> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.highailabs.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# Pricing Strategy
> The pricing model of record for High IQ -- a hard paywall at $12.99/mo or $99.99/yr with no free trial, browse-only guest access, and the website as the free tier.
**Status:** Decided — August 3, 2026. **Supersedes the July 3, 2026 freemium-with-trial model.**
This is the pricing **model of record**. All other pricing docs
([Tier Comparison](/planning/pricing/tier-comparison),
[Options Comparison](/planning/pricing/pricing-options-comparison),
[Revenue Projections](/planning/pricing/revenue-projections),
[Rollout Plan](/planning/pricing/rollout-plan),
[Personas & Journey](/planning/pricing/personas-journey)) defer to this page.
Where an older draft disagrees with this page, this page wins.
## The decision
High IQ launches with a **hard paywall and a single paid subscription. There is
no free trial, no introductory offer, and no meaningful free tier.**
| Level | Price | What it is |
| ------------------------- | -------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Guest** | \$0, no account | **Browse only.** 2,500+ researched strains, strain detail, High Families, strain music, rate-capped label scanner. Nothing is saved. No AI. |
| **Account, unsubscribed** | \$0 | Not a product tier — a holding state. The user sees the paywall. Data retained **30 days**, exportable. |
| **Pro** | **$12.99/mo or $99.99/yr** | Everything personal and everything AI: stash, orders, notebooks, stats, Gmail sync, historical import, receipt parsing, dispensaries, collection, rankings, badges. |
Key structural decisions:
* **No free trial and no intro offer.** The purpose of launch is to learn whether
the product is worth full price to a stranger. A discount buys conversions and
destroys the signal. Reopen condition below.
* **The website is the free tier.** `thisiswhyimhigh.com` already serves 2,525
researched strains publicly and free, indexed by Google. The app does not
duplicate it. The product story is: **website = the database, app = your data.**
* **All AI is Pro. All personal data is Pro.** No exceptions beyond the capped
guest label scanner.
* **Historical Import is included in Pro with usage caps.** No separate SKU.
* **No lifetime products of any kind.**
* **Studio (\$19.99/mo) stays deferred to v4.0.**
## Why a hard paywall
1. **AI costs put a floor under the price.** Notebooks are LLM-heavy with a
research pipeline behind them. At the budgeted ≤\$2.50/user/month AI cap, a
free tier that touches AI has no path to positive contribution. Keeping every
LLM call behind the paywall is what makes Free/Guest economically safe — and
once AI is the only thing worth paying for, a free tier that excludes it has
little reason to exist.
2. **Storing free-user data forever is a real cost and a real liability.** A
30-day retention window for never-subscribed accounts bounds both.
3. **The free browsing job is already done by the website.** Duplicating it in
the app buys nothing and costs storage, sync, and support.
4. **Full price produces a clean signal.** Ten people paying \$12.99 cold tells
you more than a hundred trial starts.
## Why guest browse-only still exists
Guest access is **not** a free tier — nothing is saved and no AI runs. It exists
for three operational reasons:
1. **App Review.** An app that opens to nothing but a paywall attracts scrutiny
under guideline 2.1.
2. **Screenshots must be real.** ASO conversion depends on frames of actual
product; a locked door does not sell.
3. **The TikTok → install path needs a landing.** A cold paywall on first open
converts worse than a paywall after one good moment.
Its marginal cost is near zero: no LLM calls, no storage, no sync.
## Data retention policy
| State | Retention | Notes |
| ------------------------- | ------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------ |
| Guest | Nothing stored | No account exists |
| Account, never subscribed | **30 days** | Warned at day 23; export offered before deletion |
| Lapsed subscriber | **12 months, read-only** | Resubscribing restores everything |
| Active subscriber | Retained while subscribed | Export always available |
**Lapsed ≠ never-subscribed, deliberately.** A user who paid for six months and
cancels keeps their history for a year. Deleting it would destroy the single
best win-back message available ("your 8 months of stash history is still
here") and would reliably produce 1-star reviews. This distinction must be
disclosed in the privacy policy **and** the App Store privacy labels.
## Unit economics
Never model Apple's cut at a flat 15% in Year 1. The standard commission is
**30% for each subscriber's first year**, dropping to 15% after 12 continuous
months. The 15% rate from day one applies **only** under the **App Store Small
Business Program** (gross under \$1M/yr) — **enroll immediately**.
Other constants: **RevenueCat** \~1% of tracked revenue above the free tier
(we are under the $2.5K MTR threshold for a while); **AI cost** capped at **≤$2.50 per Pro user per month\*\*; **refund leak** budgeted at 2–5% of gross.
### Pro Monthly (\$12.99)
| Line | Standard (30%) | Small Business Program (15%) |
| ---------------------------- | -------------: | ---------------------------: |
| Sticker price | \$12.99 | \$12.99 |
| Apple commission | −\$3.90 | −\$1.95 |
| RevenueCat (\~1%) | −\$0.13 | −\$0.13 |
| AI cost cap | −\$2.50 | −\$2.50 |
| Refund leak (\~3%) | −\$0.39 | −\$0.39 |
| **Net contribution / month** | **≈ \$6.07** | **≈ \$8.02** |
### Pro Annual ($99.99 — $8.33/mo effective)
| Line | Standard (30%) | SBP (15%) |
| ---------------------------- | -------------: | -----------: |
| Effective monthly sticker | \$8.33 | \$8.33 |
| Apple commission | −\$2.50 | −\$1.25 |
| RevenueCat + refund leak | −\$0.33 | −\$0.33 |
| AI cost cap | −\$2.50 | −\$2.50 |
| **Net contribution / month** | **≈ \$3.00** | **≈ \$4.25** |
### Why the price floor is \~\$9.99
| | \$12.99 | \$9.99 | \$6.99 | \$4.99 |
| --------------------------- | ---------: | ---------: | ---------: | ---------: |
| **Net / sub / month (SBP)** | **\$8.02** | **\$5.59** | **\$3.16** | **\$1.54** |
The AI cost cap is fixed regardless of price, so it consumes a larger share as
price falls. Below roughly $9.99, a single enthusiastic notebook user erases the
contribution of several ordinary ones. **The $4.99 recommendation in
`docs/business/[plan]-pricing-strategy-projections-nov30.md` predates the
AI-first product and is superseded by this page.\*\*
## Annual is the retention strategy
High IQ is a weekly-use product, not a daily one. A monthly bill on a weekly-use
app is twelve chances a year to ask "do I still use this?" Annual is one.
* Annual is **pre-selected** on the paywall and presented as **"\$8.33/month,
billed annually"**; monthly sits underneath as the secondary option.
* **Target annual mix: 50%+**, above the 25–35% a daily-use app would target.
* Monthly and annual must live in the **same App Store subscription group** so
users can move between them without double-paying.
## The launch funnel (planning assumptions)
These replace all trial-based funnel math in older projection docs.
| Step | Assumed rate | Notes |
| ----------------------------- | ------------------------- | ----------------------------------------- |
| Website visitor → app install | 1–2% | \~10 visitors/day today |
| Install → account created | 15–25% | Hard paywall suppresses this vs. freemium |
| Account → purchase | 8–15% | Full price, no trial, unknown brand |
| **Net install → paid** | **1–3%** | Hard-paywall-at-full-price expectation |
| Monthly churn (early) | 6–8%, improving toward 5% | |
| Annual mix | 50%+ | Pushed hard via paywall design |
**1–3% net install→paid is the honest expectation**, roughly half what a
freemium-with-trial model would produce. This is an accepted cost of the
no-discount decision, not an oversight. Every subscriber is full-price revenue
from day one, and every conversion is real evidence about willingness to pay.
## Reopen conditions
The no-discount stance is a **launch experiment with a defined review date**
(v1.1, late November — see [Execution Plan](/planning/launch-readiness/execution-plan)),
not a permanent commitment. Read signals in this order:
| Signal | Meaning | Response |
| ----------------------------------------- | -------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------- |
| Paywall view → purchase under \~2% | Paywall or positioning problem | Rewrite the paywall, **not** the price |
| Purchase → notebook generated under \~70% | Value not reachable after paying | Fix onboarding, **not** the price |
| Month-1 churn above \~15% | Value does not repeat | Push annual; ship retention |
| Repeated "love it, too expensive" | Genuine price resistance | **Now** consider \$9.99 or an intro offer |
Only the last row is a pricing problem. The first three look like pricing
problems and are not — cutting price in response leaves the same broken funnel
with less revenue.
### Designated first experiments (post-100 subscribers)
1. **Paid intro offer** — $2.99 first month, then $12.99. Preserves the anchor,
lowers first-purchase friction, still requires payment on day one.
2. **\$9.99 price test** via RevenueCat offerings.
3. **Trial reintroduction** — only if direct qualitative feedback demands it.
Do not run any of these before 100 paying subscribers; there is no statistical
power below that.
## Rejected alternatives
| Alternative | Why rejected | Reopens if… |
| ------------------------------------------------------ | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| **Freemium + 7-day trial** (the July 3 model) | Trials on iOS still capture payment method, so the "risk-reversal" benefit is smaller than assumed; discounting the first period muddies the willingness-to-pay signal launch exists to produce | Purchase rate stays under 2% after paywall and onboarding rewrites |
| **Paid intro offer at launch** ($2.99 → $12.99) | Same signal-muddying objection; deferred to the post-launch experiment queue rather than rejected outright | First designated experiment after 100 subscribers |
| **\$9.99 or lower list price** | Costs $2.43/sub/month in contribution to solve what is diagnosed as a positioning problem; AI cost cap makes sub-$9.99 structurally fragile | Direct, repeated qualitative price resistance |
| **Free logged-in tier** (stash/favorites free forever) | Unbounded data retention cost and liability; the website already covers free acquisition | Free→Pro conversion is proven above 8% in a future test |
| **\$4.99 Basic tracking tier** | Splits an unproven funnel; net contribution of \$1.54/mo cannot absorb AI costs | Churn feedback is dominated by "I just want tracking" AND Pro conversion is under 2% |
| **Historical Import as a one-time SKU** | Adds friction to the single best onboarding moment | Import AI costs exceed the \$2.50 cap for >10% of Pro users |
| **Lifetime / Founders products** | Founder decision, July 3 2026 — no lifetime SKU at any scale | Never |
| **Day-1 Studio tier** | Selling on future promises invites refunds and review damage | Studio ships when AI media ships (v4.0) |
**Note on precedent:** the July 3 model listed "Guest + Pro only, no trial" as
a rejected alternative whose reopen condition was a post-launch A/B test. That
condition was met early by founder decision on August 3, 2026, at $12.99
rather than the $9.99 originally sketched.
## Apple compliance requirements
These are blocking, not cosmetic. Missing disclosures are among the most common
subscription-app rejection reasons.
* The **paywall itself** must show subscription length, price per period, and
auto-renewal terms, with functional links to the Terms of Use (EULA) and
Privacy Policy.
* **Restore Purchases** must be reachable from the paywall, not only settings.
* **Account deletion** must be reachable in-app.
* Monthly and annual must share **one subscription group**.
* App Store **privacy labels** must match the retention policy above.
* Friends & family and the App Review account receive Pro via **RevenueCat
promotional entitlements** — there is no free tier to grant them.
## Related
* [Execution Plan](/planning/launch-readiness/execution-plan) — week-by-week launch schedule
* [Tier Comparison](/planning/pricing/tier-comparison) — feature-by-tier matrix
* [Revenue Projections](/planning/pricing/revenue-projections) — rebuild against the funnel above
* [Rollout Plan](/planning/pricing/rollout-plan)
* [Personas & Journey](/planning/pricing/personas-journey)
* [Options Comparison](/planning/pricing/pricing-options-comparison) — historical analysis