Subscribing Through the App Store Costs More Than It Should

You’re paying 30 percent more than you need to! Here’s how to pay the writer's price, not Apple's.

Dear friends

I can’t tell you how much your messages of support have meant since I told you of my brush with Covid. The quick DMs just checking in, the emails wishing me well, the kind words left on my last post — each one has lifted my spirits during what has been a rough few weeks. I feel very fortunate for the sense of belonging within this community, and I’m deeply grateful to every one of you.

Some may see this as me going a little off-message, but I hope I’ve shown by now that care for one another isn’t separate from resistance — it’s at its core. So I’m writing today in that same spirit of care, to flag something small but significant that I think you’ll want to know about. And don’t worry: we’ll be back to the main work this week. I’ve already started drafting the next post, and I’m confident I’ll be able to deliver it, whatever my energy levels.

Before I dive back into that, I want to take a moment to share something practical that affects many of us here. We are all feeling the pinch right now. Everyday costs are higher, and that makes any extra expense harder to justify, so most of us need to think carefully before paying for a subscription. We weigh the value we get against the cost, and the reality is that few of us can afford to support every publication we enjoy — every subscription we choose to pay for is money pulled from an alternative purchase. This is where Substack’s recent move to iOS payments becomes relevant.

When Substack announced that payments could now be made through the iOS app I was initially pleased. My first thought was simply that it was about time — Substack, after all, is a platform that has often lagged on features that feel like basic infrastructure in 2025, so the ability to pay directly through the app seemed like a small but overdue step. It was only when I received my first payout from Apple’s App Store system that I understood what it means in practice.

Nine new subscribers have signed up to Your Time Starts Now through the Substack app. Each one of you is paying 30 percent more than the subscription price I have set. That mark-up exists so that Substack can give Apple its 25 percent cut, and still protect its own margin.

None of us should really be surprised about this — it is, after all, how technofeudalism¹ works. But if you are one of those subscribers — or if you have subscribed to any other Substack publication through the app — and you need to be mindful of your budget, I'm going to walk you through some simple steps you can take to stop paying that inflated price.

Step #1: Cancel your subscription through the app. On an iPhone or iPad, open your Settings, tap your name at the top, then Subscriptions, then find the Substack subscription — Your Time Starts Now — and cancel it.

Step #2: Set a calendar alert for the day your subscription expires. That way, you will continue to get the access you've already paid for right up to the day it expires, but you won't miss out on valued articles by losing track of when to re-subscribe.

Step #3: On that day, open Substack in your web browser rather than the app. Go directly to the publication you want to support, and subscribe there. The cost will be 30 percent lower, because you will be paying the price set by the writer, not the inflated price Apple and Substack add on top.

I know that with everything that's going on right now this may feel like a small detail, but it’s just my way of showing care to all readers here in the Substack community. When every subscription is a careful choice, no one should have to pay more than they need to.

In solidarity, as ever

— Lori

1. Technofeudalism is the term some economists and political theorists use for the stage we’ve entered where digital platforms dominate not just markets but the basic organisation of economic life. In feudalism, peasants worked land they didn’t own and paid rent to lords who controlled access. In technofeudalism, people and businesses operate on digital infrastructures they don’t control — from app stores to online marketplaces to social media networks — and pay rent in the form of fees, commissions, and data extraction. The usual dynamics of competition are replaced by dependence on a few gatekeepers, whose power lies in owning the digital “land” everyone else has to use.