Apple App Store subscriptions have gotten cheaper, but there’s a catch

Some premium apps and services requiring a monthly subscription may offer annual discounts if the consumer is willing to pay for a longer period. These are usually 12-month plans, although some subscriptions may also offer 24-month deals. The disadvantage is that the consumer will have to pay an initial lump sum when subscribing to this annual plan. To make it easier to pay for these discounts, while still allowing developers to offer deals, Apple rolled out a new payment plan in the App Store in late April that allows developers to offer consumers cheaper 12-month subscriptions, but bill them monthly for the annual commitment. This way, consumers benefit from the lowest annual price without having to pay the entire amount at once. For developers, they benefit from a more predictable revenue stream, better than monthly options. The consumer still has to pay for the 12 month period, even if they pay a deposit each month. Additionally, US consumers cannot take advantage of the payment plan as of this writing.

The new App Store payment plan follows years of protests from developers and some consumers over Apple’s high fees for iPhone app purchases, but it’s not necessarily a direct response to those complaints. Apple has had to make changes to the App Store experience following regulatory pressure and lawsuits, including introducing support for third-party iPhone app marketplaces in the European Union and Japan and allowing developers to link to cheaper offerings outside the App Store in the United States. The new subscription payment plan has no impact on Apple’s fees, as the company will still take its share of the annual amount the customer agrees to pay. It is the developer who offers the offer, not Apple.

The new subscription payment feature does not require developers to offer discounts. Not all subscriptions available in the App Store have cheaper annual prices. Additionally, developers should choose to offer this payment plan with discounted annual subscriptions promoted through their apps. Developers can always decide to charge subscribers one-time upfront payments in exchange for the discount for purchasing a 12-month subscription.

Subscribers can cancel at any time during the 12 months to avoid being charged another cycle by the App Store at the end of the period. However, agreeing to purchase the 12-month subscription via the “monthly subscriptions with 12-month commitment” option, what Apple calls the payment plan, means paying all 12 installments. For example, canceling a subscription after four months does not mean that the customer stops paying the remaining eight installments. These will be due each month and will always appear in the Apple account details.

Apple explains in a support document that consumers who cannot be billed for remaining installments may lose access to the service until the installments are paid. This may mean that access to paid features may be suspended. A user whose payment method fails will not be able to purchase other content in the App Store until the payment method is updated. Separately, users will be able to upgrade to a different plan during the 12-month period. In this scenario, users will receive a prorated refund for unused time during the current billing period.

Apple’s announcement indicates that consumers in the United States and Singapore will not be able to take advantage of the new payment plan for 12-month subscriptions. Developers cannot offer this payment option to consumers in these two markets, but they can use it everywhere else. Apple has not explained why these two particular markets are being excluded, or how long the exclusion will last. TechCrunch believes that Apple’s decision regarding the United States could be linked to the Epic Games lawsuit, parts of which concern subscriptions. Apple does not have a similar legal battle in Singapore, but the outlet speculates that stricter consumer protection rules in the country could be the reason why Apple excluded Singapore.

While Apple offered the iPhone screenshots above as an example of how the new payment plan will appear in Apple Account, the payment option is also available to developers and businesses that sell subscriptions for iPad, Mac, Apple TV, and Vision Pro App Stores. The new payment option may appear on devices running iOS 26.4, iPadOS 26.4, macOS 26.4, tvOS 26.4, and visionOS 26.4, or later versions of these operating systems.