# 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

# Why does my user show active subscription but no data in the dashboard?

Understanding why a user may have an active subscription on device but no entitlements, Apple events, or webhooks in the Superwall dashboard

## Understanding How Superwall Tracks Subscriptions

Superwall uses two different sources of truth for subscription data:

### 1\. On-Device Subscription Status (SDK)

The SDK determines subscription status by reading the **local Apple receipt** directly from StoreKit. This receipt is tied to the user's **Apple ID**, not their Superwall user ID.

If there's a valid subscription receipt on the device, the SDK will report `subscriptionStatus = active`, regardless of which Superwall user ID is currently active.

### 2\. Dashboard Attribution (Server-Side)

The dashboard displays subscription data (entitlements, Apple server events, webhooks, receipts) that is attributed to a specific **Superwall user ID**. This attribution happens at the time of purchase. Whichever user ID was active when the transaction occurred is the one that gets linked to the subscription data.

## The Most Common Cause

When you see an active subscription on device but nothing in the dashboard, it almost always means:

**The subscription was purchased under a different Superwall user ID than the one you're currently looking at.**

This can happen when a user:

* Reinstalls the app (generates a new anonymous user ID)
* Logs out and back in (may generate a new user ID depending on your implementation)
* Switches accounts
* Had their identity reset for any reason

The subscription remains valid because Apple validates it against the user's Apple ID. But all the purchase events, webhooks, and server notifications are attributed to the **original** user ID that was active at purchase time.

## Example Scenario

1. User installs your app and gets assigned anonymous user ID `abc-123`
2. User purchases a subscription. All events are attributed to `abc-123`
3. User deletes and reinstalls the app
4. User gets assigned a new anonymous user ID `xyz-789`
5. The subscription is still valid (same Apple ID), so the SDK shows `active`
6. But the dashboard shows nothing for `xyz-789` because the subscription belongs to `abc-123`

## How to Verify This

If you suspect this is happening:

1. Check the "Customer Info" section in the dashboard for the user. If it shows subscription status as active but no entitlements, this confirms the SDK is reading a valid receipt
2. The subscription data exists, it's just linked to a different user ID
3. If you have access to your server logs or Apple's App Store Connect, you can try to find the original transaction and trace it back to the original user ID

## How to Prevent This

To maintain consistent attribution across user sessions:

* Call `Superwall.shared.identify(userId:)` with a stable user ID from your own authentication system as early as possible, ideally before any purchases occur
* Use the same user ID consistently across reinstalls and devices
* If your app supports account creation, identify users immediately after they sign up or log in

## Key Takeaways

* **Active subscription + no dashboard data = purchased under a different user ID**
* The subscription is valid and working correctly
* This is expected behavior, not a Superwall bug
* The SDK uses the Apple receipt (tied to Apple ID) for access control
* The dashboard uses attribution data (tied to Superwall user ID) for reporting
* These are intentionally separate to ensure users never lose access to their purchases