Insights from RevenueCat’s 2025 State of Subscription Apps Report

Listen to this episode from Subversive on Spotify. Jacob Eiting is the founder and CEO of RevenueCat, the world’s largest SaaS platform for subscription apps that need help powering in-app purchases, managing customer data, and growing revenue across iOS, Android, and the web. Prior to founding RevenueCat in 2017, Jacob was the CTO of Elevate Labs, a consumer subscription business offering both brain training and meditation apps, and a software developer at multiple other companies, including Apple.Key Takeaways:The cost of building apps is falling exponentially. This is opening up opportunities for products in niches that were not previously viable, but that can now support profitable businesses. However, it’s also dramatically increasing competition.Subscriber retention is the most important metric for consumer subscription apps, but retention rates continue to decline as the app stores become increasingly crowded. While there are tactics companies can use to improve retention on the margins, this metric is hard to move and is ultimately driven by product quality.The rise of AI has created a “tourist effect” that is driving organic growth through viral word of mouth, but this will slow down eventually. To win in the long run, AI companies need to develop sustainable and repeatable growth strategies.Given that 80% of trials occur on the same day an app is installed, optimizing the new user onboarding experience is one of the highest-leverage opportunities consumer subscription apps have to accelerate growth.Consumer subscription apps are at a disadvantage vs. B2B SaaS businesses because most of them only monetize users through a single subscription tier. Recently, a lot of apps have begun testing lifetime subscriptions and/or one-time purchases to capture more consumer surplus and increase ARPU.Jacob Eiting: RevenueCat Website: https://www.revenuecat.com 2025 SOSA Report: https://www.revenuecat.com/state-of-subscription-apps-2025/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeiting/ X: https://x.com/jeitingPhil Carter: Website: philgcarter.com Substack: philgcarter.substack.com LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/philgcarter X: x.com/philgcarterPodcast Production by Podders: https://podders.io