What a face-rating app really earns
Last updated: August 2026
Indie app Twitter is either "$40k MRR in 60 days" or silence. Here is the middle nobody posts: ChadMe has around 6,000 monthly active users, roughly 86% on Android, and it makes hundreds of dollars a month, not thousands - real money that taught us more per dollar than any course. These are the numbers and what they changed.
The stack
- Weekly subscription with a 3-day trial - the main offer.
- Annual at $89.99 - the aspirational offer.
- Credit packs from $0.99 to $59.99 - the flexible offer.
- A $1.99 one-time unlock of your full rating - the impulse offer, shown only after someone declines the subscription.
Finding #1: the named unlock embarrassed the credits system
Over six months the one-time "unlock your rating" purchase sold 47 times. All six credit packs combined - a whole configurable economy with bonus tiers and badges - sold 12. Same users, same paywall real estate, roughly 4x the sales for the offer with a name. People do not buy currency; they buy the thing. And the unlock's refund count after six months: zero.
Finding #2: trials start easily and convert brutally
620 free trials started in a recent 90-day window. 36 converted to paid - 5.8%, against an industry norm closer to 15-30%. The gap is geography (more on that in the India post) and the price shock of a weekly renewal. Every paywall experiment we run now optimizes the trial-to-paid step, not the start.
Finding #3: revenue concentration is extreme
The US produces about a third of store revenue from a fraction of users. Meanwhile tiny markets outperform per head - the Netherlands, Australia and Peru each out-earn markets ten times their size in our installs. Averages hide everything; per-country tables run the pricing decisions now.
Finding #4: the real boss fight is retention
Roughly 95% of monthly actives are brand new - people get their rating and leave. A rating is a moment, not a habit, and every monetization idea sits downstream of that. It is the single number we most want to move this year.
Finding #5: the paywall must match the payment sheet
Our most expensive bug was copy: for a stretch the paywall advertised a free trial while the store sheet charged immediately. 83% of people cancelled at the sheet. Honest copy fixed most of it instantly. If your paywall and your store sheet disagree, the sheet always wins and the user never comes back.
Where this goes
Weekly-first pricing, honest trial copy everywhere, one-time unlocks on both platforms, and a proper go at retention. Follow along on the journey page - the numbers will stay real.
See what all the fuss is about
ChadMe is the app these numbers come from - AI face rating with per-trait scores. First rating is free.
FAQ
Why publish revenue numbers?
Because the middle of the distribution is invisible - everyone posts wins or nothing. Real numbers make the lessons checkable.
What sells best in a rating app?
In our data: a cheap, named, one-time unlock of the core result - it outsold the entire credits catalog roughly 4-to-1 with zero refunds.