App Store & Play

# Lifetime or Subscription: Pricing a Small iOS App on StoreKit

RoomFit sells €24.99 a year and €59.99 once. Offering both is a bet about how long people keep an app they open while shopping.

CodeLoop Studio·August 29, 2026·5 min read

![RoomFit AR preview of a vase at true size, labelled 23 × 23 × 28 cm](https://www.codeloop.ba/_next/image?url=%2Fimages%2Froomfit%2Froomfit-ar-vase-size-preview.jpg&w=3840&q=75)

[RoomFit](https://www.codeloop.ba/study-case/roomfit) sells two paid options: €24.99 a year, or €59.99 once. Offering both is not indecision. It is a bet about how long somebody keeps an app they open while standing in a furniture shop.

## Subscriptions assume a habit

A yearly plan is honest when the product is used continuously — a tool for work, a service with running costs on every account. Interior planning is bursty: you furnish a flat, you go quiet for eight months, you buy a rug.

For that shape, a yearly-only paywall converts the person mid-move and annoys them at renewal. Lifetime captures the buyer who knows they are in one intense project and does not want a recurring line on their card.

## Lifetime cannot include unlimited running costs

This is the trap. If lifetime promises unlimited AI, a single enthusiastic user can spend more than €59.99 in a month and you have sold them a permanent liability.

So the split is: lifetime unlocks everything structural — unlimited saved spaces, Compare Products, 100 AR visuals a day — and the model-backed feature stays a credit balance of 100 Style Checks, with [packs available when someone needs more](https://www.codeloop.ba/blog/ai-credits-in-consumer-apps). Yearly gets a monthly refill because the subscription keeps paying for it.

## What StoreKit forces you to get right

* **Three product kinds, one entitlement check.** An auto-renewing subscription, a non-consumable lifetime unlock, and consumable credit packs all resolve into “what is this user allowed to do right now.”
* **Restore has to work.** New phone, same Apple ID, purchase back. Reviewers test it and users assume it.
* **Prices vary by region.** Hard-coded euro strings in the UI will be wrong somewhere; read the localised price from the store.
* **The paywall states the limits.** Daily AR allowances, credit counts, and the fact that unused daily allowance does not roll over — before payment, not in a support reply.

Release mechanics around all this are the ordinary part of [shipping to the App Store](https://www.codeloop.ba/blog/shipping-app-store-from-sarajevo), and in-app update prompts have their own notes for [the Android side](https://www.codeloop.ba/blog/google-in-app-updates).

## Pricing your own app

Model the tier a heavy user can push to a loss before you publish it. We do this as part of [custom mobile app development](https://www.codeloop.ba/custom-mobile-app-development), and budget ranges live in [app development cost](https://www.codeloop.ba/blog/app-development-cost-bosnia). See the whole product in the [RoomFit case study](https://www.codeloop.ba/study-case/roomfit), or send scope via the [online estimate](https://www.codeloop.ba/online-estimate).