# 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

# Article-Style Paywalls: Inline with Additional Plans

Embed an inline paywall in a scrollable article and optionally present a second full-screen paywall for additional plans.

Article-style paywalls let you keep readers in the flow of a long-form page while still prompting for upgrade options. You can place an inline paywall inside a scroll view, then present a second, full-screen paywall when users tap “see more plans.”

This pattern is common in paid media and magazine apps: a portion of the article is readable, the rest is blurred or gated, and a footer paywall offers an inline purchase with a “see more plans” option that opens a full-screen paywall. Check out this working example:

<div className="flex justify-center">
  
![](https://json-ld-superwall-docs-staging.staffbar.workers.dev/docs/images/article-vid-example.gif)

</div>

This guide will show you how to build this example by explaining the APIs involved, and then a full code sample. There’s also a live working example in [CaffeinePal](https://github.com/superwall/CaffeinePal/tree/using-superwall-sdk). Look at the `RecipesView` to see it in action.

## Key APIs

Use `getPaywall()` to fetch a paywall you can embed inline, and configure it with a placement so you can control which paywall variant shows from the dashboard. For more on presenting paywalls in custom presentations, check out our [blog post](https://superwall.com/blog/custom-paywall-presentation-in-ios-with-the-superwall-sdk/).

For the second paywall, trigger a custom action from the inline paywall and call `getPaywall()` again to present the full-screen option.

> **Warning:** You're responsible for removing embedded paywall views when users move on. Reusing the same `PaywallViewController` or `PaywallView` instance elsewhere can cause a crash. For UIKit, avoid mixing `register()` and `getPaywall()` when you embed paywalls.

## Presenting a second paywall

To get the inline paywall to trigger a second, full-screen paywall, create a custom action in the paywall editor in the embedded paywall. In this example, a custom action called "showFromLine" is triggered from the "or, view all plans" button:

![](https://json-ld-superwall-docs-staging.staffbar.workers.dev/docs/images/showCustomAction.jpeg)

Then, respond to that action in your [`SuperwallDelegate`](/docs/ios/sdk-reference/SuperwallDelegate) to retrieve the second paywall and present it. In the code below, our second paywall is normally triggered via the `showAllPlansPaywall` placement that was setup in the Superwall dashboard within a campaign:

```swift
extension MyAppLogic: SuperwallDelegate, PaywallViewControllerDelegate {
    // Custom action comes in
    func handleCustomPaywallAction(withName name: String) {
        if name == "showFromInline" {
            Task {
                await presentAllPlansPaywall()
            }
        }
    }

    // MARK: PaywallViewControllerDelegate

    func paywall(
        _ paywall: PaywallViewController,
        didFinishWith result: PaywallResult,
        shouldDismiss: Bool
    ) {
        if shouldDismiss {
            paywall.dismiss(animated: true)
        }
    }

    func paywall(
        _ paywall: PaywallViewController,
        loadingStateDidChange loadingState: PaywallLoadingState
    ) {
        // Handle loading state changes if needed
    }

    // MARK: Custom Paywall Presentation

    private func presentAllPlansPaywall() async {
        do {
            let paywallViewController = try await Superwall.shared.getPaywall(
                forPlacement: "showAllPlansPaywall",
                delegate: self
            )

            guard let windowScene = UIApplication.shared.connectedScenes.first as? UIWindowScene,
                  let rootViewController = windowScene.windows.first?.rootViewController else {
                return
            }

            var topController = rootViewController
            while let presented = topController.presentedViewController {
                topController = presented
            }

            topController.present(paywallViewController, animated: true)
        } catch let reason as PaywallSkippedReason {
            print("Paywall skipped: \(reason)")
        } catch {
            print("Error presenting paywall: \(error)")
        }
    }
}
```

This keeps the inline paywall embedded while you intentionally present the next paywall. The entire flow looks like this:

**In your dashboard**

1. Have a paywall setup for your "footer" or bottom paywall.
2. Add a custom action to it to present a second paywall over it.
3. Make sure both paywalls are active in a campaign, and remember the placements used to trigger them

**In your code**

1. Use `getPaywall` and `PaywallView` to embed the first paywall in your scrollview.
2. Users can purchase from there, or tap another button to present a second paywall.
3. Handle a custom action fired from a "View all plans" or similar button in a `SuperwallDelegate`.
4. Use `PaywallViewControllerDelegate` to manage presentation of the second one.

Here's some code to model your approach, showing the first paywall as either an overlay at the bottom or inline with scrolled content:

```swift
enum PaywallEmbedMode {
  case overlay
  case inline
}

struct ArticlePaywallDemoView: View {
  let mode: PaywallEmbedMode
  let placement: String = "getPaywallTest"

  var body: some View {
    ScrollView {
      VStack(alignment: .leading) {
        Text("How to embed a Superwall paywall alongside your own content")
          .font(.title)
        Text("By Superwall").font(.caption)
        Text("...article content...")
          .padding(.vertical, 16)

        if mode == .inline {
          paywallContent
        }
      }
      .padding()
      .overlay(alignment: .bottom) {
        if mode == .overlay {
          paywallContent
        }
      }
    }
  }

  private var paywallContent: some View {
    PaywallView(placement: placement)
      .frame(maxWidth: .infinity)
      .frame(height: 300)
  }
}
```

If you need to remove the paywall, remove the `PaywallView` from the view hierarchy and recreate it when you need to show it again.