# 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

# Configuring the SDK (Legacy)

As soon as your app launches, you need to configure the SDK with your **Public API Key**. You'll retrieve this from the Superwall settings page.

> **Info:** If you haven't installed the SDK, [learn how to install the SDK](/docs/legacy/legacy_installation)

### Sign Up & Grab Keys

If you haven't already, [sign up for a free account](https://superwall.com/sign-up) on Superwall. Then, when you're through to the Dashboard, click **Settings** from the panel on the left, click **Keys** and copy your **Public API Key**:

![](https://superwall.com/docs/images/810eaba-small-Screenshot_2023-04-25_at_11.51.13.png)

### Initialize Superwall in your app

Begin by editing your main Application entrypoint. Depending on the
platform this could be `AppDelegate.swift` or `SceneDelegate.swift` for iOS,
`MainApplication.kt` for Android, `main.dart` in Flutter, or `App.tsx` for React Native:

## Tab

```swift Swift-UIKit
// AppDelegate.swift

import UIKit
import SuperwallKit

@main
final class AppDelegate: UIResponder, UIApplicationDelegate {
  func application(
    _ application: UIApplication,
    didFinishLaunchingWithOptions launchOptions: [UIApplication.LaunchOptionsKey: Any]?
  ) -> Bool {
    Superwall.configure(apiKey: "MY_API_KEY") // Replace this with your API Key
    return true
  }
}
```

## Tab

```swift SwiftUI
// App.swift

import SwiftUI
import SuperwallKit

@main
struct MyApp: App {
  init() {
    let apiKey = "MY_API_KEY" // Replace this with your API Key
    Superwall.configure(apiKey: apiKey)
  }

  // etc...
}
```

## Tab

```swift Objective-C
// AppDelegate.m

@import SuperwallKit;

- (BOOL)application:(UIApplication *)application didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:(NSDictionary *)launchOptions {
    // Initialize the Superwall service.
    [Superwall configureWithApiKey:@"MY_API_KEY"];
    return YES;
}
```

## Tab

```kotlin Kotlin
// MainApplication.kt

class MainApplication : android.app.Application(), SuperwallDelegate {
    override fun onCreate() {
        super.onCreate()

        // Setup
        Superwall.configure(this, "MY_API_KEY")
       
        // OR using the DSL
        configureSuperwall("MY_API_KEY") {
            purchaseController = MyPurchaseController(this@MainApplication)
        }
    }
}
```

## Tab

```dart Flutter
// main.dart

void initState() {
  // Determine Superwall API Key for platform
  String apiKey = Platform.isIOS ? "MY_IOS_API_KEY" : "MY_ANDROID_API_KEY";

  Superwall.configure(apiKey);
}
```

## Tab

```typescript React Native
// App.tsx

import { Platform } from "react-native"
import Superwall from "@superwall/react-native-superwall"

export default function App() {
  React.useEffect(() => {
    const apiKey = Platform.OS === "ios" ? "MY_IOS_API_KEY" : "MY_ANDROID_API_KEY"

    Superwall.configure(apiKey)
  }, [])
}
```

This configures a shared instance of `Superwall`, the primary class for interacting with the SDK's API. Make sure to replace `MY_API_KEY` with your public API key that you just retrieved.

> **Note:** By default, Superwall handles basic subscription-related logic for you. However, if you’d like
> greater control over this process (e.g. if you’re using RevenueCat), you’ll want to pass in a
> `PurchaseController` to your configuration call and manually set the `subscriptionStatus`. You can
> also pass in `SuperwallOptions` to customize the appearance and behavior of the SDK. See
> [Purchases and Subscription Status](/docs/legacy/legacy_advanced-configuration) for more.

You've now configured Superwall!

For further help, check out our [iOS example apps](https://github.com/superwall/Superwall-iOS/tree/master/Examples) for working examples of implementing SuperwallKit.