A web2app funnel sells your subscription on a web checkout (usually Stripe or Paddle) instead of through Apple or Google in-app purchase, then unlocks the app when the user signs in.
It can pay off, because card fees run far below the App Store's 15-30% commission.
But in the tests we track, moving the purchase to the web usually cut conversion by 12-33%, so the fee savings only win when that drop stays small.
This page covers how the funnel works, the fee math, where Apple's US link rules stand as of November 2026, and what real web-vs-in-app tests found.
What a web2app funnel is
"Web to app" covers two different setups. People often mix them up, and they behave differently in tests.
- Web-first funnel. A paid ad sends people to a web page, often a quiz-style onboarding flow. They pay on the web, then download the app and log in. The App Store never handles the payment.
- App-to-web checkout. The user is already in your app. A paywall button opens Safari with a hosted checkout, and the purchase syncs back to the app. This became possible on the US App Store in 2025.
Both need the same plumbing. You need a web billing system, a shared user ID or a redemption link that ties the web purchase to an app account, and an entitlement service that tells the app what the user paid for.
The web-first version also changes what you can do before the sale.
You control the page, so you can run long onboarding quizzes, landing-page tests and pricing you couldn't easily ship through App Review.
Fees and margins vs IAP
Apple's standard commission is 30%. Developers who earned up to $1 million in proceeds in the prior year can join the App Store Small Business Program and pay 15%.
On the web you pay a payment processor instead.
As of November 2026, Stripe's pricing page lists 2.9% + 30¢ per domestic card charge, plus 1.5% for international cards.
Stripe Billing, its subscription product, adds 0.7% of billing volume on pay-as-you-go.
Paddle charges 5% + 50¢ per checkout transaction but acts as merchant of record, so it collects and files sales tax and VAT for you.
Here is a worked example for a $59.99 annual plan, sold to a US card holder:
| Channel | Fee | You keep |
|---|---|---|
| Apple IAP, standard | 30% ($18.00) | $41.99 |
| Apple IAP, Small Business Program | 15% ($9.00) | $50.99 |
| Stripe card + Stripe Billing | 2.9% + 30¢ + 0.7% ($2.46) | $57.53 |
| Paddle | 5% + 50¢ ($3.50) | $56.49 |
The break-even rule is simple: divide what you keep through IAP by what you keep on the web.
With Stripe, $41.99 / $57.53 = 0.73. So at the 30% rate, web conversion can fall up to about 27% before you lose money.
At the 15% rate the math gets much tighter: $50.99 / $57.53 = 0.89. A conversion drop of more than about 11% wipes out the savings.
That is why small developers often find web checkout isn't worth it.
Two more things change the math. The fixed 30¢ hurts cheap weekly plans: on a $6.99 weekly charge, Stripe's card fee alone is about 7%.
And on the web you handle refunds, chargebacks, failed-payment retries and, without a merchant of record, sales tax yourself.
Apple's external link rules (US) and what changed
Until 2025, Apple barred apps from pointing users to cheaper web purchases.
On April 30, 2025, a federal judge found Apple in contempt of the 2021 Epic v.
Apple injunction. The judge barred Apple from charging any commission on US link-out purchases and from limiting how apps place and style those links (Ninth Circuit opinion).
Apple's App Review Guidelines now say apps on the United States storefront can include "buttons, external links, or other calls to action" that lead to other ways to pay, with no entitlement needed.
In every other storefront, those links are still banned unless the developer holds a specific entitlement.
The fee question is still open as of November 2026:
- On December 11, 2025, the Ninth Circuit upheld the contempt finding. It also ruled that Apple may eventually charge a commission tied to costs "genuinely and reasonably necessary" for coordinating external links, and sent the rate question back to the district court.
- On June 30, 2026, the Supreme Court agreed to review the contempt finding (IPWatchdog).
- In August 2026, Apple asked the district court to approve link-out fees of 15% for standard apps, 10% for subscription renewals and some partner programs, and 5% for Small Business Program members. As of that filing, Apple was still collecting nothing on link-outs (MacRumors).
So build your model with two scenarios: today's 0% link-out fee, and a possible future fee somewhere in Apple's proposed range.
Under a 15% fee on our $59.99 example, the Stripe path keeps about $48.53, and the break-even conversion drop shrinks from about 27% to about 13%.
Google Play has its own US track after Epic v.
Google. Google's developer help page says it launched US external content links and alternative billing programs on December 9, 2025. Service fees were due to start October 1, 2026, and the deadline for external content links was later pushed to February 1, 2027. Read Google's current terms before you build an Android link-out.
Measured results: web funnel vs in-app tests
This is where most web2app articles stop at theory.
We have real tests in our database, and the pattern is consistent: the web loses on conversion and sometimes wins on revenue.
Superwall
RevenueCatRevenueCatApp-to-web checkout tests
Dipsea's web-only test, run with RevenueCat in May 2025 on about 12,500 US users, is the cleanest data point.
Initial conversion fell from 27.0% with in-app purchase to 18.1% with web checkout only.
Web subscribers kept their trials slightly better, but not enough to make up the gap.
After a 30% fee, revenue per user was $2.09 for in-app purchase vs $1.96 for web only (RevenueCat).
Offering both, with 30% off on the web, didn't help either.
Conversion to paying went from 6.3% to 5.9%, and the app made 93¢ for every dollar the in-app-only version made.
Superwall's pooled early tests found the opposite net result.
Sending iOS paywall users to web checkout cut initial conversion by 11.9%, but net proceeds rose about 19.85% at a 30% Apple fee.
Superwall also noted that at the 15% Small Business rate, the same conversion drop would cut net proceeds by about 1.3%.
These numbers are vendor-reported, and Superwall sells web checkout (Superwall).
Zumba sent paywall users to a Stripe checkout with Apple Pay and Google Pay preselected.
Immediate conversions dropped 25%, but more people chose annual plans and kept them, and LTV rose 17% (RevenueCat Sub Club).
On the losing side, indie developer Sebastian Szturo tested Stripe web checkout in early 2026 and stopped within weeks.
Most revenue came from weekly plans, so a small conversion dip cost more than the fees saved, and Stripe added its own overhead.
Web-first onboarding
Web-first funnels have a different record. Teaching.com moved the same onboarding to the web and saw about 50% better conversion to trial and about 30% better conversion to paid than in the app.
Its COO credited users' trust in a brand that has been around for nearly 30 years.
A newer brand may not get the same result.
What the tests suggest
- Expect the in-app-to-web hop to cost conversion. In these tests the drop ran from 11.9% to about 33%.
- Web checkout wins more often at the 30% fee than at 15%, and on annual plans more than weekly ones.
- Judge by revenue or LTV per user, not by conversion. Zumba "lost" on conversion and won on LTV.
For more paywall experiments to compare against, see our paywall test library.
Tools for web checkout and web2app funnels
We haven't used these tools ourselves. This summary comes from each vendor's public docs and pricing pages.
| Tool | What it does | Cost (as of November 2026) | Downsides | Not for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| RevenueCat Web Billing + Funnels | Hosted web purchase links, redemption links into the app, and a no-code multi-step web funnel builder. Can use RevenueCat Billing, Stripe or Paddle as the billing engine. | Free up to $2,500 monthly tracked revenue, then 1% (pricing), plus processor fees | Another % of revenue on top of processing; funnel design tied to its editor | Teams that already run their own billing and entitlement system |
| Superwall App2Web | Paywall button opens a Superwall-hosted Stripe checkout in Safari; purchase links back to the app. Targets the US storefront via campaign filters. | See Superwall pricing; Stripe fees extra | Built around app-to-web, not a full web-first quiz funnel | Apps not on Superwall, or with mostly non-US iOS users |
| Stripe direct | Checkout, Billing and customer portal you wire up yourself | 2.9% + 30¢ per US card; Billing 0.7% (pricing) | You build entitlement sync, tax handling and dunning flows | Small teams without backend time |
| Paddle | Merchant-of-record checkout that handles global sales tax and VAT | 5% + 50¢ per transaction (pricing) | Higher fee than raw Stripe; still needs entitlement sync | US-only sellers who are fine filing their own sales tax |
RevenueCat's redemption links let a user check out anonymously on the web, then tap a one-time link (it expires after 60 minutes) to attach the purchase to their app account.
Superwall's web checkout docs describe opening checkout in an external browser rather than an embedded web view.
For deeper comparisons, see RevenueCat vs Stripe, our RevenueCat review and the broader paywall tools roundup.
How to test it
Treat web checkout as an A/B test, not a migration.
The tests above show the result depends on your plan mix, fee tier and brand.
- Do the break-even math first. Divide your IAP net by your web net per sale. If you're on the 15% tier and mostly sell weekly plans, the margin for error may be too thin to bother.
- Limit the test to US iOS users. Apple's link-out freedom applies only to the US storefront. Filter by storefront country, not by IP or device language.
- Run three arms if you have the traffic. In-app only, in-app plus a web option, and web only, as Dipsea did. The hybrid arm shows whether giving people a choice helps or splits their attention.
- Cut friction on the web page. Preselect Apple Pay and Google Pay as Zumba did, keep the plan the user picked, and skip account creation where you can.
- Measure net revenue per paywall viewer. Track trial starts, trial-to-paid and renewals, after fees, for at least one full trial cycle. Annual-plan share and refunds matter more than first-day conversion.
- Re-run the model if Apple's fee changes. A win at 0% may become a loss at a future link-out fee.
For sample sizes and test length, see our guide to A/B testing subscription apps.
If the web arm wins on margin but not volume, try pricing tests on the web page next, since that is where you have the most control.