# 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

# Local Resources

Bundle images, videos, and other assets in your app so paywalls can load them instantly from the device.

Local resources let your paywalls load bundled assets directly from the device instead of fetching them over the network. This is useful for hero images, onboarding videos, and other media that should appear immediately even when the connection is slow.

:::expo
> **Info:** Local resources require **Expo SDK v1.1.3+**.

:::

## Registering local resources

Choose a stable resource ID for each asset you want to serve locally. That same ID is what you'll select in the [paywall editor](/docs/dashboard/dashboard-creating-paywalls/paywall-editor-local-resources) when configuring image or video components.

:::expo
On Expo, pass `localResources` in the `options` prop on `SuperwallProvider`. Entries are resolved during configuration — Metro `require()` results are downloaded via `expo-asset` so the webview can read them from a `file://` URI.

```tsx Expo
import * as FileSystem from "expo-file-system"
import { SuperwallProvider } from "expo-superwall"

export function App() {
  return (
    <SuperwallProvider
      apiKeys={{ ios: "pk_your_ios_api_key", android: "pk_your_android_api_key" }}
      options={{
        localResources: {
          "hero-image": require("./assets/hero.png"),
          "logo": { uri: FileSystem.documentDirectory + "logo.png" },
          "onboarding-video": "file:///path/to/welcome.mp4",
        },
      }}
    >
      {/* your app */}
    </SuperwallProvider>
  )
}
```

> **Warning:** `localResources` is resolved when `SuperwallProvider` configures the SDK. Resources added later
> will not be available to paywalls that already loaded.

:::

## Supported source types

:::expo
Each entry in `localResources` accepts one of:

| Type                         | Use for                                                            |
| ---------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| `number` (Metro `require()`) | Bundled assets in your Expo project; resolved through `expo-asset` |
| `string`                     | A `file://`, `content://`, or absolute path URI                    |
| `{ uri: string }`            | The same shape used by React Native `Image` sources                |
:::

## Choosing resource IDs

Resource IDs are the contract between your app and the paywall editor. A few guidelines:

* Use stable, descriptive names like `"hero-image"` and `"onboarding-video"`.
* Keep the casing consistent. `"Hero-Image"` and `"hero-image"` are different IDs.
* If you rename an ID, update any paywalls that reference it.

## Referencing local resources in a paywall

In the paywall editor, set a local resource on an image or video component and select the resource ID you registered in the SDK. You can still provide a remote URL as a fallback.

Under the hood, paywalls load these resources through `swlocal://` URLs. For example:

```html
<video src="swlocal://onboarding-video" autoplay muted playsinline></video>
```

If the SDK cannot resolve a local resource, the paywall can fall back to the remote URL configured in the editor.

## Debugging

If a resource ID does not appear in the editor or fails to load:

* Make sure the app is running a compatible SDK version.
* Confirm the resource ID in your paywall exactly matches the key you registered in the SDK.
* Open a paywall on a test device after configuring local resources so the editor can discover recently used IDs.
* Keep a remote fallback URL on critical media so older builds still render correctly.

## Related

:::expo
* [Configuring the SDK](/docs/expo/guides/configuring): Where `localResources` lives in the Expo options surface.
:::

* [Paywall Editor: Local Resources](/docs/dashboard/dashboard-creating-paywalls/paywall-editor-local-resources): How to assign local resource IDs in the dashboard.