Insights from RevenueCat’s 2026 State of Subscription Apps Report

Rik Haandrikman is the VP of Growth at RevenueCat, the world’s largest SaaS platform for subscription apps that need help powering in-app purchases, managing customer data, and growing revenue. Prior to joining RevenueCat in 2022, Rik held growth leadership roles at Bitrise and Divitel, and also founded his own eCommerce company called Gimmerce that leveraged printing technology to allow for rapid, cheap, and scalable personalization of products to target niche groups of consumers.Key TakewaysSubscription 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.Rik Haandrikman:RevenueCat Website: https://www.revenuecat.com2026 SOSA Report: https://www.revenuecat.com/state-of-subscription-apps/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hhaandrikman/X: https://x.com/HHaandrPhil Carter:Website: https://www.philgcarter.com/Substack: philgcarter.substack.comLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/philgcarterX: x.com/philgcarterPodcast Production by Podders: https://podders.io/