---
title: Tiered subscriptions plus consumables (fitting the demand curve)
slug: tiered-pricing-and-consumables
summary: Tinder's model — 2–3 subscription tiers (Plus, Gold, Platinum) with à-la-carte consumables (Super Likes, Boosts) layered on top to capture both low and high willingness to pay; subscriptions act as a force multiplier for consumables, which free users rarely buy.
domain: mobile-apps
tags: [monetization, pricing, tiers, consumables, iap, credits]
related: [setting-initial-subscription-price, freemium-vs-hard-paywall-free-tier, what-to-gate-behind-the-paywall, paywall-price-display-and-plan-count, subscription-price-increase]
sources: [yt:AWI3rofh0BA, yt:lkwX_kc0NS8, yt:-5zgc14t2gc, yt:AilakPuHdf4]
updated: 2026-10-24
---

# Tiered subscriptions plus consumables

## TL;DR
- One tier at one price leaves money on **both** sides: people who'd pay $10–20 but not $30, and people who'd happily pay $50–60.
- Add **2–3 subscription tiers** (more gets too complex), then fill the gaps with **microtransactions** — closest practical thing to perfect price discrimination.
- Subscriptions give predictable revenue; consumables alone swing month to month with user need.
- At Tinder, **free users rarely buy consumables** — consumables are most valuable *with* a subscription (Boosts/Super Likes get you likes; Gold lets you see them).
- Build the top tier from **whale behaviour**: Gold users spending $100–250/month on consumables led to Platinum (bundled consumables + message-before-match).
- Good consumables scale roughly linearly with value: 10 should be ~10x better than 1.

## Details
**Ravi Mehta's demand-curve chart** (ex-CPO Tinder): x-axis paying users, y-axis willingness to pay. Tinder Plus (lower price, many payers) → Gold → Platinum (highest price, fewest payers) form a stair-step; consumables sit on top of each tier to fill the area under the curve.[^1][^2] Games use the same subscription + purchasable-items model.[^3]

**Why keep a subscription at all.** It's a strong "threshold" monetisation point that moves a large set of free users to paid predictably; microtransaction-only revenue rises and falls with users' monthly need.[^3][^4]

**Free users vs consumables.** On Tinder very few free users buy microtransactions — there's a notable gap in the chart right of the cheapest subscription. The products interlock: Super Likes (3x more likely to match[^11]) and Boosts get more people to swipe right; Gold shows who did. Without Gold, consumables are worth much less.[^5][^6] The cheapest tier is an on-ramp across the "penny gap", from which users upgrade to Gold or consumables.[^7]

**Building the top tier.** Platinum started from Gold users spending $100–250/month on consumables. Research showed motivation was utilitarian (more matches), not status signalling — they wanted more than the product could do. Platinum bundles extra Super Likes/Boosts and lets you message before matching, breaking a core "game rule".[^8][^9] Tiers grew organically: launch one, learn what's valued, add the next level.[^10]

**Testing at scale.** Tinder reportedly had more App Store SKUs than any other app — test prices like $7.99/$8.99/$9.99 per tier, boost bundles, multiplied by country pricing.[^11]

**Designing consumables.** Ask how value scales with usage and sell more of whatever users do more of when they get value; prices must make sense for the value (a $1-per-scan add-on on a utility scanner "won't fly").[^12][^13]

**Two-tier paywalls in practice.** Jonathan Parra (Superwall) sees more social, dating and AI image/video apps with two tiers (Plus/Pro, like ChatGPT) across weekly/monthly/quarterly/yearly — painful to manage but growing. To push the higher tier he styles it as premium: in one Hinge-inspired paywall the Pro option switches to a dark, high-contrast design vs a white Plus, and more users chose Pro.[^14][^15] He's surprised more consumer apps don't sell credits on top of a rate-limited subscription the way Claude/ChatGPT Max users top up.[^14] He also recommends a **friends & family plan** (usually annual) as an under-used LTV lever.[^16]

**Other examples.** BoldVoice: ~$150/year lead plan, monthly fallback, a $200/year higher tier with AI chat, plus $400–500/hour human coaching.[^17] Skylight notes some buyers just "want the best" tier regardless of feature use (David Barnard's Tinder observation applies).[^18]

## Disagreements / caveats
- Tinder works at huge scale with network effects; small apps may not have the volume to test many tiers or SKUs.
- Ravi suggests 2–3 tiers max; Parra notes managing multi-tier × multi-period pricing gets messy in tooling.

## See also
- [[setting-initial-subscription-price]]
- [[paywall-price-display-and-plan-count]]
- [[people/ravi-mehta]], [[people/jonathan-parra]]

[^1]: yt:AWI3rofh0BA @ 01:47 — David Barnard
[^2]: yt:AWI3rofh0BA @ 02:49 — David Barnard
[^3]: yt:AWI3rofh0BA @ 03:35 — Ravi Mehta
[^4]: yt:AWI3rofh0BA @ 05:08 — Ravi Mehta
[^5]: yt:AWI3rofh0BA @ 10:23 — Ravi Mehta
[^6]: yt:AWI3rofh0BA @ 11:15 — Ravi Mehta
[^7]: yt:AWI3rofh0BA @ 12:05 — Ravi Mehta
[^8]: yt:AWI3rofh0BA @ 13:01 — Ravi Mehta
[^9]: yt:AWI3rofh0BA @ 13:47 — Ravi Mehta
[^10]: yt:AWI3rofh0BA @ 17:40 — Ravi Mehta
[^11]: yt:AWI3rofh0BA @ 18:46 — Ravi Mehta
[^12]: yt:AWI3rofh0BA @ 20:48 — Ravi Mehta
[^13]: yt:AWI3rofh0BA @ 22:06 — David Barnard
[^14]: yt:lkwX_kc0NS8 @ 42:09 — Jonathan Parra
[^15]: yt:lkwX_kc0NS8 @ 52:04 — Jonathan Parra
[^16]: yt:lkwX_kc0NS8 @ 49:45 — Jonathan Parra
[^17]: yt:-5zgc14t2gc @ 15:26 — Anada Lakra
[^18]: yt:AilakPuHdf4 @ 19:49 — David Barnard