Commit Annually, Pay Monthly: How Apple’s New iOS 26.5 App Store Subscription Plan Works
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Last month, Apple told developers about a new “installment plan” for App Store subscriptions — a new option in iOS 26.5 to allow apps and services to provide annual-style payment discounts while still billing customers on a monthly basis.
While Apple noted that the new feature will be available to anyone running iOS 26.4 or later, developers need to submit apps built for iOS 26.5 to implement it — and they can’t do that until iOS 26.5 has been released. Since that happened earlier this week, we’ll likely soon see some apps offering these payment options, so Apple has now published a support document so end users know what to expect — and the first piece of bad news to get out of the way is that it still remains unavailable in the United States and Singapore.
Apple’s official name for this is “monthly subscriptions with a 12-month commitment.” That’s accurately descriptive, but it’s also a bit of a mouthful. At the end of the day, it’s essentially like an installment plan, so I’ll use that term to keep things a bit simpler.
As either name suggests, the new plan requires that you sign up for what is effectively still an annual subscription, but instead of paying for the whole thing up front, you’re automatically billed every month. While you can still cancel one of these new subscription plans early, this simply prevents auto-renewal at the end of the term, just as it would with a standard annual plan. You’ll still have access to the app or service and be on the hook for the full 12 months of payments, just like you would on any other installment plan.
When you subscribe to a monthly subscription with a 12-month commitment, you agree to complete all payments until your commitment is fulfilled.
Apple
On the flip side, if you don’t cancel before the end of the first year, you’ll automatically be enrolled in a second-year commitment, and be faced with another 12 months of payments.
Apple’s support document doesn’t tell us too much that we didn’t already know from its earlier developer announcement, although it does answer at least one question some folks raised after the news first came out about the new installment plans: what happens if you miss a payment?
The answer to that is pretty much what you might expect. Apple won’t let you miss a payment, as they’re automatically billed to whatever payment method you have on file each month. However, if your payment method can’t be charged, you’ll likely lose access to the subscription until the payment is received — and you’ll still have to make up for it when you do update your Apple Account payment method. Removing your payment method won’t cancel your subscription early, but it will prevent you from making any other purchases in the App Store or paying for other subscriptions like Apple Music.
As with other subscriptions, it’s also possible to upgrade an installment subscription to a higher tier, such as moving from an individual to a family plan. However, as is the case with prepaid annual subscriptions, it’s not treated as a mid-cycle upgrade. Instead, the existing 12-month commitment is effectively cancelled, with a prorated refund for any unused time in the current month, and you’re basically signing up for a new 12-month commitment.
Developers will have some freedom to price these subscriptions in a way that makes sense to them, but Apple has put some guardrails around the rates to ensure things stay reasonable. Specifically, an installment plan can’t be priced any lower than a prepaid annual plan — which makes sense — but it also can’t be more than 1.5 times more expensive than paying for a full year in advance.
We have yet to see any apps offering these new installment terms, and there’s no word on whether Apple itself might embrace this model for its own services. For example, Apple already offers a generous prepaid annual discount for Apple TV, since it only raised the monthly price last year, increasing it to $12.99 while the annual price remained at $99 in a move that seemed aimed specifically at reducing subscriber “churn.” However, it’s also not hard to imagine Apple leaving that gap in place to give it some space to offer a new installment plan option for Apple TV, dropping the monthly price back to $9.99 for those willing to commit to a full 12 months of service — which is exactly what these new plans are designed to encourage.
