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Sourcehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Tk_EHQUeaY
Readwise URLhttps://read.readwise.io/read/01kv42wycf78qq0y71a7fkntjh
Readwise ID01kv42wycf78qq0y71a7fkntjh
Date2026-03-13
AuthorApp Masters
Categoryvideo
Cover imagehttps://i.ytimg.com/vi/8Tk_EHQUeaY/sddefault.jpg?v=69b064bc

[music] [music] [music] >> What is up App Nation? It is Steve P. Young, founder of App Masters.com, coming at you no matter where I’m at in the world cuz today we’re going to go snowboarding with my daughter. So, we’re going to push it up a little bit early, but I’m super excited to have this guest

on. Known him for years and we’re going to break down the the state of the subscription apps report by RevenueCat. We got some interesting interesting details and one of my favorite strategies, hard paywall. We’re going to talk about why that is becoming pretty effective. So, we’re going to break down the entire report with David Bernard. Without further ado, let’s bring in David.

[music] >> David, welcome to the show. Hi, thanks for having me. Or welcome back to the show. I think I’ve been Welcome back to the show, exactly. >> [laughter] >> You got your own show and we’re cross-promoting you coming on to our show. So, it’s always good to have another podcast host on cuz you know how these things work and you can take the conversation wherever you want. So, anyways, David is the developer advocate at RevenueCat. David, we want to break down the report and I know you wanted to

start. I’m going to pull it up right now and I’m sure everybody has a report. If you don’t have the report, you’re really missing out on some gold mining information. But, is there anything you want to start off with, David? Yeah, well, I mean, I did want to start with that second slide of just saying for those of you who download the report, don’t don’t skip over and it’s like a lot of words, you’re not going to be able to read it on YouTube, but don’t skip the methodology methodology section because I think it’s really important to like understand our definitions. So, if

if you’re using a different you like if you’re not using RevenueCat and you have your own like data pipeline that you’re like looking at numbers, like being able to understand, “Oh, they define like conversion to paid this way. Like, that’s not how our like system does it.” So, it’s like the methodology is super important. And then also just touching on this with the 115,000 apps, $16 billion in revenue, over a billion transactions. Um so, it’s a pretty broad perspective of the entire

App Store, like pretty representative. And we also like cut off the the smallest apps. So, like if if somebody’s only, you know, making like 100 bucks a month, 200 bucks a month. I don’t know exactly where we did the cut off, but it was like apps that have, you know, reasonable amount of transactions. So, this isn’t like skewed to like cuz we do have a ton of like indie developers on the platform who are, you know, just getting their first app out and stuff like that. So, this is this is more like people who are actually making a little bit of money and all the way up to like literally the biggest app in the world with ChatGPT on the platform.

Um so, yeah, don’t sleep on the methodology section. A lot of little nuggets in there that like help inform how you think about the data. And then one last thing before we move on is um and I’d love to get your take on this cuz I know you like have looked you know, this is the fourth year we’ve done this report. It’s like great to have this data out there. But, like with any benchmark, when you see a number, like we’re going to talk about it like hard paywalls five times better than than freemium. Does that mean like switch to a hard

paywall I’m going to convert five times better? Maybe, maybe not. And like even if it does convert five times better, is that the best thing for your business? Like, are you trying to build a Duolingo where the freemium base is going to be your mouthpiece and you’re going to be able to convert them over years instead of like relying on that first session? Um so, so you got to take everything in this report, um, not not with a grain of salt because I mean, you know, we’re pretty thorough about the the the data and I think it’s a pretty representative sample, but take

it in perspective of like the business you’re trying to build, like how your business works. I mean, great example I’ve said for years is like, you know, if you look at the the trial start rate and you’re like, “Oh, man, my trial start rate is like abysmal.” And then but then you’re you’re a a freemium app. It’s like, well, yeah, that’s if you don’t show a paywall on onboarding if you’re freemium, like of course your trial start rate is going to be lower. And then if you’re a hard paywall and you look at the like median number of all apps and you’re like, “Oh, I’m crushing it.” Well, then now this year

we broke down hard paywall versus soft paywall. It’s like, maybe you’re not crushing it as a hard paywall. So, anyways, it’s really about like, you know, understanding the context of these benchmarks and like building the business you want to build and that that like makes sense for your app business. Anything anything you you want to add there on like how you think about using benchmarks? That’s exactly it, David. Like it’s more like I always say cuz I’m always reluctant to say, you know, some people on social media will be like, "This will beat everything

else." Right? And I’m like, “No, for the most part this wins most of the time, but every app is different.” Cuz I’ve been talking about like the three screen paywall. And a buddy of ours, like we we all know each other in the app space, but he was like, “No, this paywall beats everything.” And I’m like, “Well, [laughter] you know, I have some data that doesn’t always win, but for the most part it wins where it’s like, you know, we’ll give you 7 days for free, we’ll remind you 2 days, and then you will show the paywall.” And so, yeah, I’m with you. But I love these type of reports cuz it

helps me, especially with the age of AI, David. I’m a little scared, dude. To be honest with you, I’m kind of like, “Where is this taking us?” I don’t know, and I love the data. It makes me feel a little bit better of where we’re headed. And I’m like, “Oh, okay.” And especially we’re going to talk about AI apps and the vibe coding trend. And I’m like, okay, we’re okay and you can kind of figure out after the dust has settled where, you know, where the top apps are going to kind of come up. Yeah. Yeah, totally. Yeah. All right, I want to say hi to Ro. Good to see you,

man. I launched a month ago and got a Oh, wow, that’s great. This person said, “I launched a month ago and I got 125 users and 700 trials.” That’s awesome. All organic. Okay, good job, Ro. All right, let’s get into the report. I know one of the things that we’re going to talk about now is just the some of the top takeaways, but here’s just what I have in store for you. We’ll try to >> Yeah, I wanted to touch on this cuz we’re we’re we probably won’t have time to hit all of these and and you were kind of interested in some some things that that aren’t mentioned in these top

takeaways. So I’ll just breeze through them and then, you know, we’ll dive deeper into some of them. The top 25% of apps grew 80% year-over-year while the bottom 25% shrank. And then what we don’t show in the top takeaways, but we’ll talk more about the the P10, so the top 10% I mean P90, so the top 10% of apps um 306% growth. And then the then the the P10, the bottom 10% of apps shrank

significantly. I don’t remember the exact stat, we’ll get to that. But it’s a huge like bifurcation of market. We’ll dig into that more. Hard paywalls five times they crush premium, but context we’ll talk more about that. The [clears throat] window to use to the window to win a user is closing. 55% of three-day trials cancel that first day, day zero. So like if you’re not winning them in that onboarding in that app first activation, like they’re very likely to

go turn off auto-renew. We have a chart on that, so we’ll dig a little deeper. 30-day trial, it’s only 30% of people turn it off the first day. So something correlation is not causation. Doesn’t mean you’ll you’ll improve by getting a longer trial, but it might be something for a lot of apps to try. One thing we’re not going to touch on, so I did want to say it. Google’s the Play Store 31% of cancellations are due to billing errors. And there’s two things I I don’t

think we put it in the report. We’ve put it in some of like the follow-up content, but Google in their developer docs talk about there’s two things you can do. Turning on the um What is it? The grace period and then there’s another one like billing retry or something like that. >> Okay. Oh no no no. It’s like where you where you even you you suspend the subscription and keep retrying even after the grace period. And so if you do those two things, it

increases this by like 33%. So so you can go down from 30 to like whatever that is, 22 or something like that. So like really pay attention on Google Play to these billing errors. And then there’s tons you can do on your own as well as far as like in-app messaging about the billing and and things like that. So don’t don’t sleep on Google Play. 41% That is AI-powered apps generate 41% more revenue per payer, but they churn 30% faster. I know there’s that we’ll dig

into, so I won’t go too deep. Um And then this is what we’re just talking about. Trials of 17 days and longer, so basically 30-day trials. We kind of bucketed so that we don’t have overlap between 7-day trial, 14-day trial, 30-day trial, 3-day trial. But 17 days or longer convert 70% better than short trials. And again, correlation causation, doesn’t mean you will convert better with a 30-day trial than a 3-day free trial. And a lot of considerations there for cash flow, for getting data back to the ad networks and

stuff like that. But I mean fascinating data on longer free trials. That is interesting. No, I have seen that stat I’ve seen that trend happen, David. So, a couple of things I want to point out on this chart, too, is is that particular 7-day trial. What I’m starting to see certain apps do is they’ll start with the 7-day trial, and then when you hit X on the paywall, instead of like giving you a discount, they’re saying try it on 14. And a few of our clients, I think it depends on the app, a few of our clients I didn’t believe them, David, >> [laughter] >> cuz I love 7 days,

she was like, “Hey, 14 days is, you you know, working way better for us than seven ever did.” And so, it’s like it’s worth testing. So, I really love it. I I just recorded a podcast with Kokonut, the the app that sold to Quizlet. Um, it’ll either be out next week or April 1st. Um, but they were talking about how in in on the web, because it’s easier to do there, um, when somebody went to cancel their free trial, they would say, "Hey, you know, it sounds like you maybe you just need more time

with the app." And so, they would extend the free trial, and that was I think they said it like 16% of people took that offer. So, like 16% who would have otherwise canceled like are still like re-evaluating and taking the longer free trial. So, uh, yeah, that that extending a free trial can be powerful. You know, and the other stat I’m glad you guys put this in the key takeaways is that 31% the Google Play’s billionaire. I get so many freaking questions about this, David. So, and

Brown Media says this, too. He’s like, “Hey, where can we find the Google Docs that you’re talking about?” So, if you’ve got it, I would love to get it, and I’d love to share it with the audience, as well. Yeah, I don’t think I can pull it up while we’re chatting, but I will I will tweet it out. Um, yeah, yeah. If you if you search like Google Play, um, billing issues and on like and look for like I think the top result is is the Google uh, Docs, so. Got it. Okay. I’m I’m not good at multitasking, but

[laughter] >> You’re referring to just on the Google help support. >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like their developer side. >> No, no, no, on their developer side. I mean, we we when I found that, I I made sure we included in some of like our emails and I think maybe it’s in a tweet thread somewhere, but but the the best source is just go straight to Google cuz they have a whole page in their developer like they have these like developer help sections where it’s not like uh uh it’s like they share a lot of data and stuff, which is Yeah, yeah. way more so than than Apple

and kind of give you tips of like, “Hey, here’s how you improve these numbers.” So, it’s one of those kind of pages like, “Hey, here’s the data and like here’s how you improve the the billing error rate.” And when we get these questions all the time with RevenueCat, too. It’s like Yeah. “Oh man, like so much of my churn is billing.” And and and then they’re blaming us. They’re like, “You know, what are you screwing up?” And it’s like, “No, that’s just [laughter] like that’s Google Play. Like it’s not it’s not a platform thing.” But but we’ve built tools to help. Like we have this thing Customer Center now where like in the app with like one line

of code, you can drop this like subscription management thing in and you can ask questions and like make offers and things like that. So, it’s like we’re trying to help, but it’s not our fault. That’s hilarious. >> [laughter] >> Uh I you can tell them. You can send them my way, okay, David? I’ll say it’s not RevenueCat’s fault. >> [laughter] >> I’ll say that for you guys. All right, let’s get into This is the one that I really love, dude. It’s crazy. Here’s this slide. Yeah. Yeah, this is the one we’re talking about. If you zoom in on that all regions um and

it’s fun that this one is a little weird. We we we bucketed I think just because of the way our data works, we bucketed this by developer HQ, which is not super informative. So, that means like if you’re a US developer, um but I think it’s just cuz you can’t really break down MRR growth in the individual I mean, next year we probably could do it where like what was MRR growth of apps just with the US data? It It’s just trickier.

So, I really only focus on this chart on the all regions. And, you know, as you see in that far right 306% growth for the top 10% of apps. And then the median’s only 5.3. And it’s something we talked about on the the podcast uh where Jacob and I talked about this report. It’s like that’s that’s like inflation. That’s like GDP growth. That’s like the median app is performing at inflation and and GDP growth. Uh and then the bottom apps, as

you see, like um Oh, yeah, and that That’s why I didn’t know the number cuz we didn’t actually put it on there. The bottom quartile uh lost like went down 33% and then the P10, we don’t even have a number there, but it’s like they shrank by like 50% or more. Uh so, it’s like it’s yeah, just a wide disparity between the top apps and and the median app and then especially the top apps and the low-performing apps. Wow, that’s insane. Do you think it’s just a matter of like the top apps

having VC money or what do you think the difference is? What do you think is causing this? Uh I mean, this this really is just typical power law stuff. I mean, you know, think about your creative and UGC campaigns. What What happens? You know, like you put out 100 videos in a month and two of them get millions of views and most of them get no views, you know, 10, 20 views or whatever. Um so, standard power law. It’s like of course ChatGPT’s going to grow faster. Of

course, you know, Claude is blowing up right now uh because of the chat GPT blowback. Like some of these AI apps, especially in the last year, have just like exploded. And then, you know, for the bottom apps, a lot of them are like people who who, you know, they put it on the shelf or whatever. I mean, my own weather app is a great example. Like we had this big update in 2024, did 100k that year. Last year we did 50k. We We’re in that like P10. Like we shrank 50%. Why? Because we didn’t

update the app. We weren’t advertising it, you know, we churned it like median, you know, we churned like 70% of users. Um so like, you know, it it it’s my kind of app and you know, my kind of situation that are those like 10%. Yeah. Oh, what I do want to mention, if you guys want to follow along with this report, just download it’s a great report. It’s a great read. You’re going to enjoy it over the weekend. It is in the this YouTube description. So go download that state of

that report that RevenueCat put together. Yeah, tough to tough to read on YouTube. Hopefully everybody’s watching on like a TV or like a big screen. You can see it. >> [laughter] >> Some people are and I’m like, uh Steve, I have you on my big TV. I’m like, bro, I don’t have the face for that, but thank you. >> [laughter] >> Oh, yeah. I I I feel bad for the people on their their iPhone right now. Um >> [laughter] >> Uh well, this one’s the boom in subscription apps. Right. >> Yeah, yeah, if you go to that next slide, um this is actually data from

Appfigures. We We pulled in a few slides from Appfigures. One more slide. Um Sorry. My bad. Wait, my bad. I have the wrong one. Oh, no worries. Um okay, now one back. >> [laughter] >> There. Yeah. There we go. Okay. So this is data from Appfigures and what it’s showing is back in January of 2022, um 2,000 subscription apps were launching a month. And by this January, it’s over 14,000. A 7x growth in shipping. And you

can just see the acceleration with like Vibe coding and um and AI assisted development starting last year. It’s just like going, you know, uh exponential. And you know, we see this at Revenue Cat, like all our numbers are just like exploding. Um, apps shipped and sign-ups and all that kind of stuff. So, people are just shipping more apps than ever. And I wanted to I wanted to stop on this one just because

I mean, this this is the water we swim in. This is the This is what’s happening in the market. It’s just so many apps are launching. And then also, like if if your app takes off, you’re going to have competitors like that because it’s so much faster and easier to build an app. So, it’s just something, you know, I I thought I was talking to Who was I talking to? Oh, it was in it was in the report. Um, I did a mini-sode with Eric Seufert. And one of the things he said, which I thought was really sharp, is that

you know, yes, AI makes it easier to compete with you, uh, but it also makes it easier to track the competition. And so, like, you know, he he works as a consultant there part-time or whatever at this company Fabulous. And And he told me they set up AI agents that are searching the App Store for competitors. They’re looking at their known competitors. They’re They’re assembling like what ads seem to be working for them. And it’s like they’re generating reports using AI to do what would otherwise take an

analyst like a full-time job to do. They’re using AI to do it quicker and and and understand what’s going on so that they can defend against it better. Um, so So, there’s a you know, you you can use AI offensively, like moving quicker with your product, you know, digging deeper into the insights and, um, things like that. But then you can also use it defensively by, you know, keeping an eye on what’s going on in the market. Yeah. You know, I have a feeling that with with this

this number growing, look at this guy. I saw I released 23 apps in 2 weeks. No problem with ranking. [laughter] I don’t know if you’ve been seeing these complaints, David. People have been complaining like Apple’s taking forever to review stuff and it’s just like, well, you can see why now. Like, there’s been a lot more apps that they have to review and so they’ve been extremely picky. And the chart that you had where it’s the top takeaways like it’s the top 25 that are growing. Like, this bottom quartile is just going to continue to

grow, but like we’re all fighting for the bottom. So, like I think, you know, we’re going to go through somewhat of the what the top people are doing and I think that’s what I want to hopefully that one of the takeaways for the audience today is like try to mimic what the top 25 are doing. I know they have a little bit more money and you said it too, they have that brand brand equity, but there’s I’ve seen certain apps just boom and we work with a few of them. Like, one app we looked at yesterday, David, and I was like somebody asked me, he’s like, "Hey, dude, I have a

audacious goal. I want to hit 100,000 MRR in 6 months." I was like, I’m not that aggressive, right? [laughter] Like, I don’t have I’m not that audacious. I don’t have the cojones for that, but I was just like, “Dude, let me look.” And I knew one of our clients grew pretty quickly. He did it in 4 months. Wow. Now, they did raise some money, but they did it in 4 months. I was like, “So, it’s possible, but like you got to sort of figure out like you have to mimic what other people are doing to get that type of success.” >> I I will say though on the on the topic of mimicking and this explosion in apps,

um you do have to be careful what what exactly you mimic because Apple made a big deal in the fall, I think because they were seeing this, about that they will start rejecting copycat apps. So, if you see an app blow up and you try and fast follow, um you better like be really differentiated. Like, don’t use the same color scheme. Don’t like try and make it look like their icon. Like, Apple will reject it. And then for those of you who have competitors, there’s a form in in

in the Apple developer again, you’ll have to dig around. I should have thought to have these kind of links uh, I I didn’t even think I was going to bring this up, but you can actually go call out copycats to Apple and like say, “Hey, this app totally copied me.” And if they totally copied you, Apple is is pulling apps like crazy these days because of this flood and because of like I mean, they’ve said it for years they don’t want copycats, but they’re just getting more aggressive about um, pulling them because developers are getting so

aggressive about like just totally ripping off these apps that are successful. Love it. Yeah. Well, I meant mimic in terms of not like that. >> No, no, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I I like you called it out. I was I was jumping on that that term. Yeah, and and well, that’s a good thing to like use a little nuance here. It’s like, you know, if you if you see an app taking off um, and you want to do something in that space, you can mimic aspects of you can mimic the strategy, but it’s like you need to like do your own work. Like

figure out what’s going to differentiate your app, what’s going to bring something new to the market versus just like copying everything. And that’s where I think yeah, mimic and copy maybe we’re like splitting hairs here, but um, but you can like mimic a strategy without like copying like page-for-page their onboarding, copying their icon, copying their like keywords and stuff like that. It’s like you can you can um, learn without like just totally ripping them off. Yeah. No, and I I meant more like adopt some of the

strategies, the marketing strategies that we’re going to be talking about like the hard paywalls, the web-to-app funnels. Like what are they doing and I just read the reason why I brought this update was I read this book called Be Your Future Self Now and I was like, “Okay, you know, like what are these guys doing? How are they acting? What do they do on a day-to-day basis?” And then try to be that. It’s sort of where I was headed with that one. But on the topic of hard paywalls, Yeah. >> I’m bringing that up cuz

David, I’m like tempted, bro. Like I already told my team like, “We [laughter] should just move to a hard paywall. We should just move to a hard paywall.” I Yeah, I mean, the data is stark and I don’t If If you can zoom in on that, this is day 35 download to paid. So, So, what we did was like, um you know, you want to give it some time for the the cohorts to mature. So, this isn’t like, you know, day zero conversion. This is 35 days in. How many people have paid you anything if you’re a uh and it is zoom just a

little to the Yeah, there you go. >> There you go. Yeah. Lovely talking talking numbers on on YouTube on the memo. Um But, yeah. I mean, the top uh 10% of apps, 38% of people are paying you within 35 days. And then you look at the for freemium, uh 8.2% for the top apps. And then median, 10% for a hard paywall and 2% for freemium. But, again, it’s like you got

to take this with with context though, right? Because and I I’ve been talking about this for years. I think for a lot of apps, freemium is the right strategy. Like, you’re you If If you can retain them and if there’s like business benefits to having like, I desperately want to go back to freemium with my weather app. It’s hard because weather data is really expensive and like our main value prop is the widget and maps and those are the two most expensive things. Mapping data is really expensive and then the widget updates every like 15 minutes 24/7. Um so, it’s really

expensive to serve it. But, with the weather app, like, it becomes a daily habit. So, for people who come into the app and don’t convert immediately, I’ve lost them, you know, forever unless it like pops up in their mind again or like, you know, they see a new mention or they see a new ad or whatever once I do ads. Um but, you just you you’ve lost them. But, if you can keep get that daily habit going, then they’re part of that base. It’s like, "Oh, what weather app are you

looking at there?" It’s like, “Oh, that’s Weather Up.” And then somebody else downloads it and they actually pay. Um you have you can entice them over time. Like um I talked to um Michael from Mojo on the podcast. Um they do 50% of their conversions happen day zero, and that’s actually low. And we do I don’t think we put the data in here. Um but our data is something like 80 85% of conversions happen day zero across the industry. And and a lot of that is this hard paywall trend that keeps

ticking up. Um but for Mojo, they start showing um paywall on launch once a week after people have declined the first paywall. So, they have a very generous freemium tier, and then they pop a paywall on launch to those freemium users, and they’re they’re converting a lot you know, 50% of their revenue is coming from those people who are converting after that day zero. So, for the right app, I do think freemium is the right strategy even when

you’re looking at this data um because you’re building that cohort of people who are are sticking around. Um but it’s like you you got to know what you’re doing. You got to make the cost work. Like that’s really hard for an AI app to do freemium because the AI cost can really eat your lunch. Um but if if if there’s some re- if there’s a good reason that you think you can retain people, will convert them over time, that that freemium base is going to be like valuable to you, you’re collecting data,

you’re whatever, don’t don’t don’t just go to a hard paywall because you see these numbers. Like really think through like what’s my strategy. But for a lot of apps, hard paywall does make sense. I love it. You know, I’m I’m proponent of it. You know, like for me, what I what I love about these reports is that you and I get to we have the advantage. And if you guys don’t are familiar with the Sub club, where have you been? Check out the sub club podcast by RevenueCat that David hosts, but we get to talk to so many people and you you hear certain things from people

like, oh yeah, this is working. And then you guys have the aggregate data of so many apps and I’m like and the data backs it up. I’m like, okay, and that’s how I sort of how I use this data to your earlier point of like, hey, this is what our data says. It doesn’t work for all apps, but just just you know, just you know, but I like it. I that’s that’s the way I look at it. Um >> [clears throat] >> You want to go on to the >> skip ahead to slide nine. Okay. Cuz this this was actually kind of shocking to me is that um

hard paywalls don’t retain any worse. This was one of the more surprising things in the report for me because, you know, when I think about hard paywalls, >> [clears throat] >> you’re you’re kind of in a way you know, forcing somebody into a payment and like enough people still forget to turn off auto renew or whatever. So, my assumption would have been that hard paywall apps retain worse because you’re forcing somebody to pay versus like a freemium, it’s like, you know, they’re

choosing to pay cuz they could keep using the app for free. Now, you know, maybe you you it’s not as generous of a free tier and you have a lot of features locked away or whatever. Um but still this this was shocking to me. So, if you go with a hard paywall, you may or may not I mean again, like every app performs different, but you may not be con uh um sacrificing retention, which is what I would have assumed. That is interesting, too. And I saw that, too, David. Like we had one of our

apps [clears throat] we had we were able to grow it quite a bit, but when we put a hard paywall and we’re converting 13% trial install the trials. And then when we had the X, it dropped down to six. I like I knew do right away cuz I had the mix panel emails and then anyways the trial to pay didn’t change much. Like it was still converting. So the more niche you can go, the more like your app solves one particular problem really well. I feel like a hard paywall is yeah, I’m a big fan. I’m I’m doing

this David. Based off of this conversation, based off of based off of David. Hey, I and I was experimenting with this but not as well like not as thoughtfully as you have been is you can have a hard paywall happy X but then when they tap the X then just give them 7 days free and then you know, you need to make it really clear but you can still have a you can have a soft hard paywall where they hit the X and [clears throat] then they they get to use it for a while but then you still

lock it down after the 7 days. I had been doing this as a kind of like win back offer and it wasn’t very successful where I didn’t have an X on my paywall but I I had it to where when you if you leave the app it immediately pops a local push notification like hey like try it for 7 days and I you know, I thought that was really smart where other people probably don’t even see the notification, ignore it, whatever. Um not many people took us up on it and then not that many people who took us up on it actually converted. Um so in this next update I’m

doing I’m going to switch to exactly what you’re doing. So I put the X on the paywall but then just give them the the reverse trial 7 days not auto converting, just let them use the app. I like it. I like it, man. I like it. Okay. I want to move to Do you want to cover a little bit on the AI apps? Yeah, yeah, I think it’s well let we can go over quick on this so we have time for the some of the deeper stuff. Um this just shows like AI penetration. Um

it’s kind of subjective like what is an AI app and what’s not. We did our best and again this is in the methodology section so you want to read that and like better understand but essentially like we we we at signals and like the description and like other stuff or like what’s an AI app are they pitching it as like AI as a value prop. Um and so it is kind of interesting photo and video it makes a ton of sense that like most apps in that category now promote themselves as like AI first apps because it’s like so powerful in photo and video. But it’s interesting seeing, you know, the

different categories and and the penetration of AI apps across it. Um so I I I think that’s interesting and if you go to the next slide Um This is interesting. This is and this is what we were talking about in the in the key takeaways is that AI apps make more money. Uh the top 10% of apps by day 30 are making $47 per pair whereas the uh non-AI apps are

only making 42 and the medium median is even more stark. Uh basically $19 versus $14. Um So yeah, it’s it’s uh AI apps make money. Um and then if you go to the next slide and this this was also very surprising to me is that uh even though they make more money they don’t retain. And that this kind of makes sense. I I wouldn’t have guessed it and it was a little surprising to me but then once you see the data you’re like, “Oh yeah.”

Over the last couple years, you know, you just see so many AI apps launch and people are really excited and willing to try stuff but a lot you know, a lot of it ends up either gimmicky or kind of like a one-time use. Yeah, like like Studio Ghibli is a great example. Like when that happened the ChatGPT app blew up but then also a bunch of other apps blew up around this like photo uh AI re-imagining to look cartoony and whatever. Um

And it’s like you’re not going to do that every day, right? You’re going to do that a few times. You’re going to take your I mean I did the same thing. It’s like I did like six or eight photos. I shared them to my wife and my kids and friends and stuff. Like, “Oh, check this out. It’s so cute.” Like, us at Disney World like Studio Ghibli-fied, whatever. But, then people just churn out. ChatGPT is probably the one exception there where like, yeah, people came in for that, but there was like so much more to the app. Like, it got them using AI more frequently and stuff. And, you

know, I I actually haven’t looked at their retention data, so I’m not saying that they did retain better. And, we don’t share individual data from any individual apps in the report. But, just generally, you would think like an app that can hook you in with something like that, but then has a broader value prop has a better chance of retaining than something that’s like only doing like cartoonified photos. And like, so it makes sense that these AI-first apps are making a lot of money because people are willing to pay,

willing to try. But, then it makes sense that they’re also churning at a higher rate because so many of them are those like limited use case kind of situations. Yeah, I love it. One of the the And, I also think like even for our app, like we have an AI app, David, and it’s, you know, you can do it on ChatGPT, but it’s more niche, and it’s like particularly for specific like use case within ChatGPT, but I can see like weekly does better for us because it’s more of a one-time use thing. Like, you might use it for a

couple of times and then call it a day. So, yeah, I could see why. The The thing that I wanted to move on to was the web Yeah. to app flows. Like, this is interesting, man. And, this is what I meant with the mimic. Like, like, think about what these top apps are doing. Yeah. Well, I I Yeah, I will say on web specifically, and this is, you know, again, the context matters. You know, when you look at the percentage of apps that So, starting from the left is like hobby apps, and then all the way to the right is

top-performing apps, and so of course, top-performing apps are going to have way more uh web revenue. >> [clears throat] >> And and this is like um share projects with any web revenue. So, this is this is not amount of web revenue, but like are they doing web revenue? Are they using Stripe? Are they bringing that in? And so, of course, the top apps are going to be doing something on web versus like a hobbyist. Um and but I will say as a hobbyist

don’t jump on web just because the bigger apps are doing it. Like it can be a huge distraction. Um you need to do it at the right time for your business. Because like you know, and I I say this like RevenueCat, we’re like promoting and like have products that make it easier to do web, and like we want people to like, you know, do more web if they can. Uh and and we’re trying to make it as easy as possible, but even if we make it as easy as possible, now you have two different funnels. Now you have two different metrics to look at. Like,

how are my web How’s web converting versus app? Like, oh wait, do I need to like optimize the web funnel better because my conversion rate’s low? It like complicates things significantly. Like, if you’re sending ads to the web, it’s like are the ads not converting well, or is it the payment not converting well? Uh you know, is the payment flow too complex? Like, you know, did they not have Apple Pay? Whatever. It like introduces all of these complexities where the platform billing, Google Play, and Apple App Store billing, it it’s just a

low-hanging fruit. Like, you you you’ll get a quicker, easier sense of like what what people are willing to pay. You can be a little more confident in some of your experiments that it’s not these external factors. So, when you’re just starting, I actually wouldn’t recommend that specific thing you’re saying of like, you know, be the person you want to be in a few years. I I think this is one place where you you maybe don’t. Um you want to like understand that you’ll eventually get there, but

like set some kind of like target. Like, I I need to make sure like I have a value prop I mean this is where like people all the time are like, you know, web’s not converting and then like well is the app converting? It’s like no, like they don’t have a core like value prop that people are willing to pay for. So, it’s like you need to prove that out first, like build the business, take the low hanging fruit, and then think about going to web. And so, it’s it’s really important and yes, you can save on fees and like there’s stuff you can do on the web around like the way the payments are done and um, you know, the the

cancellation flows and like winning people back and like there’s tons of benefit to web, no doubt. Uh, but um, yeah, I’d just be careful in like when when you jump on it and not letting it be too much of a distraction from getting that like core loop of the app dialed in. Yeah, I was talking to somebody and he was telling me that it was it was an app that I was like, okay, there’s not that much ASO traffic for this market, right? And

so, he figured out a web funnel and that helped him get to I forget what the exact numbers are, but definitely above 10,000 MRR and it was just all the web traffic. Like he was just sending everybody to the web. And so, when I think about this, I’m like, okay, you kind of have to dissect I completely agree with you. I think you should start with the app sending people ASO ASA so easy to get done, but then once if that’s not taking off, like start thinking about other ways because web does get complex. Like it’s it’s not the

easiest thing to do, but it’s like something to think about when you’ve tried other things and you still believe in the product, you might want to test out a little bit of web. We’ve done it, David. We’ve No, that’s a that’s a that’s a really good point. I’ll I’ll I’ll I’ll caveat my earlier statements that like I I >> [laughter] >> think it I think what it comes down to too is like understanding whether or not you’re the kind of app that will convert well on web. And that that’s a good example of like, you know, maybe the app isn’t converting because

they need to be like sold more. I talked to um Leon from Rise Science on the podcast and he was talking about how like what they found is that the web offers them a better opportunity. People are more in like e-commerce mode on the web of like they really want to like read up on like like what’s the problem. They uh Rise Science is a sleep app. And so on the web what they finally found success with and they were app first um

but on the web what they finally found success with was like, “We need to really sell the problem of sleep of like, you know, you’re tired all the time, you know, all these kind of things.” And they sell the problem a lot more whereas in the app they jump right to the solution. Because if somebody’s downloading your app, it’s like they’re convinced they have a problem, they’re looking for a solution, and so you their onboarding in the app is like get them to the solution as quick as possible. But then what’s working so well on the web is like really selling the problem.

And so I think that’s where like, yeah, if if the app’s not working because people just aren’t downloading, you’re not getting traction, but you really are solving a problem, maybe it’s that you need to go sell the problem and the web is better for that. So that’s a good example of like if you’re early um and it’s not working, maybe the web could unlock something. Yeah. Or like you know, we’re looking at another app and it’s just kind of like I’m like this totally makes sense on the web. Like they’re already doing about 30K MRR. I’m like this totally makes

sense. Like web could be a different channel. So once you start figuring out and you got some traction and you know, for me David, I’m like I don’t want to be in that hobbyist thing little, you know, that shrinking thing anymore. And so I’m like, all right, let’s think through all this stuff. Yeah. >> The The next chart that I really love too and and look, I implore you guys to really download this app because when you look at this RPI, revenue per install, David, what I’m looking at is, "Okay, if I’m going to five code anything, what category I should should

I start thinking about?" Yeah, and and it’s pretty stark. Health and fitness just stands tall above all else. But, you know, some sleeper hits in there, you know, education, you know, as I said, I just interviewed the guys from Coconote and they they’re charging $130 a year and it’s something we talked about on the podcast. I was like, "How did you like it’s kind of like, you know, industry knowledge at this point

that if you’re targeting like high school and college students, they don’t pay. They they they they’re the like 100% of those people cancel day one on the on the free trials. Like they’re much more savvy, much more like don’t have disposable income, but education is that category where like you’re paying $50,000 a year for college, you know, $10,000 a year for for high school and then even when you’re in high school, it’s like you’re trying to get the grades to be able to get into that good college. So, $130 a year is like a

drop in the bucket when it you it’s helping you achieve these outcomes that are so meaningful to your your life. So, education is another category where I think it’s a little bit slept on and then that that demographic being a little bit slept on. So, yeah, really fascinating chart to dig into and and look at like what what categories are like really driving that revenue. Yeah, I love it in business. When I when I start thinking about this, I want to give away too much in any things and I’m like, "Okay, I’m on you know, like again, use this data to be

like I have these hypotheses in my head and I was like, "Okay, well, I’m on the right track. Okay, this is perfect. Thank you, David. Thank you for putting this together for me. Yeah, [laughter] it’s kind of fascinating that gaming is the one that’s like the smallest. You can I mean that’s stark. And it’s funny that it’s right next to health and fitness because it makes it even more stark. Um but but I mean it’s kind of like what we’ve always seen in gaming is that, you know, if you’re going to launch a game, it’s like feast

or famine, you know. I mean I’m sure there’s plenty that that do a little bit and do all right, but don’t do great. But games, man, it’s a it’s tough. Like people aren’t as willing to pay. It’s got to be super, you know, addictive and like you probably want to have ads in there and stuff like that. So it’s a just a totally different ballgame. Yeah, I love it. All right, let’s move on to conversion rate. We got 15 minutes left. I For those who are here, if I promised you an app audit, I apologize. We’re probably going to save it for next week for the app audit. I

think just too much data that I want to make sure we get out and really help people because that is the common questions I get too, David, is like “Hey, my trial to paid is this. How is that compared to everything else?” And like, “Bro, just download this report. Like I appreciate my data, but my data is anecdotal. It’s like a handful of people.” And so when my handful of people back it up with, you know, the thousands that you guys look at, it makes sense for me. So here are the conversion rates, David.

Yeah, trial trial to paid is is interesting. And again, this is going to be so dependent like, you know, and I forget if we broke this down by hard paywall soft paywall. We probably did. But it’s so dependent on your strategy and and like how long your free trial is and things like that. Um but and yeah, these are the ones that I it’s really fascinating, but these are the ones I’m almost like most hesitant to give any strong recommendations on because

everybody’s funnel is just so different. And so like if you have a really high trial start rate, and I think we we have data on that, right? Trial start rate is Yeah, I didn’t share data on that. I I think Oh, here it is. Download to trial. This is it. Oh, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. It was the first one. >> Yeah, I was looking at on my other screen, but I was like, okay, I pulled it up. And I I numbered them wrong, yeah. Um It’s all good. >> [laughter] >> So, download to trial. So, this is where

like if you’re in the if you’re in the the P90, if you’re if you’re in the top 10% of apps on download to trial, you should probably expect your trial to paid to be lower. If you’re in the bottom of download to trial, you should hope that your trial to paid is higher. I mean, this is this is one of the things we see with with hard paywall versus freemium is that if you have a freemium app, your download to trial’s probably going to be smaller because you make it easy to hit that X button and just use the app. Um

But again, ideally over time you’re converting those users, but just in general, your download to trial’s going to be lower. But then once people have taken the leap to go ahead and start that trial, they’ve already experienced the app, they know what’s going on, your trial to conversion is going to be higher. So, these are ones where it’s like you really need to look at the whole funnel, not just say, “Oh, my download to trial’s terrible.” But then you’re your your trial to paid is amazing. So, you got to look at that whole funnel.

And then that next slide, number 22, is that full funnel view of like And and this is this is maybe the one to benchmark a little more strongly against is is is you know, how many of the people who download my app actually pay? And that takes into account both the trial start rate and the trial conversion rate. Um and here, you know, again, ton of disparity. Health and fitness incredibly high, gaming incredibly low. It’s a It’s kind of a mirror of those revenue per install numbers. Um and then, know,

and these are tough, too, because you know, if if your app is featured by Apple, we’ve talked about this a lot, you and I, Steve. It’s like, if you’re if you’re featured by Apple, your download to paid is going to go down because those are like not high-intent users. If you have like really strong ads that like really sell the problem and get people really hyped up for your solution, your download to paid is probably going to be higher. If you’re doing UGC where it’s like

the videos are going super viral, but it’s not really selling the product, maybe you’re getting a ton of downloads, but like it’s just not what they expected, or like it’s not really solving a problem, or whatever, your download to paid is going to be lower. And so, all of the like these specific ones, it’s like you just really need to take into context like source of traffic, intent, category, like, you know, value of what you’re delivering, like, you know, there’s so many things to take into account where

And and and this is where like you can make a business work in the bottom quartile. Like, I mean, my weather app, I I hadn’t paid I I’ve done almost no paid ads. So, when I made the 100k in 2024, it was getting featured by Apple, it was getting featured in the press, it was all just free attention. So, yeah, my numbers my numbers weren’t great, but like I didn’t pay for any of that. I wasn’t losing money on user acquisition. I wasn’t, you know, blowing 10k on meta ads and not making it back,

you know, trying to figure it out. That was just like free money coming in. So, depending on So, if you if you get a ton of word of mouth, if you’re great on ASO, you know, depend if Apple features you a ton, if if you’re in the press, if like all these kind of things, you can make a business work even if you’re not converting well. And then and then the key there is like understand why, or form a hypothesis around why you’re not converting well, and then figure out, you know, do I need to press harder in this or do I need to focus somewhere

else in the business? Because again, if you’re getting a ton of features by featured by Apple a ton and people aren’t converting, maybe it’s not some like paywall hack or onboarding hack or activation or whatever. Maybe it’s like build a that new feature that’s really going to sell and like be more valuable to people or like maybe you just need to go like get more press and like build a feature that’s going to get pressed and get more free downloads. It’s like you need to like really think about your business and figure out um why the numbers are what they are and whether

you should try to move them or what ways to try and move them. Yeah, I like it. And there’s a finite number of marketing online marketing channels anyways. So, it’s like you you you’re going to be okay, but there’s an infinite number of features I’m sure you can build and so, yeah, like I like what you said there. Row had a good point, David. He say, “Would be good to grow no percentage of health and fitness.” Would be good to know percentage of health and fitness. You get all the meditation, habit trackers, 7-minute workout apps in one category.

So, like maybe mental health versus but that’s maybe getting too granular. Those are really tough to break down. And then we are really careful in our data not to like single out individual apps. And so, once you start like zooming in on like specific niches within a category, then it it’s hard to like, you know, have enough apps to like, you know, provide those stats in a in a anonymous kind of way. Uh but yeah, I mean, I ideally we would break it down even deeper, but this is what it is.

Dude, what I’m finding is health and fitness and business. Like, yo, come on. Like, that is good. >> [laughter] >> These are great categories here. >> Yeah. Well, all right. You want to go quickly through the conversion rate stuff and then >> I let let’s do trial durations cuz I >> that’s good. Okay, my bad. >> Yeah. Um so, this is interesting. Um in 2024, three three-day trials were 42% and they bumped up to 46% in 2025. So, more people are using

three-day free trials and it and it makes sense. You know, you get quicker ad signal, you get the money quicker. If you’re doing AB testing, I mean, I talked to Duolingo. Duolingo moved from a 14-day trial to a 7-day trial because it doubled their their experimentation rate and he said it was like a huge deal for them um to be able to experiment more quickly, to like get the decision and it was a net increase in conversions to move to the shorter trial. Um and so, we have other data. I don’t think I shared it in here, but other

data that shows that these longer trials do convert better. And so, it’s like this this um contradiction that longer trials convert better, but more people are using shorter trials. Um my boss, Rick, has really been hammering on this like, “Everybody needs to use longer trials.” I I think this is a bit of correlation versus causation in that the kind of apps that are offering 30-day trials are the kind of like, you know, longer-term apps and like I think ChatGPT, don’t they do they either do a

7-day or a 30-day trial? It’s like the apps that are using a 30-day trial are different kinds of apps than are using a three-day free trial. So, I don’t think using a longer trial is like guarantees that you’re going to do better. Um so, I don’t think the shift to three-day trials is necessarily a bad thing for a lot of apps. Um but, like it you know, looking at the data, it’s worth an experiment and and maybe the best way to experiment is what you were saying earlier, Steve, is like, don’t just switch to a 30-day trial, keep your three-day trial or seven-day trial, and

then either in cancellation or if they, you know, X out, like then then offer the longer trial to the the more uncertain people. That may be the best way to kind of straddle the fence of still getting the early signal, but then like for people more unsure, give them that longer trial. Yeah, I like it. And I think it’s I think this the way I read this chart is there’s been I know with my AI app we did a 7-day yearly that wasn’t converting as well cuz people are activating but canceling, David. And then we did a 3-day on the weekly and then, dude, same number of

downloads, 3x more revenues and I’m like, “Okay.” And you’re seeing the proliferation of like AI apps and those like one-time use tend to be weekly with a 3-day trial. So, maybe that’s the way I sort of read this data. Yeah. Yeah. And if you go to the next slide, I’ll do do this in like 10 seconds so we can hit the the last few slides. I love the last one, by the way. The last one’s really good. So, you guys got to see the last one. >> want to get to it. Um [laughter] this shows like when do people turn off auto-renew? And And again, 30-day trials

only 30% turn off day zero versus 3-day trials. And so, like when you do a 3-day trial, the psychology of it is like, “Oh, it’s only 3 days. Like, I want to make sure I don’t forget.” And so, people go immediately turn it off. So, this this is where maybe some of those numbers get shifted around is that maybe 30-day trials do convert better because people are a little less worried about the the the They know they have more time to turn off auto-renew. Uh and some of them still probably just end up forgetting,

but it is what it is. So, fun chart to look at though on those day zero trial cancellations. It’s been a trend in the industry. I’ve gotten a ton of questions on this over the last couple years like, “Why is everybody turning off the trial immediately?” And it’s like, “That’s just like that’s what people do now.” Yeah. Um All right. So, this is a retention. You already moved on to the next one. Um not a ton to say here. I mean, you know, you can look media and entertainment has a much higher

retention. Kind of makes sense. Like, these are you know, um I mean, you know, we don’t have like Disney Plus or whatever, but it’s like you would expect a a Disney Plus type app in media and entertainment to to retain better. Health and fitness being pretty low is surprising those like people try stuff, they get on the like New Year’s resolutions kick and then churn out. So this is one to look at to balance out the earlier data on like revenue per install and conversion and stuff like that. It’s like yeah,

conversion and revenue is better, but then your churn is going to be higher than a lot of categories. But look your favorite there business >> [laughter] >> high conversion, high revenue and high retention, you know, that’s that’s interesting. But then across all categories and so these are these are yearly yeah, year one retention. But in all categories 27% of annual subscriptions retained. That’s the median. And then yeah, the one you’re looking at

Yeah, it’s fine. It’s fine. You can go to the next one. >> Yeah, yeah, my bad. This is the business one David This one shows that no, go up one. Sorry. Yeah, this shows that in in our last report. So well, we didn’t just take the data from last report. We actually like re compared the data, but in earlier years retention was higher. So retention is drifting lower and and this actually makes sense when we talk about AI apps like what’s been blowing up the last couple years AI apps.

We saw in the data AI apps churn at a higher rate. So then overall churn is going up like fewer people are retaining this year than they did last year. So just an interesting thing to note about the kind of trend in the industry. And then the last one on on retention is that lower priced apps retain at a higher rate. And then this is one that I struggle to not like over infer and like correlation causation kind of thing, but you know, if you think about it, if if if your renewal is

coming up and it’s 20 bucks a year, it’s like 20 bucks like, you know, I’ll spend that at Starbucks with my kids." I mean, I spend 50 bucks at Starbucks with my kids. Yeah, [laughter] I got four kids. So, it’s like, you know, it’s not hitting our pocketbook hard compared to other purchases. But when I see the the Ladder fitness app, 130 bucks, it’s like, yeah, it’s super valuable, but like, that hits the budget, you know, you see you see that in the budget. You don’t see a $20 uh I think Castro, my

podcast player, is like 20 bucks a year. It’s like, I don’t even think about it. Yeah, me neither, man. I think there is something on psychology of pricing. And so, should you, you know, have a lower price just to get better retention? Maybe, if that’s your strategy, but, you know, maybe you need to make more money and be okay with higher churn. I love the Castro guys. I’m happy to pay them and support them. All right. Last Yeah, I just said last slide, yeah. >> This is going to be interesting. So, if you guys you guys got to take a screenshot of this cuz if you’re

wondering what to put on your paywall call to action, here it is. Thank you, RevenueCat. Put it all together. Yeah, this this is fascinating. Now, this is not by and well, maybe next year we could do it by like, you know, conversion percentage and things like that. This is just the common like, what’s most common. So, across all the apps using RevenueCat paywalls, um what is the most common CTA on a paywall? Continue. Yes.

it makes sense. Start to continue, subscribe now, cancel anytime, subscribe. You can see the big ones. But what’s fun about this one is digging into the smaller ones, like, um start my 3-day free trial, unlock everything, unlock pro. Um and then one of my favorites recently, and I think you’ve been on this as well, try for $0 and $0.00. We tried that. Yeah, Duolingo had great success with that. So, for some apps, for whatever reason, you know, it’s not

guaranteed, but for some reason some apps do really well with try for $0.00 versus like try for free. Um So, yeah, really fun to just get an idea of what people in the industry are using and so I get ideas for other CTAs to try. And And again, the big ones aren’t that they convert better, it’s just that they’re more common and more common doesn’t mean they convert better, it just means it’s more common. Uh but yeah, really fun. I I I’m really glad we included this in there. Yeah, that’s a This is a fun one. I want to share this one cuz we have found that

continue actually does perform pretty well versus like start free trial. But start free trial works pretty well on Android. That’s the data. It’s It’s one data point, you know, not thousands like you guys, but >> [laughter] >> like the guy was like, “Oh, I like that.” Like cuz that’s what I’ve seen, too. And it looks like a a bug and I So, I’ll explain this at the very top you can see start open bracket open bracket product.offer period with unit close bracket close bracket free trial. What that What that’s saying is that’s people

using our little tags to insert a tag related to the product that they’re selecting. So, then if you like if you’re tap on weekly, it would be like start weekly free trial or whatever. And then if you tap on annual, it’d be like, you know, start annual free trial or whatever those like, you know, variables are. Um so, when you see the variables in there, it’s that people are actually using variables so that the call to action changes when they select different plans. Yeah, love it. David,

time for a few questions? We got two questions. I’m good. I know you got to run. I can I can stay as long as you want. All right, you [laughter] you take over, bro. All right. Dikisha Disha Okay, I don’t know. Can you give me strategies to improve the trial to paid rate for a utility category apps targeting business professionals like health professionals, lawyers? What do you think? Trial to paid rate? Oh, you know, I mean, these are so tough. Uh again, like what what’s your trial start rate? Um

the trial start rate, trial to paid rate, um and overall like download to paid rate is so much about um you know, convincing people that you’re solving their problem or providing something of value. Um so, I would I would really be thinking hard about um onboarding and activation. Is And And And again, we’ve talked about this a ton on the podcast where like some apps perform incredibly well with a super long onboarding. So, that’s worth trying. You know, if you’re only doing four pages of onboarding, try 30 pages

of onboarding if if it makes sense. But then for other apps, you want to just get them to the solution as quick as possible. So, if you have a 30-day a 30-page onboarding, try a three-page onboarding. Like, get them to the solution immediately. Um I would I would take kind of big swings like that of like trying the the opposite ends of the spectrum um to see what convinces them and like activates them better. Um what gets them

to that like believing your solution is worth paying for as quickly as possible. Yeah, and I think trying to get people to Yeah, like you said, adopt the features as quickly as possible. Try if they cancel. The way I see this, David, maybe this is simplifying it is if the trial to paid is not as good, they should and like the trial start rate is strong. Like, one of our apps is this, okay? So, I’m personalizing this. It’s like 8% trial start rate. But our trial to paid sucks. So, I’m like, maybe I just need to improve the product. You know, I never lean on that. I never lean

on that. You know me, like I I hate building more features. And so, I’m like, maybe the product just sucks. And if I’m being honest with myself, I could probably do a better job of improving that app’s product features. So, that’s That’s sort of how I think about it cuz they show you the numbers. >> a Yeah. I mean, yeah, part of selling somebody on the solution is like actually having a good solution. So, yeah, maybe >> [laughter] >> the first part is like, yeah, is the product actually solving these problems and then yeah, improve the product and then sell it.

All right, Nerix, my boy Nerix, how’s it going, bro? So, 7 days better or 3 days better for trial? >> [laughter] [gasps] >> Um yeah, we didn’t put this in and I don’t I don’t have it handy. You know, download the report to see what the data says on 7-day trial versus 3-day trial. Um we did show you the slide that 3-day trials have way higher uh day zero cancellation rate. So, understand that if you use a 3-day trial, more people are going to cancel that first day and kind of give you less

of a chance. The 7-day like more people do stick around, not you know, a ton, but more people do stick around. Um I think 3 days is good for like, you know, if you if you’re running ads and you need the signal as quick as possible. You know, certain type of apps, weekly subscriptions and things like that do better with the 3-day trial. I get 46% of apps are using 3-day free trials. Um so so there there’s a reason they’re doing that and a lot of them have tested 3 days versus 7 days.

Um but I I I think it’s so context dependent. So, I mean really this is an experiment worth running versus like us trying to tell you uh which one’s going to do better. Like I mean, you know, it should if you’re using RevenueCat or similar tool like it should be pretty easy to set up this test of 3-day versus 7-day trial and and and you’ll be able to look at those signals, like what that cancellation rate is, how many how quickly people are turning off that auto renew. Yeah, love it. And here’s the link to the report. It is in the YouTube description as well, but all you do is

look, 115,000 apps, 16 billion in revenue, billion in revenue, insane. All right. >> the report’s been downloaded almost 5,000 times already in less than a week. Um so, if you haven’t downloaded it, your competitors probably have. So, >> [laughter] >> They’ve run it through the AI machine. They got all the insights all ready to go. And then Man, I will say, you know, I I try not to like plug too much, but

on the subject of running it through an AI machine, we’re we’re about to launch this product. We’re going to initially launch it as a Slack bot, but it’s basically like chat with the RevenueCat dashboard. But, what’s cool is like we plugged in all this all the state of subscription app data into the like data that the AI is looking at. So, you can ask it things like how is my app performing compared to the median and you know, should where are the benchmarks? Where am I weak compared to the benchmarks? And dude, it

I was a little skeptical cuz you know, like sometimes sometimes AI is like gets a little fuzzy with the data and just hallucinates and stuff like that. But, we’ve been iterating on this over the last couple of months and it’s got really good. So, it’s it’s pretty fun to just be able to like prompt and like basically like talk to your data. So, yeah, really fun thing we’ve been working on. I love it, man. All right. And then this person said, “What plans do you recommend?” I had this chart up

because I was like, "Look, per category, download report, you can see retained subscribers after a year. This could be a way to do it. I think it really depends on the category and about which plans to promote. For me, I found that AI apps tend to be more weekly heavy. If it’s an app that is a one-time use type of thing, weekly. If it’s an app that has a long-term use, I would say yearly. Stay away from monthly, in my opinion, David. >> [laughter] >> Yeah, I mean,

certain apps do well on monthly if it is if it feels more like that tool that you’re just going to use forever, I think monthly Seth Seth from Rob Chat a while back he’s like my hypothesis is that for an app the people are going to stick with the optimal like LTV maximizing plan is the monthly plan because you can charge a little more on a monthly basis than you can on an annual. Um so if you’re an app that has

really strong retention and really strong conversion I think those are the apps that that can do well with monthly cuz again these are these are like aggregated data showing monthly don’t retain as well as annual. There are certain apps that retain incredibly well on monthly. I mean think of your Disney Pluses and Netflixes and stuff. There’s a reason they don’t offer $130 a year. They’re charging 26 bucks a month and and they know you’re going to stick around and so they make way more money

charging you 26 bucks a month than trying to give you this this annual plan. I will say um for most apps monthly probably doesn’t make sense. But I think for the right app um you can potentially get a higher LTV. And then similarly like ChatGPT they don’t offer annual subscriptions. Um they offer monthly. Two I’m paying the $200 a month subscription. Would I drop $1200 to get that annual? I probably wouldn’t. It’s an easier I mean it’s a ton of

money. I get a ton of value out of it but it’s like easier to swallow $200 a month versus $1200 a year and that’s the that’s the mindset and the kind of app where I think the monthly can make a ton of sense. Okay I’m going to answer this one quick. Devlin says what are your trials rates trials start rates like I’m getting 7%? I’m getting close to 10%. I would just say if you want to improve it do a hard paywall. There you go. >> [laughter] >> Yep. David let’s end with this. This is a great question. What’s that did you want

to include in the report but just didn’t make it in? Oh that’s a great question. Yeah, right. Um, I’m always thinking of new stuff that I wish we had had put in there. Off the top of my head though, I can’t remember. Um I mean, we talked about we talked about one earlier where like it would be nice to like break down by like more specific in the categories and stuff like that. Like that would be cool. Oh, you know,

it’s not a stat, but I’ve always wanted us to do scatter plots because like this year’s report, it’s really dense with all the and you know, those of you watching on your phone probably couldn’t read a single number because it’s so dense. Uh, but I love how we’re now doing the P90 the top quartile, the median, the bottom quartile, the P10 cuz that that that gives you a better sense of the distribution, but a scatter plot man with all the dots in there like really shows you like a better visual

representation of the uh the distribution of the data and then you see the outliers. Like the crazy outliers are like way up into the right and then the crazy outliers are like way bottom to the left. So, I think that that’s the biggest thing, but we don’t do scatter plots because it um it it each point is an individual app’s data and so that’s kind of like, you know, showing individual app data versus aggregated data. Uh, so that that’s the

biggest one and that’s unfortunately one that we’re not going to be able to do ever. I love it, man. Well, here’s the link to the here’s the report. Go download it right now. Over 5,000 people have already downloaded it. That’s amazing people. That’s amazing amount of people and then what I would suggest is that link in that YouTube description is your easiest way to find it and then go check out if you’re not listening to the Sub Club podcast by David. He hosts this. I know there’s a lot of people showing up. I’ve been in past podcast guests as well, but there’s been a a of recent

episodes that really break down some of the strategies that are in the report. And Dave has been pumping out content like like almost [clears throat] every day, David. I see a new podcast episode coming out, dude. >> we did We did a special thing. We we we did this last year and did it again this year in conjunction with the report. We do these minis sodes that are like 15 or 20 minutes. And so I did 11 of those this year. So we’re not going to maintain that. >> [laughter] >> It was a lot of work, man. You know as a podcaster like every one

of these is a ton of emails and conversations and figuring out what to talk about and then the guest management and all that kind of stuff. So we do this every year for the status of subscriptions and each one of those minis sodes is actually featured has a whole slide in the report with like the key takeaways. And it’s exactly what you’re saying. Like the idea is like we’re going to show all this data, but then what do you do? And so my goal we don’t like talk about the data in in those like minis sodes, but we talk about like the strategies related to the this topic. So we talk about price

testing. We talk about retention. We talk about user acquisition. Like we talk about those kind of main topics in a like more bite-sized format. So Yeah, no. Look at the guests I mean great job getting the best 11 labs, ladder, like it’s insane photo room. Yeah. This Jacob guy that I don’t know about. >> [laughter] >> That that one is that one’s me and Jacob for like an hour and 20 minutes like really breaking down the report and talking about the state of the market.

So that that one was a long one, but it was a it was a fun one he and I just chatting. Love it, man. All right, guys. Well, hey, I have to I know there’s a lot more questions I’m like, why are there questions right when I’m about to end? But [laughter] go check out the report. David, thank you so much for coming on and doing this, man. Yeah, thanks for having me and have fun snowboarding with your daughter. I I wish I was going snowboarding this morning. She’s ready, man. She’s locked [laughter] and ready. She’s like, all right, Dad, let’s go. Let’s get it. The Okay, the last thing I want to plug is if you guys are

interested in an Indie App Santa promo, I know H is telling me to promote this. There’s a price drop right now. We’re working out some details on the a subscription. We’re going to add some subscription that allows you to do more promotions. This is still working today. So, we’ve dropped our prices quite a bit just to give you guys because of Apple and all the things all the fuss about it. So, I’m like, all right, try it because I want you guys to try it. And then next week we’ve got a great Yes, he’s been following the channel and he’s been able to succeed in his app and I love having these type of people on and

so you’re going to hear an Indie App success story that’s made, according to his records, I won’t give you the numbers, but over $50,000 in January. So, I love people He reached out to me on Instagram and he’s like, “Hey Steve, thank you for all the content. Here’s what we’re able to do.” And I’m like, “Bro, come on, share it with us.” So, we’re going to have a D on next week. David, thank you for being a friend, man. Known you for years now. Look at we were young boys back when we met and now Like 12 years ago.

[laughter] >> That’s why I knew when you thought I said mimic, you’re like, “Oh, re-skinning.” You know, the re-skinning thing. >> [laughter] >> Oh, man. Yeah, we’ve been through a lot of ups and downs in the industry over the years. True, man. And then Steve Thank you, Steve. Two of my favorite app people on the on live. Steve love the lives. David love the Sub Club podcast. So, thank you, Steve. >> Steve. All right, guys. Have a great weekend. I’m going to have a great weekend starting now, but I’ll see you guys next week. Bye >> Bye, everybody.

Dude,