How to tell a subscription trap from a fair price

A decade ago a small utility cost four dollars once. Now the same utility costs three dollars a month, which is nine times as much over three years, for software that has not changed. Some of those subscriptions are fair. Most are not, and the difference is not obvious from the store page.

Does the app have a running cost?

This is the only question that really matters. A subscription is honest when the developer pays something every month to keep your copy working: servers that sync your data, a service they license, a database they update. A weather app pays for forecast data. A transit app pays for feeds. Those recur, so the charge recurs.

A file renamer has no running cost. Neither does a unit converter, a calculator, a torch. If an app that runs entirely on your phone charges monthly, you are not paying for upkeep, you are paying because the store made it easy to.

What happens on the day you stop paying?

There are three answers and they are very different.

• It keeps working, you stop getting new features. This is the fair version. You paid for a period of development and you keep what it bought.
• It stops syncing but your data stays readable on the device. Acceptable, if the data is in a format you can get out.
• It locks the data you created. Your notes, your library, your years of logs, held behind a payment. This is not a subscription, it is a hostage arrangement, and no feature list justifies it.

Store pages almost never state which one applies. It is usually in the support pages, and if it is nowhere, assume the third.

Is the free tier a product or a trailer?

A free tier that does one thing completely is a product. A free tier that does every thing partly is a trailer, designed so that each session ends in a wall. You can tell them apart in about ten minutes of use: if you hit a paywall before you have finished a single real task, it is a trailer.

What is the annual price, out loud?

Monthly pricing exists because $4.99 is easier to agree to than $59.88. Say the yearly number to yourself before you subscribe, and then compare it to what the thing would have cost as a purchase. Sometimes it is still worth it. Often the comparison ends the conversation.

The exception worth knowing

Small independent developers charging a modest subscription for an app they are actively improving is the one arrangement that has made good software sustainable again. The test is not whether it is a subscription. The test is whether anything is being paid for on the other end.

Last reviewed 25 September 2026 · Utilities