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Paywall tools compared: revenue share or flat price?

Build, buy & decideOpinion5 min readMiniwall team

Updated : Corrected how Superwall bills and what each tool includes, after checking each pricing page.

Superwall, RevenueCat and Adapty each charge about 1% of revenue once you pass a free amount, and Superwall adds a monthly fee on its paid plans. Miniwall charges a flat monthly price by views. Neither is better in general. A share of revenue starts cheap and grows with your income. A flat plan is steady, but it grows with your traffic instead, and some sites have a lot of traffic and little revenue.

We make Miniwall, so read this with that in mind. Everything we say about the other three comes from their own pricing pages as of 3 November 2026[1][2][3], and they change. If we've got something wrong, tell us at hello@miniwall.app and we'll fix it and say so at the top of the post.

How each one charges

SuperwallRevenueCatAdaptyMiniwall
Free until$10K MAR a month (Indie plan)$2,500 of monthly tracked revenue (MTR)$5K of monthly tracked revenue10,000 views a month
After that1% of MAR; Startup ($49) and Scale ($199) a month add 1% of MAR1% of what you track1% of monthly tracked revenue; add-ons priced separately$12, $59 or $149 a month by views[4]
What the bill followsRevenue (MAR); the page says the paywall product is billed only on revenue from its own paywallsTracked revenueTracked revenueYour views

Swipe sideways to see every column.

MAR and MTR are each company's own terms, so read their page for how they count. The free amounts differ too, so the same app doesn't pay the same everywhere at the same size. We don't turn that into a dollar table for the other three, because their pricing pages say how they count and we'd be guessing at the details.

For Miniwall the maths is simple: Free covers 10,000 views a month, Indie 100,000, Pro 1,000,000 and Team 5,000,000[4]. Revenue doesn't enter into it. If your upgrade screen converts twice as well next quarter, the bill doesn't change. If you show it on twice as many pages, it can.

What each tool is for

  • Superwall offers paywalls, and lists subscription infrastructure (entitlements, purchase APIs, webhooks) as free on every plan. It bills the paywall product[1].
  • RevenueCat is subscription infrastructure with paywalls, A/B tests and funnels. It also lists a Growth Tools option: use its paywalls and funnels on your own infrastructure and pay 1% of the revenue tracked from those tools[2].
  • Adapty combines purchase infrastructure, a paywall and flow builder, A/B tests and revenue analytics, with separate add-ons such as refund saving and ad management[3].
  • Miniwall draws screens only: paywalls, upgrade prompts, banners, onboarding, cancel surveys. Your site passes the prices and takes the payment.

That last difference matters for the price comparison. All three of the others also offer purchase infrastructure, which is more than a tool that only draws screens, so a percentage fee buys you more with them than a flat fee does with us. Don't compare the numbers without comparing the jobs.

Where each model fits

A share of revenue fits when you're small and want a bill that starts near zero, or when you need the infrastructure that comes with it. At $2K a month, 1% is $20, and you may be better off paying that than building receipt handling yourself.

A flat price by views fits when your revenue is large compared to your traffic, or when you want a bill you can forecast from page views. It fits worse when you have a lot of views and very little revenue, because the plan follows the views.

Either way, ask the vendor how they count: which revenue is tracked, which views count, what happens when you go over, and whether anything is switched off. Tool pricing: per view, per user or % of revenue goes through those questions in detail.

A short way to choose

  • You need entitlements, receipts and purchase handling done for you: Superwall, RevenueCat and Adapty all offer them, so compare how each counts revenue.
  • You want paywalls and tests next to that infrastructure, from one vendor: the same three.
  • You already have checkout and billing, and want your team to change screens without a release, at a price that follows views: that's the job Miniwall was built for.

When not to pick Miniwall

  • You need someone to handle billing, tax and receipts. We don't. Miniwall assumes you already take payments.
  • You need an uptime commitment in writing. Standard plans don't have one, and our terms tell you to design your site so it works if a screen doesn't load. An uptime commitment is part of the Custom plan.
  • You need mobile SDKs that have been in the field for years. Ours are early (0.1.x), so pin the version. The Web SDK is the most mature.

If one of these is you, pick the tool that fits. We'd rather you do that than use us for the wrong job.

Next step

Take your last three months of revenue and page views. Work out what each model would charge on your own numbers, using each company's current pricing page. The model that looks cheapest at your size may not be the one that's cheapest in a year.

Sources

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