RevenueCat and Adapty are direct competitors: both are subscription infrastructure for mobile apps, both handle receipt validation and entitlements, both take a percentage of your revenue, and both now ship a visual paywall builder. The short version is that Adapty's free tier is twice as generous and its paywall A/B testing is stronger, while RevenueCat covers more platforms and has a deeper integration ecosystem. Which matters more depends almost entirely on whether your bottleneck is conversion or cross-platform reach.
This guide compares the free tiers and pricing, platform and SDK coverage, the paywall builders and experimentation, the integration ecosystems, and what Adapty has shipped recently, then gives a straight decision guide. One disclosure up front: Spaceport generates projects wired to RevenueCat, so I have a horse in this race. I have tried to be accurate about where Adapty is genuinely better, and it is, in a couple of places that matter. Prices and features are as of writing; both move fast.
On this page
- What they have in common
- Pricing and free tiers
- Platform and SDK coverage
- Paywalls and A/B testing
- Integrations and ecosystem
- What Adapty shipped recently
- How to decide
- FAQ
What they have in common
Unlike a paywall-only tool, these two overlap almost completely on the fundamentals. Both give you a hosted subscription backend so you are not hand-rolling receipt validation, and both answer the question your app actually asks: does this user have access right now.
Both handle the unglamorous parts, verified transactions, entitlements, restores, refunds and revocation, grace periods, upgrades and downgrades. Both provide subscription analytics (churn, LTV, cohorts) so you are not rebuilding a reporting layer. Both use a percentage-of-revenue pricing model with a free tier, and both charge 1% on their paid tiers at time of writing. And both now ship a visual paywall builder, which used to be a real differentiator and is now table stakes.
So the decision is not about whether the basics work. They both work. It comes down to the four areas below.
Pricing and free tiers
This is the clearest practical difference, and it favors Adapty.
Adapty's free tier covers up to 5,000 USD per month in tracked revenue. They doubled it in early 2026, replacing an older flat-fee plan. RevenueCat's free tier covers up to 2,500 USD per month. Both then charge 1% on the paid tiers.
For an indie developer, that gap is not academic. It is the difference between paying nothing and paying a percentage during exactly the phase when revenue is small and every subscription matters. If you are somewhere between 2.5K and 5K a month in tracked revenue, Adapty is simply free and RevenueCat is not. Above that, the two converge and pricing stops being the deciding factor.
Platform and SDK coverage
Here RevenueCat is ahead, and it is the single strongest argument for it.
RevenueCat ships SDKs for iOS, Android, Flutter, React Native, Cordova, Unity, macOS and Catalyst, and Ionic. Adapty covers iOS, Android, Flutter, React Native, and Unity. For a pure iOS app that difference is irrelevant. It starts to matter the moment you have a Mac app, a Cordova or Ionic codebase, or a plan to expand beyond the two main mobile platforms.
The bigger version of this is web. If your subscription business spans iOS, Android, and a web product, RevenueCat's native Stripe connection for web subscriptions means one subscriber identity and one entitlement system across all three. That is genuinely painful to assemble yourself, and it is where RevenueCat is hardest to beat.
Paywalls and A/B testing
Here Adapty is ahead, and it is deliberate: Adapty has repositioned itself as the subscription SDK for teams that care about paywall conversion.
Adapty's visual paywall builder has matured considerably. You can start from pre-made, industry-tested templates or from a blank canvas, and crucially it ships unlimited A/B testing with real-time analytics. If your growth motion is iterating on the paywall and measuring lift, that is the product built for you.
RevenueCat's Paywalls v2 is a component-based editor that renders natively (SwiftUI on iOS rather than a web view) and is included free on all plans. It is good, and for most indie apps it is not the limiting factor. But if you intend to run continuous paywall experiments as a core practice, Adapty's experimentation story is stronger.
Integrations and ecosystem
RevenueCat has the deeper ecosystem. It connects natively to Stripe for web subscriptions and to a long list of analytics and marketing tools including Amplitude, Mixpanel, Adjust, AppsFlyer, and Braze.
This matters more than it sounds when your subscription data needs to reach the rest of your stack: attribution that ties a subscriber back to a campaign, product analytics that segment by entitlement, lifecycle messaging triggered by subscription events. If that plumbing already exists as a supported integration, you wire it up in an afternoon. If it does not, you build and maintain it.
Adapty has integrations too, including marketing attribution, and its coverage is respectable. RevenueCat's is simply broader and more battle-tested, being the larger and longer-established platform.
What Adapty shipped recently
Worth knowing if you last evaluated Adapty a year or two ago, because the picture has changed. Through early 2026 Adapty shipped a CLI, geo-pricing, Autopilot, and Apple Ads Manager support, alongside the free-tier increase and the paywall builder work.
The geo-pricing piece is notable for anyone selling internationally, since charging one converted price everywhere leaves money on the table in both directions. It is also a reminder that the market is converging: features that were differentiators are becoming standard on both platforms, which pushes the decision back toward free tier, platform coverage, and ecosystem.
How to decide
- You are a pre-revenue or early indie, iOS only. Adapty, on free-tier grounds alone. The 5K versus 2.5K threshold is real money during the phase where it hurts most.
- You span iOS, Android, and web. RevenueCat. The native Stripe connection and single cross-platform entitlement system is the thing that is genuinely hard to replicate.
- Paywall iteration is your core growth motion. Adapty, for unlimited A/B testing and the more mature experimentation workflow.
- You need deep integrations with analytics, attribution, or lifecycle tooling. RevenueCat, for the broader supported-integration list.
- You are on Cordova, Ionic, or macOS. RevenueCat, by SDK coverage.
- You have no strong signal either way. Either is a defensible choice; both solve the hard part correctly. Pick on free tier if you are small and on platform coverage if you are not.
Whichever you pick, remember that both sit on top of App Store Connect, and neither creates your products or sets your prices in each market for you. That layer has to be right first. See creating App Store subscriptions with the App Store Connect API and pricing across 25 countries. If you are also weighing a paywall-only tool, see RevenueCat vs Superwall, which is a different comparison because Superwall is not a subscription backend.
FAQ
Which has the better free tier, RevenueCat or Adapty?
Adapty. Its free tier covers up to 5,000 USD per month in tracked revenue, versus RevenueCat's 2,500 USD. For an early indie app that gap is the difference between paying nothing and paying a percentage during the phase when revenue is smallest.
Is Adapty a good RevenueCat alternative?
Yes, it is a genuine competitor rather than a lesser option. It handles the same fundamentals (entitlements, receipt validation, analytics), has a more generous free tier, and has stronger paywall A/B testing. RevenueCat's advantages are platform breadth and integration depth.
Which should I use for a cross-platform app?
RevenueCat, especially if web is involved. It ships more SDKs (including Cordova, Ionic, and macOS) and connects natively to Stripe for web subscriptions, giving you one subscriber identity across iOS, Android, and web.
Do both support paywall A/B testing?
Both offer paywall builders, but Adapty's experimentation is stronger, shipping unlimited A/B testing with real-time analytics and template-based paywalls. RevenueCat's Paywalls v2 renders natively and is free on all plans, which is enough for most apps that are not running continuous experiments.
How much do RevenueCat and Adapty cost?
Both use a percentage-of-tracked-revenue model and both charge 1% on their paid tiers at time of writing, after their free tiers (2,500 USD per month for RevenueCat, 5,000 for Adapty). Verify current pricing before committing; both change it periodically.
Can I switch from one to the other later?
You can, but it is real migration work: both are the source of truth for entitlements, so you are moving subscriber state and re-validating transactions. Pick deliberately up front rather than planning to switch, and weigh the free tier against where you expect to be in a year.
Spaceport generates a production-ready SwiftUI Xcode project with RevenueCat subscriptions already wired up, entitlements, paywall, and restore flow working on the first build, plus your products and prices created in App Store Connect across 25 markets. We ship RevenueCat because of the cross-platform and integration story above; the App Store Connect groundwork underneath is identical whichever SDK you choose. And before any of it matters, you need users: Lighthouse is the sibling toolkit for the waitlist and newsletter that get you your first hundred. From an indie iOS dev, for indie iOS devs.