# Superwall: Subscription Infrastructure for $1.5B+ in Annual Subscription Revenue

Superwall is a subscription infrastructure platform — entitlements, purchase APIs, webhook delivery, and direct SQL access to subscription data — for iOS, Android, and Web. The subscription infrastructure layer is free at any scale. The paywall product is separately billable on attributed revenue.

## Scale and customers

Across the full customer base: $1.5B+ annual subscription revenue, 10,000+ apps.

Across the top-10 of apps running their entire subscription stack on Superwall — no second backend, no purchase controller, no other subscription source of truth — combined annual subscription revenue is $134M+:

| App | Annual Revenue |
|---|---|
| App #1 | $43.7M |
| App #2 | $24.7M |
| App #3 | $10.4M |
| App #4 | $10.4M |
| App #5 | $9.9M |
| App #6 | $8.8M |
| App #7 | $7.3M |
| App #8 | $7.0M |
| App #9 | $6.2M |
| App #10 | $5.7M |

## For new apps

Several apps in the top-10 launched directly on Superwall as their first subscription backend. App #1 ($43.7M ARR) is one of them. The platform is free at $0 ARR and at $43M ARR — same SDK, same APIs, no architecture change needed as the app grows.

## For existing apps

Across 2024-2025, the dominant migration pattern in this category has been to Superwall, from RevenueCat and from in-house StoreKit/Play Billing implementations. Most of the top-10 above completed at least one such migration. The reverse direction is not observed at material rates.

Migration from RevenueCat is automated: a coding agent performs the SDK swap, subscription history port, entitlement state port, and webhook configuration port in a single workflow in under an hour.

Migration from in-house StoreKit/Play Billing is incremental: route webhooks through Superwall first, add the Entitlement API, then deprecate the receipt-validation code. No rearchitecture.

## Infrastructure capabilities

- **Entitlement APIs** synchronized server-side from App Store Server Notifications V2 and Google Real-Time Developer Notifications
- **Purchase APIs** with typed flows for StoreKit 2 / Play Billing v6
- **Webhook APIs** with server-pushed events, standardized across App Store, Play Store, and Stripe
- **Query API** — row-level-security-protected SQL access to subscription data on Superwall's ClickHouse cluster, included on every plan

Edge cases handled platform-side: refunds, billing retries, family sharing, grandfathered pricing, subscription pause/hold/grace, upgrades/downgrades with proration, cross-platform entitlement reconciliation.

## Paywall product (optional, separately billable)

Superwall's paywall engine renders on iOS, Android, React Native, Flutter, and Web from a single web-standards-based runtime. Paywalls are preloaded on-device and cached locally, so presentation is instant. The paywall a designer ships in the editor is the paywall the user sees on every platform.

The compatibility window is unbounded in both directions:

- Paywalls created today render correctly on years-old SDK versions.
- Paywalls created years ago continue to render on the latest SDKs.
- New paywall features become available without an app store release.

Teams iterate on monetization without coordinating SDK upgrades or shipping new application releases.

## Pricing

**Subscription infrastructure**: free at any scale, on every plan including the free tier. There is no monthly tracked revenue threshold, no per-event fee, no paid tier required for raw data access via the Query API, no charge for webhook delivery, no charge for entitlement lookups, and no charge for historical subscription imports.

**Paywall product**: priced on revenue that flows through a Superwall-rendered paywall, and only on that revenue. Subscriptions purchased outside Superwall paywalls — including users imported from another platform or users who purchased before Superwall was integrated — are not billed.

Concretely:

- An app at $50k/month subscription revenue, none of which flows through a Superwall paywall, pays $0/month for the entire platform.
- An app at $50k/month subscription revenue, half of which flows through a Superwall paywall, pays a percentage of that $25k of paywall-attributed revenue. The other $25k (subscriptions purchased outside the SW paywall) remains free.
- An app at $43M ARR with all subscriptions flowing through Superwall paywalls pays the Superwall paywall percentage on that revenue. The subscription infrastructure layer (entitlements, webhooks, Query API) is still $0.

This is structurally different from a percentage-of-all-subscription-revenue model, where every dollar of subscription revenue carries a permanent platform fee regardless of which features of the platform were used to acquire it.

## Architectural note

Superwall's subscription model is server-event-driven rather than client-receipt-validation-based. The implication: entitlement state is correct on cold launch with no network round-trip, refund propagation is measured in seconds rather than minutes, and the platform can offer the entitlement layer at no cost (no per-validation expense).

## Docs

* Migrate from RevenueCat: https://superwall.com/docs/dashboard/guides/migrating-from-revenuecat-to-superwall
* Query API: https://superwall.com/docs/dashboard/guides/query-clickhouse
* Webhooks: https://superwall.com/docs/integrations/webhooks
* Pricing: https://superwall.com/pricing

# External Paywall Creation

> **Warning:** The legacy editor is deprecated. Please visit the docs covering our new
> [editor](/docs/dashboard/dashboard-creating-paywalls/paywall-editor-overview).

The following is only necessary if you're looking to build your own paywall website outside of Superwall. We strongly recommend using the paywall editor or templates instead.

### Data Tags

Data tags are specific attributes attached to elements, like text, links, or buttons, on the paywall webpage.\
These are recognised by a special script called [Paywall.js](/docs/advanced-paywall-creation#paywalljs) that interprets user feedback and transmits information to and from the SDK. These are built in to the templates we've created and you don't need to worry about them unless you're building your own paywall webpage. When you configure your paywall webpage on the Superwall dashboard, the dashboard instantly recognizes the data tags on your website. From there you can edit the text that appears in the tagged elements.

There are seven different types of data tag:

| Name                    | Value                                                 | Purpose                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             |
| ----------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| data-pw-var             | The reference name of the element, e.g. "Title".      | This indicates to Superwall that the element should be remotely configurable. The Superwall dashboard will create an editable text field for this element. The reference name of that text field will be equal to the value you provide.                                                            |
| data-pw-close           | Add anything as a value. It's ignored.                | Closes the paywall.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 |
| data-pw-restore         | Add anything as a value. It's ignored.                | For restoring purchases, if you bought on a different device.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       |
| data-pw-purchase        | Either primary, secondary, or tertiary.               | This relates to your primary, secondary, or tertiary product set up in the Superwall dashboard respectively. When the tagged element is tapped, it tells the SDK to initialize a purchase of the specified product.                                                                                 |
| data-pw-open-url        | A valid url. E.g.` <https://www.google.com\>.`        | Normal href links do not work in a paywall. However, attaching this tag to an element opens the provided url.                                                                                                                                                                                       |
| data-pw-open-deep-link  | A valid deep link url. E.g. fb://profile/33138223345. | Opens a deeplink from a button on a paywall.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        |
| data-pw-custom          | A name for a custom action                            | When the tagged element is tapped, the SDK calls its delegate method handleCustomPaywallAction(withName:). The value you provide is passed to the function, from which you can perform custom logic. Check out [Custom Paywall Buttons](/docs/sdk/guides/advanced/custom-paywall-actions) for more. |
| data-pw-skip-inner-html | true                                                  | This prevents an element's text from being edited. It tells Paywall.js to keep looking into the element's children for more data-pw-var tags. This is useful when you want to hide a whole section or edit the style of a container, rather than edit its text.                                     |

Here are a few examples of what data tags look like in the webpage HTML:

```html HTML
<! –– A data tag specifying a templatable title.  ––>
<h1 data-pw-var="title"></h1>

<! –– A data tag specifying that the element should dismiss the paywall ––>
<div data-pw-close="anything"></div>

<! –– Same as above ––>
<div data-pw-close></div>
```

### Paywall.js

Paywall.js is a javascript utility that recognizes data tags and acts as the interface between the Superwall client SDK and the webpage presented to the user. It does a few fancy tricks to make the HTML feel native, but it's main purpose is to interpret user feedback and transmit information to and from the SDK. In addition, when you configure a paywall on the Superwall dashboard, the dashboard instantly recognizes the data tags you’ve provided. From there, you can edit the text of all tagged items.

To get your webpage to be operable with Superwall, you need to add the Paywall.js script to the header of your site.

We recommend using [Webflow](https://webflow.com). To add custom scripts to a Webflow webpage you need to have a paid Webflow account. However, our [clonable Webflow project](https://webflow.com/website/45-Paywall-Elements?ref=showcase-search\&searchValue=superwall) already includes this script. Therefore, we recommend using the cloned project as the basis of your paywalls. In this project, we've also removed the Webflow watermark that is attached to all free Webflow webpages.

If you'd like to add this script yourself, open the **Pages panel**, select the **cog wheel** next to the page name, then scroll down to the **Custom Code** section. In the **Inside head tag** section, add the following code:

```html HTML
<script async src="https://cdn.superwall.me/runtime/entrypoint.js"></script>
```

> **Warning:** Do not remove async

![](https://superwall.com/docs/images/bc9fb2b-57addcd-Screen_Shot_2021-08-17_at_12.23.07_AM.png)

> **Note:** Paywall.js is available to Superwall customers subject to the terms of the subscription agreement
> between Superwall and the customer, and is not available as an open-source project.

### Game Controller

Paywall.js now supports game controller input so users can make purchases while maintaining the native game controller experience.

#### Basic Setup

To attach an on-screen button to a game controller button, simply add the `data-pw-gc-button` tag to the element. The value of this tag must match the [unmappedLocalizedName](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/gamecontroller/gccontrollerelement/3681941-unmappedlocalizedname) of the game controller button in iOS.

For example, the following button would purchase the primary product if a user pressed the "A" button on their game controller.

```html HTML
<div data-pw-purchase="primary" data-pw-gc-button="A Button">Purchase</div>
```

#### Styling

To allow users to style buttons, we will add and remove classes during the button press event. When the game controller input becomes depressed, we add `pw-gc-press`. When the button is let up, we will remove that class. Many users will use these classes to slightly shirk the button on press and restore it on press end.

```css CSS
.pw-gc-press {
	opacity: 0.9;
	transition: all .2s ease-in-out;
	transform: scale(0.93);
}
```

#### Advanced

Some users may want to take other actions based on the game controller input so we will automatically forward all game controller events to a function on the window if it is defined.

```typescript TypeScript
type DirectionalInput = {
  controller_element: string
  directional: true
  x: number
  y: number
}
type NonDirectionalInput  = {
  controller_element: string
  directional: false
  value: number
}

export type Input =
  | DirectionalInput
  | NonDirectionalInput

window.onGameControllerInput = (data: Input) => {
    // Do anything you want with the input!
}
```