Retention Messaging

What Retention Messaging is

Retention Messaging is Apple's tool for the auto-renewable subscription cancellation flow, announced at WWDC 2026 and available in App Store Connect since 4 November 2026. When a subscriber moves to cancel, you can show a message about your subscription's value, an image, or a retention offer.

There are two ways to configure it:

• App Store Connect: open to all developers, with no server. The App Store shows your message and chooses the best offer for each eligible subscriber.
• Retention Messaging API: available by request. Your server chooses the message for each subscriber in real time, and you can also show a switch plan message or a promotional offer.

Setup steps, App Review rules and the early numbers are in Apple retention messages and offers.

What it is not

Retention Messaging fires during the cancel flow, before the cancellation completes. That makes it different from a few adjacent things:

• A win-back offer targets people who have already lapsed, after cancellation.
• A retention offer is the discount itself, and the App Store Connect version uses that offer type. The real-time API uses promotional offers. An offer code is a separate code you distribute yourself.
• An introductory offer runs at the start of a subscription, not at the end.

The anchor caveat

A retention offer only works if the price it discounts was right to begin with. A save offer shown off a base price that was never localized is a discount off the wrong anchor: 20% off a price that is already 3x too high in a market is still too high. Retention Messaging is most useful on top of prices that already fit each country, not as a patch for a base price that does not.

Cross-store note

This is an Apple feature. Google Play has its own cancellation-survey and win-back surfaces, configured separately in Play Console. The mechanics and timing differ between the two stores.