What debt payoff apps charge: prices of 46 App Store apps

On 18 October 2026, 46 apps ranked for “debt payoff planner” in the United States App Store. 45 were free to download and 35 listed in-app purchases: median prices were $4.99 a month, $24.99 a year and $39.99 for a lifetime unlock. 23 apps sold a subscription, 17 a one-time price, 13 both. The full list is below, with a CSV.

Method and date

The data is the public App Store listing of every app that appeared in the search results for the keyword debt payoff planner in the US storefront on 18 October 2026, read between 13:13 and 13:45 UTC through AppGapFinder. Apple returned 46 results. For each app the listing’s in-app purchase section gives tier names and prices; that is all it gives, so the billing period is read from the tier name (“Monthly”, “12 Month Subscription”, “Lifetime”). Tiers named only “Premium” or “Pro” are counted in a separate “period not stated” group rather than guessed.

Two groups are compared throughout: 37 debt-specific apps (payoff planners, snowball calculators, debt trackers) and 9 general finance apps that rank for the term (budgeting apps, bill organizers, a loan calculator and two fintech services). Prices are the US list prices shown that day; regional pricing, trials and promotions are out of scope. Listings change, so treat every number as a dated snapshot and download the CSV if you want to work with the raw rows.

Free, subscription, one-time: the mix

Free-to-download is universal, so the real choice is what sits behind the paywall. Subscriptions are the majority model (23 of 35), but a one-time price is far from rare in this niche: 17 apps offer one, and 13 of them offer it next to a subscription rather than instead of one. The four remaining apps mix a one-time or subscription tier with an unnamed one.

What the tiers cost

The debt-specific apps and the general finance apps price very differently, which matters because a developer entering this keyword competes with the first group, not the second.

The cheapest monthly tier in the set is $1.99 (ClearDebt, “Monthly Plan”), the cheapest annual tier $9.99 (Debt Free, “Pro Upgrade - Yearly”) and the cheapest one-time unlock $6.99 (Debt Snowball, “Unlock All Payment Strategies”). The highest prices all belong to general apps or to a lifetime pass: $17.99 a month and $79.99 a year (EveryDollar Premium) and a $99.99 lifetime pass (Loan Calculator).

What the top 10 do differently

Nine of the top ten list purchases; the exception, position 5, is a service that automates payments rather than a planner. The position-one app sells only subscriptions, $6.99 a month and $27.99 a year, plus a $41.99 family plan, the only family tier in the whole set. Positions 2 and 3 sell only a one-time unlock, $6.99 and $9.99. Position 6, itself a 2025 entrant, shows the three-tier shape of $9.99 a month, $39.99 a year and a $79.99 lifetime; six other 2025 and 2026 entrants use the same shape, and only one incumbent does. Position 4 carries the highest monthly and annual tiers in the set, $17.99 and $79.99. Positions 7 and 9 name no period in their tiers (three “Premium” tiers at $4.99 to $6.99, and two “YNAB Subscription” tiers at $14.99 and $109.00), and position 8 sells lifetime tiers from $9.99 to $25.99.

So the top of this keyword is not one model winning. A subscription-only leader, two one-time-only apps and a three-tier app sit within four positions of each other, and users searching the term see all of them.

What the 2025 and 2026 entrants chose

25 of the 46 apps were first released in 2025 or 2026, and 21 of them list purchases. 16 of those 21 sell a subscription and 12 sell a lifetime tier; among the 14 incumbents with purchases, 7 sell a subscription and 5 a lifetime tier. The newcomers set the monthly floor: the five cheapest monthly tiers, $1.99 to $2.99, all belong to apps released since 2025, while the cheapest annual tier, $9.99, belongs to an incumbent. Their lifetime prices run from $9.99 to $79.99 with a median of $47.49, above the whole set’s $39.99.

Read together with their rating counts (most entrants have fewer than 50 ratings), the entrants are competing on price while the incumbents hold the ratings. That is a gap in positioning, not only in price.

How this compares with store-wide benchmarks

Two store-wide reports give the context. RevenueCat’s State of Subscription Apps 2026, covering more than 115,000 apps with 2025 as its target period, puts the median monthly subscription price at about $8 (most common $10) and the median yearly price at $34.80 (most common $30). Adapty’s State of In-App Subscriptions 2026, from 16,000 apps, reports global medians of $12.99 a month and $38.42 a year. This keyword’s medians, $4.99 and $24.99, sit about 38 percent below the RevenueCat monthly figure and 28 percent below its yearly one, and further below Adapty’s.

Neither report covers one-time or lifetime prices, so there is no store-wide comparison for the $39.99 median here. Both reports are category- or store-level aggregates; the point of a keyword-level read is that a developer prices against the apps users actually see next to theirs.

How to use this when pricing your own app

1. Decide the shape first, then the number. The set contains all three shapes within the top ten. Pick the one your product supports: a planner people use for a year or two fits a one-time price or a lifetime tier next to a subscription; a service with ongoing costs fits a subscription only.
2. Price against the debt-specific medians, not the store.$4.99 a month, $24.99 a year and $39.99 to $44.99 lifetime are the centre of this niche. A price near the general apps’ $12.99 a month needs a reason users can see in the first three screenshots.
3. Name the period in the tier.23 of 87 tiers hide their period behind “Premium” or “Pro”. A tier called “Pro Yearly” costs nothing extra and reads clearly in the listing, in the App Store’s purchase sheet and in the reviews, where unclear paid tiers were the largest low-star theme for the position-one app in the competitor analysis walkthrough; the method for counting such themes is in the review-mining guide.

This is step four of the App Store competitor analysis guide, done for one keyword in full. The same read takes a few minutes for any keyword in the tool: open each app from the result list and the detail view shows its tiers.

The full list

Every listed tier of the 35 apps with in-app purchases, in rank order, exactly as the listing named and priced it on 18 October 2026. The same rows, plus the 11 apps without purchases, are in the CSV.

Apps in the result with no in-app purchases listed that day: Changed: Automate Debt Payoff (#5), Debt Magic: Payoff Planner (#12), Debt Payoff Planner: Snowball (#19), NerdWallet: Smart Money App (#28), Debtless (#31), Relief: Get out of debt (#32), Debt Manager (#33), Gauss: Payoff Credit Card Debt (#36), Clerkie Payoff Debt Bills Fees (#39), Budget Planner with AI - Jelli (#40), Debt Snowball vs Avalanche (#43).

Frequently asked questions

Why do some apps show no purchases?

Either the app is a service that bills outside the App Store, as the fintech apps in the list do, or it is genuinely free. The listing does not say which, so these 11 are reported as “none listed” rather than “free”.

Are these the prices users actually pay?

They are the US list prices of each tier. Introductory offers, free trials, regional prices and discounts are not in the listing and are not in this data.

Will the numbers change?

Yes. Apps enter and leave the result, and prices move. The date is part of every table, and the read can be repeated for this or any other keyword in a few minutes.

Sources

• Worked data: public App Store listings for the keyword “debt payoff planner”, United States storefront, read through AppGapFinder on 18 October 2026 (CSV).
• Apple, “Choosing a business model” (free, freemium, paid and paymium models; the App Store Small Business Program’s 15% commission): developer.apple.com/app-store/business-models.
• Apple, “Auto-renewable subscriptions” (70% of the price in a subscriber’s first year, 85% after one year of paid service; 800 price points): developer.apple.com/app-store/subscriptions.
• Apple, In-App Purchase overview (consumable, non-consumable, auto-renewable and non-renewing subscription types): developer.apple.com/in-app-purchase.
• RevenueCat, State of Subscription Apps 2026 (pricing by plan duration): revenuecat.com/state-of-subscription-apps-2026.
• Adapty, State of In-App Subscriptions 2026 (global median prices): adapty.io/state-of-in-app-subscriptions.

Sources checked on 18 October 2026.