RevenueCat vs Superwall: which one an indie iOS app should start with in 2026

RevenueCat started as a subscription backend and grew paywalls on top. Superwall started as a paywall and experimentation engine and, since its next-generation SDKs in February 2025, added entitlements and purchasing underneath. By 2026 the feature lists overlap heavily. What still separates them is where each is strongest, and what each one counts when it sends you a bill.

The table assumes every dollar of revenue passes through a Superwall paywall — the most expensive case for Superwall. Superwall's Indie plan is free up to $10k of attributed revenue a month, then "1% of total MAR", so the fee jumps from $0 to about $100 at the threshold rather than growing gradually.

Read the table this way: between $2,500 and $10,000 a month, Superwall Indie is cheaper by up to about $100 a month. Above $10,000 the two converge at 1%. The real difference is the base. Revenue that never touches a Superwall paywall — subscribers from before you integrated, or a web checkout you run separately — isn't billed by Superwall, while RevenueCat counts everything it tracks.

This is the decision that shows up in your users' hands. RevenueCat's Paywalls v2 renders with native components, so it inherits Dynamic Type, accessibility and platform feel. Superwall renders paywalls in a web-standards runtime cached on the device, and says paywalls built today still render on years-old SDK versions — which means you rarely need an app update to try a new design.

Both run A/B tests. The difference is the unit of work. In Superwall, a placement is any moment in your app (onboarding end, feature tap, third session) and a campaign decides which paywall — if any — shows there, for which audience. That model makes "test a paywall after the second workout" a dashboard change. RevenueCat's Experiments compare offerings and paywalls across audiences, with Paywall Rules adding conditions, which covers most indie testing without the placement vocabulary.

This is an officially documented setup, and common among apps that adopted RevenueCat first. Superwall's docs describe two ways to wire it:

1. Observer mode — Superwall's recommended option. RevenueCat completes purchases; Superwall shows paywalls and records the outcome. Superwall notes that in this mode "you aren't using RevenueCat's entitlements as a source of truth" for Superwall's own gating, so decide which system your app asks.
2. A custom purchase controller — you keep RevenueCat handling purchases and pass them through a controller you own, for full control over the purchase code.

The cost of running both is the sum of both fees on overlapping revenue, so it pays only when Superwall's experimentation is driving real conversion gains. RevenueCat also offers an integration that sends revenue events to Superwall.