Apple will let your subscription apps charge you more money without asking

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

If the developer has raised the monthly or annual price, Apple has updated its App Store rules so that subscriptions can auto-renew without your explicit permission. Before the rule change, users would have to manually opt-in to a renewal if the price went up, but that won't be the case now. Apple says it's making the change to make sure users don't lose access to a subscription if they miss an opt-in message.

According to Apple's Monday evening post, there are specific conditions that developers will have to follow if they want to offer an auto-renewable subscription price increase. For an annual subscription, developers can raise the price by 50 percent, but can't raise it more than $50USD without an opt-in.

Let's say I have a $60 a year subscription. It would auto-renew without me having to opt-in if the developers raised it to $90. If I have a monthly subscription that's $15, and the developers wanted to raise it to $22, it would be less than a 50 percent increase, but over.

What if there is an app that costs $10 a year and goes up to $60 a year? Apple's rules say that consent is needed if the price increases.

More than 50% of the current price; and

The difference in price exceeds approximately $5 United States Dollar (USD) per period for non-annual subscriptions, or $50 USD per year for annual subscriptions.

Both conditions would have to be true to require an opt-in. It's hard to believe that Apple wants that. We reached out for clarification and will update if we get any.

The price can only be raised once per year without requiring an opt-in, which should help prevent scammy apps from slowly increasing their price by a buck or two every other month. The price increase has to be permissible by local law according to Apple.

If any of those conditions aren't met, you'll have to opt in to the price increase. Apple says that users will be warned about upcoming automatic renewals with price changes by email, push notifications, and in-app messaging. It sounds like they will be in your face.

We have seen evidence that this change was coming, and last month, we were told that Apple was testing this change with a Disney Plus price increase. The final design of one of the notifications is not clear, but a developer posted a picture of it in March. At the time, Apple confirmed that it was piloting a new commerce feature and that it would provide details soon. It looks like that day is here.

iOS biz people… Subscription price increase as mere NOTICE instead of having to confirm, else subs expires.



Is this new behavior for everyone or exclusive to Disney+? pic.twitter.com/zt7c15QcTA

— Max Seelemann (@macguru17) March 24, 2022

There is a link near the "OK" button that says to learn more or cancel.

Apple is making a trade-off between consumer friendly and convenience. A lot of people will be happy that they won't have to go and re-subscribe because the price went up and they missed an opt-in prompt.

I like to know where my money is going, and I'll have to be on the lookout for apps that could go up in price by a lot. The easiest way to fix this is to let users decide if they want the auto-renewing price increases. I think it would be a good idea to turn it on in the settings of the App Store, so that if the price goes up, you can ask for an opt-in.

Apple didn't respond immediately to the question of whether there were plans to add such a feature.

If Apple wanted to be consumer-friendly, it could make it so that subscriptions don't auto-renew by default. Sean Hollister pointed out in his piece that Apple co- founder Steve Jobs had a relevant quote when he was talking about privacy.

Ask them. Ask them every time. Make them tell you to stop asking them if they get tired of your asking them.

Apple has moved one step further away from that.