What do you actually keep?
We had to work out what a subscription is worth after VAT, Stripe, the app stores and RevenueCat all take their cut. The answer was worse than we assumed, so we are publishing the model rather than the conclusion.
Gross, VAT included
MRR, into the company
Freemium models only
Under $1M in proceeds last year
Free below $2,500 tracked / month
Fee assumptions — VAT 21% · Stripe 1.5% + €0.25 · store 30% · RevenueCat 1.0%
Five ways of charging, side by side
Euro · four decimals, so each column adds up
Stripe B2B keeps €1.7784 more of every €4.99 than App Store IAP — which at your target is 13,583 fewer customers to find.
- Customer pays
- €4.9900
- VAT
- €0.0000
- Revenue ex-VAT
- €4.9900
- Stripe or store commission
- -€0.3248
- RevenueCat
- -€0.0499
- You keep
- €4.6153
- Share of price
- 92.5%
- vs best model
- —
- Paying customers needed
- 21,668
- Total users, free included
- —
- Gross billings / month
- €108,123.32
- Customer pays
- €4.9900
- VAT
- -€0.8660
- Revenue ex-VAT
- €4.1240
- Stripe or store commission
- -€0.3248
- RevenueCat
- -€0.0499
- You keep
- €3.7492
- Share of price
- 75.1%
- vs best model
- −€0.8660
- Paying customers needed
- 26,673
- Total users, free included
- —
- Gross billings / month
- €133,098.27
- Customer pays
- €4.9900
- VAT
- -€0.8660
- Revenue ex-VAT
- €4.1240
- Stripe or store commission
- -€0.3248
- RevenueCat
- -€0.0499
- You keep
- €3.7492
- Share of price
- 75.1%
- vs best model
- −€0.8660
- Paying customers needed
- 26,673
- Total users, free included
- 889,075
- Gross billings / month
- €133,098.27
- Customer pays
- €4.9900
- VAT
- -€0.8660
- Revenue ex-VAT
- €4.1240
- Stripe or store commission
- -€1.2372
- RevenueCat
- -€0.0499
- You keep
- €2.8369
- Share of price
- 56.9%
- vs best model
- −€1.7784
- Paying customers needed
- 35,251
- Total users, free included
- —
- Gross billings / month
- €175,902.49
- Customer pays
- €4.9900
- VAT
- -€0.8660
- Revenue ex-VAT
- €4.1240
- Stripe or store commission
- -€1.2372
- RevenueCat
- -€0.0499
- You keep
- €2.8369
- Share of price
- 56.9%
- vs best model
- −€1.7784
- Paying customers needed
- 35,251
- Total users, free included
- 1,175,002
- Gross billings / month
- €175,902.49
Early on the RevenueCat row is €0. At 500 users on Stripe B2B you would keep €2,307.63 a month, which is past their $2,500 tracked-revenue threshold, so the 1% applies from there on.
Best model: Stripe B2B. €4.6153 per paying user. 21,668 paying users needed.
What each way of charging actually means
Two of these differ only in who your customer is, and that difference is worth more per sale than any fee on this page. It is the single largest number in the grid above, and the one most often missed.
- Stripe B2CYour own site · You remit the VAT
- You sell to consumers through your own checkout. The price on the page includes VAT, you remit that VAT yourself, and Stripe takes its percentage on the full VAT-inclusive amount — so you pay Stripe a fee on tax money that was never yours.
- Stripe B2BYour own site · No VAT charged
- You invoice a VAT-registered business in another EU country, so you charge no VAT at all — you issue the invoice at the bare price and the customer self-accounts for the VAT in their own return under the reverse charge. Nothing to remit means the entire price is revenue, which is why this column keeps the most of any option here. It is also the narrowest: it needs a business customer, in another EU country, whose VAT number you actually validated. Sell to a consumer, or to a business in your own country, and you are back on the Stripe B2C line.
- App Store IAPApple / Google · The store remits the VAT
- Apple or Google is the merchant of record. They take the payment, they remit the VAT, and their commission comes off what is left after VAT rather than off the gross — which is the one structural thing working in your favour here. You never touch the transaction and you do not get the customer’s details.
- Freemium — StripeYour own site · You remit the VAT
- Stripe B2C economics applied to the slice of a free user base that converts. Every per-customer figure is identical to Stripe B2C — the fees do not care how many of your users never pay. What changes is the second band: how many people you need at the top of the funnel to produce those paying customers.
- Freemium — IAPApple / Google · The store remits the VAT
- App Store economics applied to a converting slice of a free user base. It carries both costs at once: the store’s commission on every sale, and a total user base large enough that the conversion rate still produces the customers you need.
The reverse charge is the one line here that is a rule about your paperwork rather than a fee schedule, so treat that column as the best case rather than the plan. It is worth checking with your accountant before you price against it.
Three fee bases, and everyone gets them wrong
Stripe charges its percentage on the gross, VAT-inclusive amount. Raising your VAT rate does not shrink Stripe’s cut.
App stores take commission on the ex-VAT amount. They are merchant of record, so VAT comes out before their share does.
RevenueCat charges its percentage on gross tracked revenue, before store commission — and charges nothing at all below $2,500 of monthly tracked revenue.
Getting those three bases right is the only reason this was worth publishing. The rest is arithmetic, and the arithmetic is tested against the spreadsheet it came from, cell by cell.
Every fee here, with the date we checked it
Fees as of 3 September 2026
- Stripe, European cards1.5% + €0.25 per successful charge
- Standard EU pricing for EU-registered businesses. Non-European cards cost more.
- App Store / Play commission30%, or 15% on the small-business rate
- The 15% rate needs under $1M in proceeds in the prior year. Apple moves you to 30% for the rest of the year once you cross it; Google keeps 15% on the first $1M every year. We model one store column on standard, non-DMA terms — EU App Store economics under the DMA are not a single commission rate, and pretending otherwise would be the kind of confident wrong number this page exists to argue against.
- RevenueCat1% of tracked revenue, free below $2,500/month
- Charged on gross, before store commission. The free tier is why take-home per user is not a constant: below the threshold you keep more per customer than above it.
- VAT21% by default
- A common EU rate (Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium). Yours is an input, not a fact — change it.
- EUR / USD1.08 USD per EUR
- Two thresholds above are set in dollars while every figure here is in euro. Assuming parity would move the RevenueCat threshold by roughly 7%, so the rate is stated rather than hidden.
It models the pricing, not the demand
Every number here assumes someone pays. It says nothing about whether they will, what churn does to the total, what it costs you to find them, or whether a different price would convert better. Those are the expensive questions and this tool does not touch them.
It also assumes a single price, a single VAT rate and one store column. Real businesses have tiers, trials, annual plans, refunds and several countries.
The questions this tool cannot answer are the ones we test in public
Every experiment we run — on Livnly, and on how we build it with agents — is published with its hypothesis, its target and its result, including the ones that failed.