RevenueCat and Superwall began as tools for two different jobs. RevenueCat is subscription infrastructure: it talks to Apple and Google, validates purchases and tells your app who has paid. Superwall is a paywall tool: it decides which paywall a user sees, when, and tests one against another. In 2026 each has moved into the other's job, which is why the comparison gets confusing.
Neither of them takes the payment. Apple, Google and (on the web) Stripe do that. Both sit on top. Once you see the two layers separately, the choice is mostly about which layer you care about more and what each one charges at your revenue.
The two jobs in a subscription app
Every app that sells a subscription needs two things that are easy to blur together.
1. The purchase and entitlement layer. When someone buys, something has to confirm the purchase with Apple or Google, record it, handle renewals, refunds, billing retries and cancellations, and answer one question for your app at any moment: does this user have access? Doing that yourself with StoreKit and Google Play Billing is very possible, and very fiddly.
2. The paywall layer. The screen that asks for money. Which products it shows, what it says, when it appears (on launch, after the third use, when someone taps a locked feature), and whether a different version would convert better.
The first job is plumbing: it has to be correct, and nobody notices it until it is wrong. The second is where pricing experiments and most of the revenue upside live.
What RevenueCat does
RevenueCat is built around the first job. Its SDK wraps StoreKit and Google Play Billing, its servers keep the subscription state, and your app asks it whether the user is entitled to "pro". Around that it adds charts (revenue, churn, trial conversion), webhooks to your back end, and integrations with analytics and attribution tools.
It also does the second job now. RevenueCat has its own remotely configured paywalls and A/B experiments, included in the same plan.
Price, checked in October 2026: free until your monthly tracked revenue passes $2,500, then 1% of tracked revenue, per RevenueCat's pricing page. Two details matter. Tracked revenue is measured before the store's commission and taxes. And the 1% applies to the whole amount, not just the part above the threshold: RevenueCat's own example says $2,600 in a month costs $26.
See the RevenueCat page in the directory for the listing.
What Superwall does
Superwall is built around the second job. You place triggers in your app ("user tapped export", "app opened for the fifth time"), and Superwall decides remotely which paywall to show to which audience, with experiments between designs, prices and timing. Changing a paywall does not need an app update.
It also does the first job now. Superwall describes its subscription infrastructure (entitlements, purchase APIs, receipt validation, webhooks, revenue analytics) as free at any scale, and it markets a migration path from RevenueCat. It still integrates with RevenueCat for teams that want to keep RevenueCat as the purchase layer.
Price, checked in October 2026: per Superwall's pricing page, the infrastructure is free with no revenue threshold. The paywall product is free up to $10,000 a month in paywall-attributed revenue, and above that it costs 1% of paywall-attributed revenue. Revenue that did not come through a Superwall paywall is not billed. Their own example: $50,000 a month with half converting through Superwall paywalls costs $250.
See the Superwall page in the directory for the listing.
What it costs at small scale
Say all your subscriptions convert through the tool's paywall. Rough monthly cost on gross revenue:
| Monthly revenue (before store fees) | RevenueCat | Superwall |
|---|---|---|
| $1,000 | $0 | $0 |
| $3,000 | $30 | $0 |
| $8,000 | $80 | $0 |
| $20,000 | $200 | $200 |
Below $10,000 a month, Superwall's published pricing is cheaper. Above it, they converge. At the revenue most indie apps actually have, either bill is small next to the store's commission, and neither should decide the question on its own.
How people combine them
There are three common set-ups.
- RevenueCat alone. One SDK for purchases, entitlements, charts and paywalls. The simplest choice if you want one vendor and one dashboard.
- Superwall alone. One SDK for paywalls plus Superwall's own entitlement layer. The choice if paywall experiments are the point and the free infrastructure suits you.
- Both. RevenueCat as the purchase layer, Superwall in front of it for paywalls. This was the standard pairing for years and both still support it. It makes sense if you already run RevenueCat and only want Superwall's paywall tooling.
How to choose
Ask yourself three questions.
Will you actually run paywall experiments? If you will ship one paywall and leave it, the experiment tooling of either is wasted, and you are choosing a purchase layer. If you plan to test prices, trial lengths and timing every few weeks, that is the job Superwall was designed around, though RevenueCat's experiments may be enough.
Are you already on one? Migrating subscription state between providers is possible and both describe how, but it is careful work on the one part of the app that must not break. "We already use it and it works" is a perfectly good reason to stay.
Do you need it at all yet? If you have no subscribers, either free tier covers you. Before you have any revenue, the bigger risk is the App Store review of your paywall: guideline 3.1.2 wants the paywall to say clearly what the user gets for the price. App Store rejection: the common reasons covers that one.
What neither one does
Neither sets your price, and neither fixes a product nobody wants to pay for. A paywall experiment can move conversion by a useful margin, but only on traffic you already have and value people already feel. If you are still working out what to charge, start with how to price a SaaS as a solo founder: most of it applies to apps too.
And for web products, neither is the main tool: payments there go through Stripe, Paddle or Lemon Squeezy, compared in Stripe, Paddle or Lemon Squeezy for an indie product.