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SDK Quickstart

Get up and running with mobile subscriptions

This guide will walk you through how to get up and running with subscriptions and RevenueCat's SDK with only a few lines of code.

1. Set up your RevenueCat account

Before continuing with this guide, follow our Setting up RevenueCat guide to create a free account and set up your first project.

Set up your account →

2. Product Configuration

Before using the SDK, you need to configure your products, entitlements, and offerings in the RevenueCat dashboard. Every new project comes with a Test Store automatically configured, so you can start immediately without connecting to Apple or Google.

Configure Products →
📘Already configured your products?

Continue to SDK installation below.

SDK Version Requirements

Test Store requires minimum SDK versions (iOS 5.43.0+, Android 9.9.0+, etc.). See Sandbox Testing for complete version requirements.

3. Using RevenueCat's Purchases SDK

Our SDK seamlessly implements purchases and subscriptions across platforms while syncing tokens with the RevenueCat server.

SDK Installation

Install the SDK on your preferred platform.

Note: if you are using RevenueCat's Paywalls, the RevenueCatUI package is required during the installation process.

If you run into issues with the SDK, see Troubleshooting the SDKs for guidance.

SDK Installation Guides →

Initialize and Configure the SDK

📘Only use your public API key to configure Purchases

You can get your public API key from the API keys section in the dashboard.

You should only configure the shared instance of Purchases once, usually on app launch. After that, the same instance is shared throughout your app by accessing the .shared instance in the SDK.

See our guide on Configuring SDK for more information and best practices.

Make sure you configure Purchases with your public API key only. You can find this API key in your app settings by selecting your app in the API keys page. You can read more about the different API keys available in our Authentication guide.

// on iOS and tvOS, use `application:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:`
// on macOS and watchOS use `applicationDidFinishLaunching:`

func application(_ application: UIApplication,
didFinishLaunchingWithOptions launchOptions: [UIApplicationLaunchOptionsKey: Any]?) -> Bool {

Purchases.logLevel = .debug
Purchases.configure(withAPIKey: <revenuecat_project_apple_api_key>, appUserID: <app_user_id>)

}

The app_user_id field in .configure is how RevenueCat identifies users of your app. You can provide a custom value here or omit it for us to generate an anonymous id. For more information, see our Identifying Users guide.

When in development, we recommend enabling more verbose debug logs. For more information about these logs, see our Debugging guide.

If you're planning to use RevenueCat alongside your existing purchase code, be sure to tell the SDK that your app will complete the purchases

📘Configuring Purchases with User IDs

If you have a user authentication system in your app, you can provide a user identifier at the time of configuration or at a later date with a call to .logIn(). To learn more, check out our guide on Identifying Users.

Present a Paywall

The SDK will automatically fetch your configured Offerings and retrieve product information from your Test Store or connected stores (Apple, Google, Amazon). You can present a paywall using RevenueCat's pre-built UI or build your own.

Option A: Use RevenueCat Paywalls (Recommended)

RevenueCat provides customizable paywall templates that you can configure remotely. See Creating Paywalls to design your paywall, then Displaying Paywalls for platform-specific implementation.

Present a Paywall →

Option B: Build Your Own

If you prefer full control, manually display products and handle purchases. See Displaying Products and Making Purchases.

SDK not fetching products or offerings?

A common issue when displaying your paywall or making a purchase is missing or empty offerings. This is almost always a configuration issue.

If you're running into this error, please see our community post for troubleshooting steps.

Make a Purchase

Once your paywall is presented, select one of your products to make a purchase. The SDK will handle the purchase flow automatically and send the purchase information to RevenueCat.

Testing with Test Store:

  • Test Store purchases work immediately without any additional setup
  • They behave just like real subscriptions in your app
  • No real money is charged
  • Perfect for development and testing your integration

Testing with real stores:

  • The RevenueCat SDK automatically handles sandbox vs. production environments
  • Each platform requires slightly different configuration steps to test in sandbox
  • See Sandbox Testing for platform-specific instructions

When the purchase is complete, you can find the purchase associated to the customer in the RevenueCat dashboard. You can search for the customer by their App User ID that you configured, or by the automatically assigned $RCAnonymousID that you'll find in your logs.

Note: RevenueCat always validates transactions. Test Store purchases are validated by RevenueCat; real store purchases are validated by the respective platform (Apple, Google, etc.).

Additionally, the SDK will automatically update the customer's CustomerInfo object with the new purchase information. This object contains all the information about the customer's purchases and subscriptions.

Want to manually call the purchase method? See Making Purchases.

Check Subscription Status

The SDK makes it easy to check what active subscriptions the current customer has, too. This can be done by checking a user's CustomerInfo object to see if a specific Entitlement is active, or by checking if the active Entitlements array contains a specific Entitlement ID.

If you're not using Entitlements (you probably should be!) you can check the array of active subscriptions to see what product IDs from the respective store it contains.

// Using Swift Concurrency
let customerInfo = try await Purchases.shared.customerInfo()
if customerInfo.entitlements.all[<your_entitlement_id>]?.isActive == true {
// User is "premium"
}
// Using Completion Blocks
Purchases.shared.getCustomerInfo { (customerInfo, error) in
if customerInfo?.entitlements.all[<your_entitlement_id>]?.isActive == true {
// User is "premium"
}
}

You can use this method whenever you need to get the latest status, and it's safe to call this repeatedly throughout the lifecycle of your app. Purchases automatically caches the latest CustomerInfo whenever it updates — so in most cases, this method pulls from the cache and runs very fast.

It's typical to call this method when deciding which UI to show the user and whenever the user performs an action that requires a certain entitlement level.

📘Here's a tip!

You can access a lot more information about a subscription than simply whether it's active or not. See our guide on Subscription Status to learn if subscription is set to renew, if there's an issue detected with the user's credit card, and more.

Reacting to Subscription Status Changes

You can respond to any changes in a customer's CustomerInfo by conforming to an optional delegate method, purchases:receivedUpdated:.

This method will fire whenever the SDK receives an updated CustomerInfo object from calls to getCustomerInfo(), purchase(package:), purchase(product:), or restorePurchases().

Note: CustomerInfo updates are not pushed to your app from the RevenueCat backend, updates can only happen from an outbound network request to RevenueCat, as mentioned above.

Depending on your app, it may be sufficient to ignore the delegate and simply handle changes to customer information the next time your app is launched or in the completion blocks of the SDK methods.

// Additional configure setup
// on iOS and tvOS, use `application:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:`
// on macOS and watchOS use `applicationDidFinishLaunching:`

func application(_ application: UIApplication,
didFinishLaunchingWithOptions launchOptions: [UIApplicationLaunchOptionsKey: Any]?) -> Bool {

Purchases.logLevel = .debug
Purchases.configure(withAPIKey: <revenuecat_api_key>)
Purchases.shared.delegate = self // make sure to set this after calling configure

return true
}

extension AppDelegate: PurchasesDelegate {
func purchases(_ purchases: Purchases, receivedUpdated customerInfo: CustomerInfo) {
/// - handle any changes to the user's CustomerInfo
}
}

Restore Purchases

RevenueCat enables your users to restore their in-app purchases, reactivating any content that they previously purchased from the same store account (Apple, Google, or Amazon account). We recommend that all apps have some way for users to trigger the restore method. Note that Apple does require a restore mechanism in the event a user loses access to their purchases (e.g: uninstalling/reinstalling the app, losing their account information, etc).

By default, RevenueCat Paywalls include a 'Restore Purchases' button. You can also trigger this method programmatically.

Purchases.shared.restorePurchases { customerInfo, error in
// ... check customerInfo to see if entitlement is now active
}

If two different App User IDs restore transactions from the same underlying store account (Apple, Google, or Amazon account) RevenueCat may attempt to create an alias between the two App User IDs and count them as the same user going forward. See our guide on Restoring Purchases for more information on the different configurable restore behaviors.

👍You did it!

You have now implemented a fully-featured subscription purchasing system without spending a month writing server code. Congrats!

Sample Apps

To download more complete examples of integrating the SDK, head over to our sample app resources.

View Sample Apps →

Next Steps