Why Every App Subscription Feels Like a Scam Now
Without value
My Medium friends can read this story over there as well.
A notes app. A weather app. A PDF reader. A photo filter. Sometimes even a calculator. Because… math…
It’s been like that for quite some time now. Unfortunately.
I still remember the days when the app store was full of one-time purchases. For 99 cents, for $1.99, for $9.99. Good times.
Now everything is “free”.
Freemium
We know how it goes. It starts free, but the features we really want cost money. Monthly. Or yearly.
Freemium. It’s the default.
It’s not that developers shouldn’t get paid, they absolutely should, it’s the feeling that half these apps don’t offer anything worth a recurring bill.
And many of them aren’t created by developers. They’re built with AI programming tools now.
This is where the scam feeling kicks in. Not because the apps are evil, but because the compounding costs are crazy. And the value is… questionable.
When a tiny tool demands the same monthly fee as Netflix, something’s off. We aren’t paying for value anymore.
Everyone encourages subscriptions
The market allows this. Loves this.
Apple encouraged subscriptions. Developers chase “predictable revenue.” Investors demand recurring income.
We all know this isn’t about quality, it is about “ARPU.” Average revenue per user.
Makes sense in a spreadsheet. Makes less sense when we’re staring at a cropping tool asking for nine bucks a month.
Not all is bad
We can be fair. Some subscriptions are great.
Tools that actually improve over time, sync across devices, store files, automate workflows, support teams. Those earn it. Built by people who care about the product.
The problem is the flood of apps (and people) that don’t. They just slap a subscription on top because the App Store conditioned everyone to think it’s normal.
The result
The result is this weird, slightly hostile vibe in modern software.
Every tap feels like we’re about to be charged. Every new feature feels like a trap.
We start avoiding new apps because we don’t want to be ambushed by another annual bill. We don’t try new tools because we know they hit us with a paywall in a second.
That’s not healthy for anyone.
And the irony is (I feel like), if most of these apps charged a one-time fee like 5 or 10 bucks, they could sell more. But it’s less predictable. Maybe less stable.
Do we need subscriptions
Not everything needs to be a subscription.
Some things are tools, not services. We buy a screwdriver once. We don’t pay monthly to keep using it. Gosh, I hope.
This whole subscription mess frustrates us because it exposes modern tech.
Companies aren’t building better products, they’re building better billing systems.
Every app wants a share of our mental rent. Our inbox fills up with “Your subscription renews tomorrow” notifications we didn’t even remember starting. Because they lure us in the free trials (but already forcing us to input our credit card info).
And half of them don’t even deliver updates. They just sit there, quietly renewing.
The new world is like this, everywhere
This model makes software feel disposable. Not because the apps are bad, but because we resent them before we even use them. The trust is gone.
And that’s happened (or happening) in many industries, not just tech and apps. It’s happening with cars, lifestyle products, everything in our lives.
It just keeps getting worse. We assume the worst. We assume a catch. We assume the “upgrade to pro” screen will block whatever we got the app or tool or “thing” to do, in the first place.
Scam?
So yeah, app subscriptions feel like a scam now.
Not because all of them are scams, but because the ecosystem behind them has trained us to expect disappointment, unfortunately.
And disappointment is terrible UX.
We’ll probably see a course correction at some point. Fingers crossed. Users push back. Developers get tired of chasing this subscription-based system.
Maybe Apple or Google or somebody else changes the rules again. Maybe not.
But to me, the apps that win long term will be the ones that actually justify their price (or their subscription) by real development, updates, value, and trust.
Until then, we’re stuck with subscriptions.
I agree. It's gotten out of hand. You should have to prove that you offer a continued service before being allowed to charge a subscription