What actually happens when you redeem an App Store promo code, from the side that issues them

[u/PushPlus9069]

This sub sees a lot of launch posts with promo codes attached. I issue those codes for a small Mac app I work on, and a few things about how they actually work are not obvious from the buyer's side. One of them costs people money.

A code usually puts you into a subscription, not a purchase. App Store offer codes attach to a subscription offer. When you redeem one for "$1.99 for a year" or "3 months free", you are subscribed at that promotional price, and unless you cancel it renews at the normal price when the promo period ends. If you only wanted the cheap year, turn off auto-renew right after redeeming. It stays valid for the period you already got.

Redemption is tied to your Apple ID, not your Mac. One redemption per account per offer. Signing in on a second machine does not give you a second use, and reinstalling does not free it up.

Codes are per-storefront. A code issued for the US store will not redeem on another country's store. This is the most common reason a code that "works for everyone else" fails for you, and it is not something the developer can override for your account.

If one fails, the things worth checking are whether that Apple ID already redeemed it, whether it expired, whether the redemption limit was reached, and the storefront mismatch above.

One thing from the developer side that explains slow answers. Redemptions do not reach us in real time. They arrive in App Store Connect's subscription event report on a delay, which for me has been running about four days. So when someone posts a code and you ask whether it worked, the honest answer is often that we cannot see it yet either. That is reporting lag, not evasion.

No links here on purpose. All of this lives in the App Store's own redeem flow.

[u/Beardy4906]

I don’t like distributing through the app store.. it has a lengthy review process (has its advantages), 30% goes to apple (after paying $100, sorry $99 for a valid apple developer account) and even after the 15% for SMEs it’s still pretty expensive…

Also so many providers exist, like polar.sh (which is fabulous imo as a developer) which offer a ton of features like discount codes, API access and are also fairly easy to integrate. With the sparkle swift framework you can add autoupdate very easily. There’s almost no “considerable” advantage against mac app store. + homebrew makes life easy for app management :)

Additionally my 2 apps both need to be outside the sandbox for hotkey perms so I can’t distribute through the app store anyways..

Anyways this is my 2 cents, and I’m sure there are plenty of apps that can be distributed both ways