Insights from RevenueCat’s 2026 State of Subscription Apps Report
with Rik Haandrikman — VP of Growth
Rik Haandrikman walks through RevenueCat's 2026 State of Subscription Apps report — the benchmarks that matter and what the best subscription apps are doing differently this year.
In this episode
- Subscription apps are becoming a "winner-take-most market,” with the top 10% of apps growing >300% YoY vs. the median only growing 5% YoY.
- AI has driven a 7x increase in new app launches from 2022 - 2026, but apps launched before 2020 still generate 69% of all revenue.
- AI apps generate 41% more revenue per payer but churn 30% faster, highlighting that many of these apps are still figuring out retention.
- 80-90% of trial starts and half of conversions now happen on Day 0, which means that new user onboarding flows are more important than ever.
- Hard paywalls convert 5x better vs. freemium (10.7% vs. 2.1% install to paid), but after one year, retention rates look nearly identical.
- North America continues to be king, with metrics like D60 RPI and Y1 RLTV ranging from 2.5 - 5x higher vs. the worst-performing regions.