# 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

# Troubleshooting (Legacy)

### My paywall has unexpected presentation behaviour

If you are seeing a paywall when you think you shouldn't or vice versa, we recommend running through the following list to debug:

1. If you're [implementing subscription-related logic yourself](/docs/legacy/legacy_advanced-configuration), check when you're setting `Superwall.shared.subscriptionStatus`. It's important that the variable here is kept in sync with the subscription status of the user. If it isn't, the paywall won't display when it is supposed to. If the status is `.unknown` or `.active`, the paywall won't show (unless you're specifically overriding that). [See here](/docs/legacy/legacy_advanced-configuration) for more information about that.
2. Check your device. If you have already purchased a subscription on your device, your paywall wouldn't show again. If on iOS and you're using a local StoreKit file in your app for testing purposes, deleting and reinstalling your app will reset your device's subscription status.
3. Check your [campaign](/docs/dashboard/dashboard-campaigns/campaigns). Are you sending the necessary properties along with your trigger to match the rule? Is your trigger event name spelt correctly? If you have a holdout group in your campaign double check that this isn't the reason your paywall isn't displaying.
4. Check that the products on your paywall are available and their identifiers are correct. If not, you'll see an error printed to the console. On iOS, if you're using a StoreKit configuration file to test, make sure to add your products before trying to present the paywall.

### How can I debug paywall presentation in production?

If you know the userId of an account that's having trouble with paywalls, search for it in the Users tab on the dashboard. Clicking on it will reveal the user's events log. Whenever a paywall is or isn't shown, you'll see a `paywallPresentationRequest` event. Expanding that will give you a `status` and `status_reason` from which you can figure out what the issue is. If you're seeing `subscription_status_timeout` as a reason, it means that it took longer than 5 seconds to get the subscription status. This could be because you're not setting `Superwall.shared.subscriptionStatus` correctly or there's an issue with internet.

We recommend calling `identify(userId:)` in your app with the same userId that you use in your analytics to make life easier.

### In sandbox on iOS, my paywall shows free trial text but when I go to purchase, it doesn't show a free trial

If you've previously purchased a product within a subscription group and then deleted and reinstalled the app while testing in sandbox, this could happen. To fix this, restore products and try again. This is because we use the on-device receipt to determine whether a free trial is available. In sandbox, the app's receipt isn't retrieved until a purchase or restore is made. Therefore, the SDK won't be able to accurately determine whether the free trial is available. Fortunately, this won't happen in production.

### My products aren't loading or aren't working in production

If your products haven't loaded you'll get an error message printed to the console. Run through the following list to solve this:

1. On the Superwall dashboard:
   1. Check that you have added products to all paywalls in the paywall editor. If any paywall doesn't contain a valid identifier you will see a error message in the console.
2. For iOS apps:
   1. In Xcode:
      1. If you're using a StoreKit configuration file locally, make sure your products have been added to it, either manually or by syncing with App Store Connect.
      2. Make sure your app's bundle ID is the same as your app in App Store Connect.
      3. Check you've added in-app purchase capability to your app's Xcode project.
   2. On App Store Connect:
      1. Make sure your free and paid apps agreements status are active.
      2. Make sure that your tax and banking information has been added.
      3. Make sure your product status is 'Ready to Submit'.
      4. Check that the IDs of your products match those in the paywall.
      5. Make sure you've waited at least 15 minutes after creating a product.
   3. In Production:
      1. Make sure you have waited for at least 72 hours after the release of a new app for your products to appear in your app. As soon as they appear on your App Store page, you'll know they're available in-app.
3. For Android apps:
   1. Users in Russia and Belarus don't have access to Google Billing. In this instance, products won't load and paywalls won't show. The `onError` `PaywallPresentationHandler` handler will get called.
   2. Make sure the device or emulator you're running on has the Play Store app and that you are signed in to your Google account on the Play Store.
   3. Make sure your `applicationId` matches the applicationId on the Play Store.
4. If you're using RevenueCat:
   1. Check that your product IDs are added to RevenueCat and associated with an entitlement.
   2. If you're using offerings, make sure your product is associated with one.