Pricing and plans
Published price medians by duration and region, the weekly-versus-annual trade-off, trial length evidence, introductory offers and price anchoring.
Price low to convert: the expensive mistake
The intuition is that a cheaper app converts more people. The data says the opposite, at every edge. High-priced apps start more trials — 9.8% (median, high-priced apps) RevenueCat 2025 against 4.3% (median, low-priced apps) RevenueCat 2025 — convert more installs to payers by day 35 (2.66% (median, high-priced apps) RevenueCat 2025 vs 1.49% (median, low-priced apps) RevenueCat 2025), and earn roughly seven times the first-year value per new subscriber: $55.21 (median, high-priced apps) RevenueCat 2025 against $8.08 (median, low-priced apps — roughly a seventh) RevenueCat 2025.
Two things are going on. Price signals seriousness, and the people a high price selects are the ones who wanted the outcome enough to pay for it — they also retain better. And a low price does not lower the effort of deciding; it only lowers what you get when someone does.
| Metric | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Download → trial start | 9.8%median, high-priced apps | RevenueCat 2025 |
| Download → trial start | 4.3%median, low-priced apps | RevenueCat 2025 |
| Download → paid at day 35 | 2.66%median, high-priced apps | RevenueCat 2025 |
| Download → paid at day 35 | 1.49%median, low-priced apps | RevenueCat 2025 |
| Realised year-1 LTV per new subscriber | $55.21median, high-priced apps | RevenueCat 2025 |
| Realised year-1 LTV per new subscriber | $8.08median, low-priced apps — roughly a seventh | RevenueCat 2025 |
| Median prices year over year | flatP75 and P90 prices rose slightly across most durations | RevenueCat 2025 |
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.
What 'high' and 'low' mean
The report tiers apps by price relative to their category, so the finding is "priced above your peers", not a dollar figure. Absolute medians vary widely by category — Business apps sit at $29.99 (Business category) RevenueCat 2025 — and the report notes median prices held flat year over year while the top quartile rose.Weekly, monthly, annual
The plan you lead with is a retention decision disguised as a pricing one. After a year, weekly plans are renewing at 3.4% (median, weekly plans) RevenueCat 2025, monthly at 17.0% (median, monthly plans) RevenueCat 2025; annual plans keep about half. Cheap annual plans do best of all — Still subscribed after one year: up to 36.0% (apps with cheap annual plans) RevenueCat 2025 — and high-priced monthly plans worst: 6.7% (high-priced monthly plans) RevenueCat 2025.
| Metric | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Renewal rate at year 1 | 3.4%median, weekly plans | RevenueCat 2025 |
| Renewal rate at year 1 | 17.0%median, monthly plans | RevenueCat 2025 |
| Year-1 retention, annual plans | 53.7%low-priced annual | RevenueCat 2025 |
| Year-1 retention, annual plans | 48.3%high-priced annual | RevenueCat 2025 |
| Year-1 retention, monthly plans | 22.5%low-priced monthly | RevenueCat 2025 |
| Year-1 retention, monthly plans | 12.2%high-priced monthly | RevenueCat 2025 |
| Still subscribed after one year | up to 36.0%apps with cheap annual plans | RevenueCat 2025 |
| Still subscribed after one year | 6.7%high-priced monthly plans | RevenueCat 2025 |
What the best-retaining categories do
Health & Fitness and Travel are mostly annual — 67% (Health & Fitness) RevenueCat 2025 and 65% (Travel) RevenueCat 2025 of subscriptions. Gaming is the outlier at Share of subscriptions that are weekly: 78% (Gaming — the outlier) RevenueCat 2025, because a weekly plan matches how a game is played. Outside gaming, lead with annual and show monthly beside it as the price to be smaller than.
Where weekly plans belong
Reliance on weekly plans: 36% · 35% (India/South-East Asia · Middle East & Africa — highest regions) RevenueCat 2025. In those storefronts a weekly plan is not a churn problem, it is the price people can pay; an annual-only paywall there is a paywall most cannot use. Broctic's Places tab shows which storefronts your downloads come from.
Trial length
Most apps offer short trials — Share of trials offered for 5–9 days: 52% (in 2024, up from 48.5% in 2023) RevenueCat 2025 — and the best-converting length is longer: 45.7% (median for trials of 17–32 days — the best-converting length) RevenueCat 2025. A trial is a promise that the product proves itself before the charge; seven days is enough for a utility, not for a habit. Offer the length your product needs to deliver its outcome once, and remind people the day before it ends.
- Trials on the annual plan only is the common pattern: the trial carries the commitment, and the plan with the best retention gets the trial.
- An introductory price (first month reduced) is the alternative to a trial where the product is consumed rather than habitual. Apple allows one intro offer per subscription group per user.
- Price anchoring — a monthly price shown beside the annual — is the most robust practitioner finding, and unmeasured in public. It costs nothing to do.
When to raise prices
When trial → paid is inside the published band and download → trial is strong, the price is not the constraint and is probably below what the outcome is worth. Raise it for new subscribers only — existing subscribers keep their price, which Apple lets you do — and watch two figures: trial starts per download, which should hold, and refund rate, which should not rise. Both are on the app's store panel in Broctic without any events.