samet teke. sell your app

Subscriptions

Sell your subscription app

A subscription app is priced on one question: will next quarter’s renewals look like last quarter’s? Retention, plan mix, trial conversion and where installs come from answer it, and this page shows how each one moves the price, then what happens to your subscribers and your RevenueCat or StoreKit setup after the sale.

Short answer

I value subscription apps on proceeds after Apple’s or Google’s cut, not gross MRR, and the multiple rises with renewals that hold, a healthy annual plan share and installs from organic search; growing, organic, low-maintenance apps reach 50–60x monthly profit. Your subscribers keep their subscriptions through the App Store transfer, and the subscription backend is handed over with the app, so nobody has to resubscribe.

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 12–60x 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 5K+ downloads a month but little or no profit are the special case: downloads set the price, 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, whether you use RevenueCat or your own StoreKit code, 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 does the sale run?

The one subscription-specific point: the full price is paid in cash at closing, with no earn-out tied to future renewals, so churn after the transfer is my risk, not yours. The app moves with the official App Store transfer, and 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.