# 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

# Custom callbacks

Handle custom callback requests from paywalls to run app-side logic and return results.

> **Info:** Available from iOS SDK 4.12.10.

## Overview

Custom callbacks let a paywall request arbitrary actions from your app and receive results that determine which branch (`onSuccess` / `onFailure`) executes inside the paywall. Common use cases include validating user input, fetching data, or running business logic that lives outside the paywall.

## How it works

1. In the paywall editor, attach a **Custom callback** action to an element (button, form submit, etc.) and give it a name (e.g. `validate_email`).
2. When the user triggers that element the SDK calls your `onCustomCallback` handler with a `CustomCallback` object.
3. Your handler runs whatever logic is needed and returns a `CustomCallbackResult` — either `.success()` or `.failure()` — with optional data.
4. The paywall receives the result and executes the matching `onSuccess` or `onFailure` branch.

## Setting up the handler

Register the handler on a `PaywallPresentationHandler` before calling `register`:

```swift
let handler = PaywallPresentationHandler()

handler.onCustomCallback { callback in
    switch callback.name {
    case "validate_email":
        let email = callback.variables?["email"] as? String
        if let email, isValidEmail(email) {
            return .success(data: ["validated": true])
        } else {
            return .failure(data: ["error": "Invalid email"])
        }
    default:
        return .failure()
    }
}

Superwall.shared.register(placement: "campaign_trigger", handler: handler) {
    // Feature launched
}
```

## CustomCallback

The `CustomCallback` struct is passed to your handler:

<TypeTable
  type="{
  name: {
    type: &#x22;String&#x22;,
    description: &#x22;The name of the callback set in the paywall editor.&#x22;,
    required: true,
  },
  variables: {
    type: &#x22;[String: Any]?&#x22;,
    description: &#x22;Optional key-value pairs sent from the paywall. Values are type-preserved (String, Number, Boolean).&#x22;,
  },
}"
/>

## CustomCallbackResult

Return one of the following from your handler to signal the outcome:

```swift
// Success — the paywall's onSuccess branch runs
CustomCallbackResult.success(data: ["key": "value"])

// Failure — the paywall's onFailure branch runs
CustomCallbackResult.failure(data: ["error": "Something went wrong"])
```

Both `success()` and `failure()` accept an optional `data` dictionary whose values are sent back to the paywall and accessible as `callbacks.<name>.data.<key>`.

## Callback behavior

When configuring the custom callback action in the paywall editor you can choose between two behaviors:

* **Blocking** — the paywall waits for your handler to return before continuing the tap-action chain. Use this when the next step depends on the result (e.g. form validation).
* **Non-blocking** — the paywall continues immediately. The `onSuccess` / `onFailure` handlers still fire when the result arrives, but subsequent actions in the chain do not wait.

## Accessing returned data in the paywall

Inside the paywall you can reference the returned data using the pattern `callbacks.<callback_name>.data.<key>`. For example, if the callback named `validate_email` returns `["validated": true]`, the paywall can access `callbacks.validate_email.data.validated`.