Apple Developers now have Additional Subscription Pricing Options
Apple is on a yearly cadence to provide updates to one the tools that developers use to create the apps that their customers use; that tool is Xcode. While Xcode may be the primary interface that developers use to create apps, there are some other web-based tools that are used by developers. The primary web-based tool that developer use is called App Store Connect. App Store Connect is used to create an apps record and manage pricing.
There are a couple of different types of items that can be defined within an app, the two broad categories are consumables and non-consumables. Consumables are items that you can buy and eventually consume, like gems or lives. Non-consumables are one-time purchases, like an icon pack, or a particular piece of functionality. There is a third type of item, a subscription. Subscriptions are renewable purchases that unlock functionality. One good example is within weather apps, which may require a subscription to provide advanced weather data which costs money to obtain.
The amount of time for a subscription will vary depending on the subscription. These durations can be one of the following options: 1 week 1 month 2 months 3 months 6 months 1 year
Developers have had a limited set of options for subscription pricing. They could charge anywhere $0.99 to $99.99. Today, developers now have more than 700 options. The prices can now range between $0.29 to $10,000. Now, it cannot be any arbitrary price, but this is the range. Here is a table of the increment types and their ranges.
| Step | Lowest Price | Highest Price |
|---|---|---|
| $0.10 | $0.29 | $9.99 |
| $0.50 | $0.49 | $49.99 |
| $1.00 | $0.99 | $199.99 |
| $5.00 | $4.99 | $499.99 |
| $10.00 | $9.99 | $999.99 |
| $100.00 | $99.99 | $9999.99 |
Developers will be able to set prices globally or individually, depending on their need. To go a bit beyond this, developers will have the option of using prices ending in "00","90", "95", and "99". These will allow for even more flexibility and can be useful for annual subscriptions.
Initially these pricing options are only available for auto-renewing subscriptions, but starting in Spring of 2023 this will be available for other in-app purchases. Even though this is only available for auto-renewing subscriptions, for now, it will provide additional flexibility for developers in how they price their subscriptions. These changes are not being made just because Apple wanted to make them. They were part of a $100 million settlement that Apple made with small developers.
Source: Apple Newsroom
