How much do iPhone apps charge for subscriptions? (2026 data)
Monetization · · 6 min read · AppTrendKit
Short answer: among 1,140 top-grossing iPhone apps in the US, the typical cheapest plan is $9.99 a month or $47.99 a year, and 28% also sell a weekly plan (median $6.99). A yearly plan usually costs about 6 months of the monthly price, so it's roughly half price. What a category can charge varies a lot: a median of $99.99 a year in Sports, $19.99 in Weather.
How we measured it
We took every app that spent at least 4 days of October 19–26, 2026 in the top 50 of a US App Store category Top Grossing chart, games excluded (they sell currency packs, not plans). For each, we read the in-app purchases Apple lists on its US store page and sorted them into weekly, monthly and yearly plans by the product name (“1 Month”, “Annual Premium”, “Weekly Pro”). Where an app lists several plans of one length, we used the cheapest, since that's its entry price. Then we took the median per category.
The overall picture
- Monthly: half the apps list a monthly plan. Median cheapest price: $9.99.
- Yearly: 52% list one. Median: $47.99.
- Weekly: 28% list one. Median: $6.99. Paid every week for a year, that's about 8 times the same app's yearly price (median across the 215 apps that sell both).
- Yearly discount: the yearly plan costs a median 6.1 times the monthly one, about half price over 12 months.
- Lifetime: only 63 apps (6%) sell one.
The most common prices
| Plan | Most common prices (share of apps with that plan) |
|---|---|
| Weekly | $4.99 (17%), $6.99 (16%), $9.99 (15%) |
| Monthly | $9.99 (15%), $19.99 (10%), $14.99 (9%) |
| Yearly | $39.99 (12%), $29.99 (9%), $19.99 (9%), $59.99 (8%) |
Prices cluster on the usual .99 steps; no single price point covers more than about one app in six.
Subscription prices by category
| Category | Apps | Monthly | Yearly | Yearly = months | Sell weekly |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sports | 49 | $12.99 | $99.99 | 8.5 | 10% |
| Entertainment | 49 | $10.99 | $82.49 | 10.0 | 27% |
| Productivity | 50 | $13.99 | $79.99 | 6.3 | 26% |
| Finance | 47 | $10.99 | $75.99 | 7.5 | 15% |
| News | 51 | $8.99 | $71.00 | 10.0 | 4% |
| Magazines & Newspapers | 50 | $8.99 | $69.00 | 9.9 | 12% |
| Health & Fitness | 52 | $12.99 | $59.99 | 6.4 | 12% |
| Medical | 47 | $12.49 | $59.99 | 5.8 | 19% |
| Books | 48 | $9.99 | $54.99 | 6.8 | 31% |
| Music | 51 | $9.99 | $49.99 | 4.8 | 25% |
| Business | 52 | $9.99 | $49.99 | 7.4 | 46% |
| Education | 49 | $12.99 | $49.99 | 4.8 | 24% |
| Navigation | 48 | $9.99 | $39.99 | 4.7 | 17% |
| Graphics & Design | 45 | $10.00 | $39.99 | 3.8 | 64% |
| Photo & Video | 53 | $9.99 | $39.99 | 6.7 | 45% |
| Food & Drink | 45 | $7.49 | $39.99 | 7.0 | 7% |
| Reference | 52 | $9.99 | $39.99 | 3.8 | 52% |
| Shopping | 42 | $9.99 | $39.49 | 4.5 | 31% |
| Lifestyle | 50 | $14.99 | $37.99 | 4.8 | 32% |
| Utilities | 49 | $9.99 | $35.99 | 6.7 | 59% |
| Travel | 51 | $5.99 | $34.49 | 5.4 | 25% |
| Developer Tools | 39 | $5.99 | $19.99 | 6.3 | 13% |
| Weather | 48 | $5.49 | $19.99 | 4.4 | 25% |
| Social Networking | 53 | $18.99 | — | — | 32% |
“Apps”: top-grossing apps in the category with listed in-app purchases. Monthly and yearly: median of each app's cheapest plan, shown when at least 10 apps list that plan. “Yearly = months”: the yearly price divided by the same app's monthly price (median), so 6.0 means a year costs 6 months. “Sell weekly”: share of the apps that list a weekly plan.
What stands out
- Sports, Entertainment and Productivity charge the most per year ($80–100 median). Sports is led by league apps (NFL, NBA, MLB, ESPN) and paid tools for golf, fishing and hunting; Entertainment by streaming services; Productivity by AI assistants, email and file tools.
- News and Entertainment give the smallest yearly discount. Their yearly plan costs about 10 months of the monthly price, so a year saves only about two months.
- Weekly plans are a utility-app habit. 64% of top-grossing Graphics & Design apps, 59% of Utilities and 52% of Reference apps sell one: AI photo tools, cleaners, scanners and translators that convert on a short trial. In News (4%), Food & Drink (7%) and Sports (10%) they're rare.
- Lifestyle prices high monthly, low yearly: $14.99 a month but $37.99 a year, under 5 months of the monthly price. That pushes buyers firmly towards the yearly plan.
- Social Networking sells by the month. Its top grossers are family-safety, messaging, live-streaming, second-phone-number and dating apps; fewer than 10 of them name a yearly plan, and the median monthly plan is the highest of any category ($18.99).
- Weather and Developer Tools are the cheapest, at a $19.99 yearly median.
What this means for pricing your app
- Start from your category, not the overall median. A $49.99 yearly plan is middle of the road in Education and expensive in Weather.
- Offer a yearly plan at around 4–7 months of the monthly price. That's where most categories sit. Go lower if you want almost everyone on the yearly plan, as Lifestyle apps do.
- Think twice before a weekly plan. It earns a lot per paying user (8 times the yearly price over a year) but is common mainly in categories where users need the app for a short job. Reviewers of those apps often complain about billing and cancelling; see the complaint themes in our app market research reports.
- Check real competitors. Every app page on AppTrendKit lists the in-app purchases its US store page shows, next to its estimated downloads and revenue. Use the app revenue estimator and the App Store fee calculator to see what a price leaves you after Apple's cut.
Limits
- US App Store prices in US dollars, for apps on a US category Top Grossing chart in October 19–26, 2026. Prices elsewhere differ.
- Apple lists a limited number of in-app purchases per app, and the price a user pays can differ with introductory offers, trials and web checkout.
- Plan lengths come from product names. Products named only “Premium” or “Pro” can't be sorted and are left out, which leaves out some large apps (Calm, Duolingo).
- An app in two categories counts in each; the overall figures count it once.