what is written about them is folklore. This playbook is the part that has been measured. Every figure on these pages comes from a named report, with its metric definition, its year and its sample beside it, and a marker that links to the sources. Where the evidence is thin or comes from a vendor with something to sell, the page says so.
It is written to be read by a person building an app and by a coding agent building one for them. The checklist is the same material as terse numbered lines, each with the metric it moves and the Broctic event that measures it, and it is also served at /llms.txt.
The funnel, edge by edge
The published medians below are for subscription apps across categories. They are medians: half of apps do worse. The point of knowing them is not to hit them — it is to know which edge of your own funnel is the one out of line.
| Metric | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Download → trial start | 4.3%median, low-priced apps | RevenueCat 2025 |
| Download → trial start | 9.8%median, high-priced apps | RevenueCat 2025 |
| Trials that start on install day | 82%share of all trial starts | RevenueCat 2025 |
| Trial → paid | 43.8%median, Media & Entertainment | RevenueCat 2025 |
| Trial → paid | 48.7%median, Travel — the highest category | RevenueCat 2025 |
| Download → paid at day 35 | 2.2%median, freemium | RevenueCat 2025 |
| Download → paid at day 35 | 12.1%median, hard paywall | RevenueCat 2025 |
| Annual subscriptions cancelled in the first month | ~30% | RevenueCat 2025 |
| Renewal rate at year 1 | 17.0%median, monthly plans | RevenueCat 2025 |
| Renewal rate at year 1 | 3.4%median, weekly plans | RevenueCat 2025 |
Store-side edges. Broctic computes download → trial, trial → paid and download → paid from App Store Connect alone, before the app sends a single event.
RevenueCat 2025: RevenueCat sells subscription infrastructure, so the sample is apps that chose that tooling — better-resourced than the App Store as a whole. Medians and percentiles are reported; exact app counts per figure are not.
The four levers with the largest documented effect
- Where the paywall is. A hard paywall converts about five times as many installs to payers by day 35 as freemium — 12.1% (median, hard paywall) RevenueCat 2025 against 2.2% (median, freemium) RevenueCat 2025 — at a higher refund rate. And Trials that start on install day: 82% (share of all trial starts) RevenueCat 2025 means an offer the user only meets later in the app is one most never see. Paywall →
- How long onboarding is. Completion runs Not verified (Retired: no traceable primary study. Do not use as evidence.) Unverified attribution (retired) 2026 and falls to Not verified (Retired: no traceable primary study. Do not use as evidence.) Unverified attribution (retired) 2026. A progress indicator alone moved first-step drop-off Not verified (Retired: no traceable primary study. Do not use as evidence.) Unverified attribution (retired) 2026. Onboarding →
- What you charge. Higher-priced apps start more trials (9.8% (median, high-priced apps) RevenueCat 2025 vs 4.3% (median, low-priced apps) RevenueCat 2025), convert more installs to payers, and earn roughly seven times the first-year value per subscriber — $55.21 (median, high-priced apps) RevenueCat 2025 against $8.08 (median, low-priced apps — roughly a seventh) RevenueCat 2025. Pricing low to convert is the most expensive mistake in the data. Pricing →
- Which plan you lead with. Weekly plans renew at 3.4% (median, weekly plans) RevenueCat 2025 after a year; monthly at 17.0% (median, monthly plans) RevenueCat 2025; annual plans keep half or more. Outside gaming, the best-retaining apps are mostly annual. Trials and retention →
How to measure it in Broctic
Connect App Store Connect and the store-side edges are computed for you, with a verdict against the bands above (what each figure means). Send the standard events from the app and the steps in between appear on the same chart — onboarding_started, onboarding_completed, paywall_viewed, trial_started, subscription_started — with the drop between each pair and a recommendation that cites the same sources as this page (events, funnels).
Sample size
A rate on fewer than fifty people is noise. Broctic shows counts and withholds verdicts below that, and this playbook's advice assumes the same discipline: change one thing, wait for the sample, then judge it.What is not here
There is no published, independently measured figure for the conversion effect of specific onboarding question designs, of tutorial styles, or of individual paywall layouts — only vendor case studies and practitioner consensus, which the pages label as such. Anyone quoting a precise number for those is quoting a guess. Apple 2026 sets what a paywall must contain; it does not say what converts.