samet teke. sell your app

Subscriptions

Sell your subscription app

Subscription apps are most of what I buy, so this is the version written by the person on the other side of the table: the numbers I ask for, what each one does to the price, and what happens to your subscribers after the transfer.

Short answer

I buy subscription apps directly, in deals from $10K to $1M+, valuing them on proceeds (what Apple or Google pays you after its cut, averaged over the last 3 months) rather than gross MRR. Steady renewals, an organic install base and a healthy annual plan share push the multiple toward the top of the 6–36x range. Your subscribers keep their subscriptions: they move with the app in the official App Store transfer.

Which numbers should I send?

For a first look, two: average monthly proceeds and average monthly costs over the last 3 months. That’s enough for a range. When we get specific, these are the ones that decide where in the range you land:

  • Proceeds by month for the last 12 months, so I can see the trend rather than a snapshot.
  • Plan mix: monthly vs annual, and the price of each. Annual plans smooth the revenue and raise the multiple; they also mean a chunk of the money was collected before the sale, which we account for.
  • Renewal and churn rates, however your tools report them.
  • Trial conversion, if you run trials, and whether it has moved recently.
  • Where installs come from: App Store search vs paid campaigns vs anything else.
  • Refunds and chargebacks, which sometimes explain a gap between what you see in analytics and what Apple pays.
  • Costs: servers and APIs, ad spend, tools, contractors.

How do these move the price?

I work from around 6–36x monthly profit (average of the last 3 months). For a subscription app, the things that move you up the range are steady or growing proceeds, renewals that hold, a meaningful share of annual plans, installs that arrive from organic App Store search, and an app that runs without you. The things that move you down are a recent drop, churn that has been rising, revenue that depends on continuous ad spend, and concentration in one country, one plan or one acquisition channel. Apps with strong downloads but low profit are the special case: those can reach up to 120x monthly profit. The whole model is in how I value an app.

What happens to subscribers and to RevenueCat?

Subscribers stay subscribed. Active subscriptions transfer with the app, and the buyer starts receiving the proceeds from the transfer date, so there is no cancel-and-resubscribe moment and no message to your users. On the technical side, the subscription backend, keys and webhooks have to be moved carefully, and that part is worth reading before we start: selling a subscription app covers RevenueCat, the keys to rotate, and who gets paid for what.

What do I check before the offer becomes final?

App Store Connect or Play Console proceeds for the period you quoted, your cost invoices, the subscription dashboard, and the store account’s standing. It’s light and specific rather than a data room. The seller’s side of the list is in the due diligence checklist.

How the sale runs

You write, I reply myself within a few hours, and you get a direct offer if the app fits. Payment goes through a reputable escrow service, the app moves with the official App Store transfer, and the whole thing takes about 14 days from first message to a closed deal, everything included. There are no fees for you, and I sign an NDA on request. What I buy in general is in my acquisition criteria.

Questions about subscription apps

What happens to my subscribers when the app is sold?

They keep their subscriptions. Active subscriptions move with the app in Apple’s App Store transfer, and the buyer receives the proceeds from the transfer date. Nobody has to resubscribe, and nothing changes for the user. The mechanics, including RevenueCat and the keys to rotate, are in selling a subscription app.

Do you value MRR or proceeds?

Proceeds: what Apple or Google actually pays out after its cut, averaged over the last 3 months. Gross MRR looks bigger but isn’t the money that reaches you, and valuing on it would only lead to a correction later.

My churn is high. Is it a dealbreaker?

Not by itself. High churn on a low-price monthly plan with cheap organic traffic can still be a good business. What matters is whether the money that arrives next quarter looks like the money that arrived last quarter. Tell me the number rather than leaving me to guess it.

I grow with paid ads. Does that lower the price?

It lowers the multiple rather than ending the conversation, because I’m buying revenue that keeps arriving without spend. I look at what the app earns from organic installs, and what the paid channel returns. See selling an app that runs on paid ads.

Do you buy apps with a free trial or a hard paywall?

Both. A trial with a good conversion rate and a hard paywall with steady conversion are different shapes of the same thing. What I care about is whether the rate is stable over the last few months.

What if most of my revenue comes from one country or one plan?

That’s concentration risk and it moves the price down a step, because one store policy change or one exchange rate can move most of the revenue. It doesn’t stop a deal; it just needs to be visible up front.