Where Adapty's free tier stops
Adapty Adapty's free tier is broad, but it ends at a revenue ceiling. You can use nearly every feature for free while monthly revenue stays under $5K, including add-ons that are free under that threshold. Once you exceed $5K per month, Adapty switches to a 1% of monthly revenue charge. That means the plan is not unlimited, and the condition that pushes builders to look elsewhere is the revenue cap itself, not a reduced feature set. Card status is not clearly waived in the provided terms.
Switch table
| Adapty | RevenueCat | Kinde | PagerDuty | Kong Konnect | Dub | Data Fetcher | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| monthly revenue free threshold | $5K | $2.5K | Not based on revenue | Not based on revenue | 30 days only | 14-day trial | Not based on revenue |
| fee above threshold | 1% of monthly revenue | 1% of monthly tracked revenue | 0.7% platform fee per customer transaction | Not stated | Not stated | Not stated | Not stated |
| core feature coverage on free tier | Nearly every feature under the threshold | All RevenueCat features from day one | Billing, auth, access management, and feature flags | Incident response, on-call, and escalation workflows | API gateways, portals, analytics, and service catalog | Link attribution, analytics, and API access | API-to-Airtable imports, scheduling, triggers, webhooks |
| team or user limits | Not stated | Not stated | 10,500 MAU, 5 organizations, unlimited dashboard seats | Up to 5 users | Up to 5 serverless gateways, 2 hybrid gateways, 2 dedicated cloud gateways | 1 user | 1 user account |
| integration or API access | SDKs, server-side APIs, webhooks, cloud export | Open-source SDKs, comprehensive REST API | Billing APIs, 1 webhook, many SDK and auth integrations | API calls, 750+ integrations | REST, HTTP, LLMs, Kafka, WebSockets, gRPC, GraphQL | API access, 3 custom domains | All integrations, webhook URLs |
| retention or history | Not stated | Not stated | 1 day of audit logs | Not stated | Analytics retained for 30 days | 30-day analytics retention | 31 days of run history |
| Card required | - | No | No | No | No | Unknown | No |
| First paid tier | - | Pro, $25/month | Pro, $25/month | Professional, $25 per user/month | Plus, varies by usage | Business, $90/month | Starter, $15/month billed annually |
The alternatives
RevenueCat
FTV 58 / 100RevenueCat gives access to all features from day one on its free tier, with no charge until your app reaches $2.5K in monthly tracked revenue. It includes the full subscription backend, open-source SDKs, unified billing, REST API access, continuous updates, and support for growth tools. It also adds optional credit-card-free signup, which reduces friction if you are just testing or migrating. Compared with Adapty, its free ceiling is lower, but the product surface is fully available immediately. Switch if you want the same kind of mobile subscription stack and your app is still small enough that a $2.5K threshold fits better than $5K.
- Beats Adapty: No card required to start
- Falls short: Lower free revenue cap at $2.5K tracked revenue
- Who should switch: Switch here if you want full subscription-management features immediately and prefer a lower-friction start.
Kinde
FTV 66 / 100Kinde's free tier is built for SaaS apps that need auth, billing, access management, and feature flags in one place. Free use includes 10,500 monthly active users, 5 monthly active organizations, unlimited dashboard seats, unlimited applications, 1 billing webhook, billing APIs, customer self-serve billing flows, and a long list of identity and security features. It also includes no credit card requirement. Relative to Adapty, Kinde is much broader on identity and user-management controls, while Adapty is more specialized on mobile subscription monetization. Switch if your product needs billing plus auth and access control, not just in-app purchase management.
- Beats Adapty: Broader identity, auth, and access-management scope
- Falls short: Not specialized for mobile in-app purchase monetization
- Who should switch: Switch here if you want billing bundled with authentication and user management.
PagerDuty
FTV 51 / 100PagerDuty's free tier is for incident response rather than subscriptions, but it does give a genuinely usable small-team plan: up to 5 users, 100 SMS or phone notifications per month, 1 on-call schedule, 1 escalation policy, API calls, and access to 750+ integrations. It does not require a credit card. Compared with Adapty, PagerDuty wins on team coordination and notification workflow, especially if your real problem is operational response rather than revenue analytics. It falls short on subscription management entirely. Switch if your free-tier bottleneck is incident handling, not app monetization.
- Beats Adapty: Incident response and notification workflows
- Falls short: Not a subscription-management platform
- Who should switch: Switch here if you need on-call coordination instead of purchase analytics.
Kong Konnect
FTV 25 / 100Kong Konnect offers a 30-day free trial of enterprise functionality with no gateway limits during the trial, analytics retained for 30 days, up to 5 serverless gateways, 2 hybrid gateways, 2 dedicated cloud gateways, support for REST, HTTP, LLMs, Kafka, WebSockets, gRPC, and GraphQL, plus API portal and service-catalog features. No credit card is required. It is not a perpetual free tier, but it gives broad API and traffic-governance coverage for a short evaluation window. Compared with Adapty, it is stronger on API management and gateway coverage, but it is only temporary. Switch if you need a short, high-scope proof of concept around APIs rather than a lasting subscription platform.
- Beats Adapty: Broader API gateway and governance coverage during trial
- Falls short: Only a 30-day trial, not a perpetual free tier
- Who should switch: Switch here if you need to evaluate API infrastructure quickly and can live with a time limit.
Dub
FTV 40 / 100Dub's free tier is for link tracking and attribution, not subscriptions, but it still gives useful starter capacity: 1,000 tracked events per month, 25 new links per month, 1 user, API access, 3 custom domains, UTM templates, QR codes, real-time analytics, and 30-day analytics retention. The provided terms do not clearly waive a card requirement. Compared with Adapty, Dub is stronger if your growth workflow centers on links, campaigns, and conversion tracking, while Adapty is built for in-app purchases. Switch if you want analytics around link performance rather than subscription revenue.
- Beats Adapty: Link attribution and campaign tracking
- Falls short: Not built for subscription management
- Who should switch: Switch here if your real use case is short links and conversion tracking.
Data Fetcher
FTV 56 / 100Data Fetcher's free tier is perpetual and includes 100 runs per month, 10,000 response records per month, up to 5 saved requests, 1 user account, scheduling, triggers, webhook URLs, all integrations, 31 days of run history, and a 50 MB file upload limit. No credit card is required. Compared with Adapty, it is stronger on simple API-to-Airtable automation and lighter-weight data pipelines, but it does not cover subscription management. Switch if your free-tier problem is moving external data into Airtable, not handling mobile subscriptions.
- Beats Adapty: Perpetual free automation for Airtable-based data workflows
- Falls short: Not a subscription-management tool
- Who should switch: Switch here if you need no-code API ingestion rather than monetization tooling.
Two quick picks
RevenueCat
RevenueCat is the closest drop-in because it serves the same mobile subscription-management use case, includes full feature access from the start, and uses a similar revenue-based model. The main difference is a lower free threshold, so switching behavior changes least for teams already building in-app purchase flows.
Kinde
Kinde gives the most free headroom for teams that can use it because the free tier is perpetual, has no card requirement, and includes wide limits across users, orgs, seats, applications, and billing features. It is less specialized than Adapty, but the free room is broader before you need to pay.
Frequently asked questions
Which alternative is closest to Adapty for mobile subscriptions?
RevenueCat is the closest match because it is also centered on subscription management for app businesses and includes SDKs, billing, analytics, and customer data workflows.
Which alternative has the highest free ceiling before charging starts?
Adapty's own threshold is high at $5K monthly revenue, but among the alternatives Kinde and Data Fetcher are perpetual free tiers with no revenue trigger. If you mean a similar subscription product, RevenueCat's threshold is $2.5K MTR.
Which alternatives do not require a credit card to start?
RevenueCat, Kinde, PagerDuty, Kong Konnect, and Data Fetcher say no card is required. Dub's provided terms do not clearly waive a card, so its card status is Unknown.
Which alternative should I choose if I mainly want API or webhook workflows?
Kong Konnect is the strongest for API gateway and traffic management workflows, while Data Fetcher is better if you want no-code API imports into Airtable. RevenueCat and Adapty are better if the core need is subscription billing.
Bottom line
For the most common case, RevenueCat is the best alternative to try first. It is the closest replacement for a mobile subscription stack, keeps the same general revenue-based pricing logic, and exposes the full product from day one on its free tier. The tradeoff is a lower free threshold than Adapty, but if you are already looking beyond Adapty, RevenueCat preserves the most familiar workflow with the least disruption.
Read the full listing for Adapty. Scores use the FTV methodology at /ftv. Browse more alternatives on /alternatives, or head-to-head comparisons on /compare.