Softwr

Mobile Development · head to head

Adapty vs RevenueCat

Adapty logo

Adapty

Mobile Development

In-app subscription and paywall platform, free below 5,000 USD of monthly revenue then 1 percent, with add-ons charged separately

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
RevenueCat logo

RevenueCat

Mobile Development

In-app subscription infrastructure billed at 1 percent of tracked revenue measured before the app store takes its cut

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Each has a real cost: Adapty the 1 percent headline is only the base rate; Refund Saver at 0.2 percent of revenue, Ads Manager at 3.5 percent of ad spend, Attribution at 0.03 USD per install and Adapty Mail at a 20 percent revenue share stack on top and are individually easy to switch on.; RevenueCat the fee is 1 percent of revenue measured before the app store takes 15 or 30 percent, so the effective rate against money you actually receive is closer to 1.2 to 1.4 percent, a distinction that is easy to miss when modelling the cost.
  • They diverge on capability: Adapty covers Visual paywall builder, RevenueCat covers Server-side receipt validation.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 30 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Adapty and RevenueCat actually diverge.

Attributes where Adapty and RevenueCat differ
AttributeAdaptyRevenueCat

Identical on both: starting price (Free), pricing model (Per month by tracked revenue), free tier (Yes), platforms (iOS, Android, Web, React Native, Flutter), user rating (Not yet rated), category (Mobile Development).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Adapty

  • Visual paywall builder
  • A/B testing on paywalls
  • Subscription analytics
  • Refund Saver add-on
  • Attribution and Ads Manager add-ons

Only in RevenueCat

  • Server-side receipt validation
  • Remote paywalls
  • Experiments
  • Revenue charts and cohorts
  • Integrations and webhooks

Both cover

  • Cross-platform entitlements

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Adapty

  • A growth marketer who needs to test paywall pricing weekly without an engineering ticket or an app releasenot RevenueCat
  • A small subscription app that wants to stay free longer than the 2,500 USD threshold offered by the main competitornot RevenueCat
  • Consolidating subscription analytics and paywall experimentation in one place rather than wiring an analytics tool to a billing SDKnot RevenueCat
  • Automating Apple refund responses where a measurable share of revenue is lost to refund requestsnot RevenueCat

RevenueCat

  • A small app team shipping subscriptions on both stores without writing two receipt validation backendsnot Adapty
  • Changing paywall pricing and layout without waiting for app reviewnot Adapty
  • Running a price experiment and attributing realised revenue rather than checkout events to each variantnot Adapty
  • Giving finance a single view of subscription revenue across App Store, Google Play and web purchasesnot Adapty

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Adapty

  • The 1 percent headline is only the base rate; Refund Saver at 0.2 percent of revenue, Ads Manager at 3.5 percent of ad spend, Attribution at 0.03 USD per install and Adapty Mail at a 20 percent revenue share stack on top and are individually easy to switch on.
  • Revenue is calculated before platform fees, so the fee applies to money Apple and Google have already taken a 15 to 30 percent cut of, making the effective rate on received cash noticeably higher than the quoted figure.
  • Adapty Mail at a 20 percent revenue share is a large ongoing cost for a channel most teams would otherwise run through an email platform they already pay a flat fee for.
  • The integration ecosystem, third-party tutorials and hiring pool are smaller than the category leader, so engineers are less likely to have used it before and edge cases have fewer public answers.
  • Paywall configuration and entitlement state live with the vendor, so a migration later means rebuilding both the billing integration and every paywall the marketing team has created.

RevenueCat

  • The fee is 1 percent of revenue measured before the app store takes 15 or 30 percent, so the effective rate against money you actually receive is closer to 1.2 to 1.4 percent, a distinction that is easy to miss when modelling the cost.
  • The bill scales with success rather than with usage or headcount, so the largest invoice arrives in the month of your best growth, which is exactly when cash is committed elsewhere.
  • At high revenue the arithmetic turns against you: 1 million USD of monthly tracked revenue is 10,000 USD a month, at which point building and staffing receipt validation in-house becomes a serious comparison rather than a hypothetical one.
  • Subscriber and entitlement state lives in the vendor system, so migrating away requires re-validating historical receipts and running dual sources of truth during the transition, and that switching cost grows the longer you stay.
  • Growth features such as paywalls and web funnels are charged at the same 1 percent of what they track, so revenue attributed to those tools is billed even where you already had the infrastructure to handle it.

Pricing, plan by plan

Adapty

Free
  • Pro under thresholdFree
    • Free until monthly revenue reaches 5,000 USD
    • All core features, no tiers and no fixed costs
    • Paywall builder and A/B testing included
  • Pro$undefined/month
    • 1 percent of monthly revenue above the 5,000 USD threshold
    • Refund Saver adds 0.2 percent of monthly revenue
    • Ads Manager adds 3.5 percent of monthly ad spend
  • Enterprise$undefined/year
    • Quoted
    • White-glove onboarding
    • 24/7 dedicated Slack support and a success manager

RevenueCat

Free
  • Pro under thresholdFree
    • Free up to 2,500 USD in monthly tracked revenue
    • All product features included
    • No seat charges
  • Pro$undefined/month
    • 1 percent of monthly tracked revenue above 2,500 USD
    • Tracked revenue is measured before the app store commission
    • No minimum commitment stated
  • Enterprise$undefined/year
    • Quoted
    • Volume discounts
    • Flexible tracking configuration

Which should you pick?

Choose Adapty if

  • You need visual paywall builder.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on iOS, Android, Web, React Native, Flutter.
  • You also want a/b testing on paywalls.
Adapty review

Choose RevenueCat if

  • You need server-side receipt validation.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on iOS, Android, Web, React Native, Flutter.
  • You also want remote paywalls.
RevenueCat review

Questions people ask

Is Adapty or RevenueCat better?
Neither clearly leads. Adapty starts at Free and RevenueCat at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Adapty or RevenueCat?
Adapty starts at Free and RevenueCat at Free.
Does Adapty or RevenueCat run on more platforms?
Both run on iOS, Android, Web, React Native, Flutter, so platform support will not decide this one for you.
Can I use Adapty for free?
Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.
What is Adapty best used for?
Adapty is most often used for a growth marketer who needs to test paywall pricing weekly without an engineering ticket or an app release, a small subscription app that wants to stay free longer than the 2,500 usd threshold offered by the main competitor, consolidating subscription analytics and paywall experimentation in one place rather than wiring an analytics tool to a billing sdk, automating apple refund responses where a measurable share of revenue is lost to refund requests. Of those, a growth marketer who needs to test paywall pricing weekly without an engineering ticket or an app release and a small subscription app that wants to stay free longer than the 2,500 usd threshold offered by the main competitor are not what RevenueCat is typically brought in for.
What can Adapty do that RevenueCat cannot?
Adapty covers Visual paywall builder, A/B testing on paywalls, Subscription analytics, Refund Saver add-on. RevenueCat covers Server-side receipt validation, Remote paywalls, Experiments, Revenue charts and cohorts. Both handle Cross-platform entitlements.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Adapty: How much does it cost above the free threshold?

1 percent of monthly revenue, measured in USD before platform fees, with billing starting once you exceed 5,000 USD in a 30 day period.

RevenueCat: Is it really free to start?

Yes, up to 2,500 USD in monthly tracked revenue, with all features included and no seat charges.

Adapty: Is the free tier really more generous than RevenueCat?

On the base product yes, 5,000 USD against 2,500 USD of monthly revenue, but add-ons are priced separately where the competitor bundles more into its single rate.

RevenueCat: Is the 1 percent taken from gross or net revenue?

Gross. The vendor bases pricing on pre-platform-cut revenue, so the app store commission is not deducted before the fee is calculated.

Adapty: Can marketing change paywalls without a release?

Yes, that is the main reason teams choose it; paywalls are configured server side and published without going through app review.

RevenueCat: What happens if RevenueCat is unavailable?

The SDK caches entitlement state locally so existing subscribers usually keep access, but new purchases and restores depend on the service.

Adapty: What does Refund Saver actually do?

It responds to Apple refund requests with transaction evidence to contest them, and it costs an additional 0.2 percent of monthly revenue.

RevenueCat: At what point should I build this in-house?

Somewhere above a few hundred thousand dollars of monthly tracked revenue the annual fee funds engineers, though it also buys cross-platform correctness you then own forever.

Share

Related pages

More on Adapty

More on RevenueCat

Keep looking

Other head to heads