// glossary
App Store revenue terms, defined.
The vocabulary used across RevenueHog's guides, docs and dashboards: each term in a few honest sentences, with a link to the page that treats it fully. Deep-link any term: /glossary#mtr.
MRR (monthly recurring revenue)
The value of all active subscriptions normalized to one month: an annual plan counts as its price ÷ 12, free trials count as $0. App Store Connect doesn't show an MRR number; computing one from Apple's reports means handling annual normalization, trials, grace periods and currency.
ARR (annual recurring revenue)
MRR × 12: the yearly run-rate of the current subscription base. It projects today's level forward, not a prediction of what the next twelve months will actually earn, since churn and growth both move it.
MTR (monthly tracked revenue)
A billing metric used by RevenueCat: the total revenue flowing through their platform in a month, which their pricing takes a percentage of past a free threshold. It measures what a tool sees, not what you recur: a one-time IAP spike raises MTR without touching MRR.
Proceeds
What's left of the customer price after Apple's commission: 70% at the standard rate, 85% for Small Business Program members and for subscriptions past one year of paid service. Apple's daily reports state proceeds per unit, and payout reports remain the source of truth for exact amounts.
S2S (server-to-server notifications)
Apple's App Store Server Notifications: HTTPS POSTs Apple sends to a URL you configure, one per subscription lifecycle event (purchase, renewal, cancellation, refund). Version 2 (the current one) delivers each event as a signed JWS. Apple allows exactly one production URL per app.
JWS (JSON Web Signature)
A signed token format: three base64url segments (header, payload, signature). Apple signs every Server Notification as a JWS with a certificate chain (x5c) ending at Apple's root CA, so a receiver can prove the event really came from Apple before trusting a cent of it.
signedPayload
The single field in a V2 Server Notification's JSON body: the JWS containing the whole event. Because the signature covers this exact string, forwarding notifications to other systems only works if you relay the body verbatim; decoding and re-serializing breaks everyone's verification downstream.
Grace period
An optional window (configured in App Store Connect) after a failed renewal charge during which the subscriber keeps full access while Apple retries billing. Honest MRR keeps grace-period subscribers in the paying base: they haven't churned, their card just bounced.
Billing retry
The state after a renewal charge fails (and any grace period ends): access has lapsed, but Apple keeps retrying the payment for up to ~60 days and the subscription can recover without user action. It's neither active nor churned. Pipelines that count it as either overstate one number and understate the other.
Intro offer
A discounted first period for new subscribers, in three shapes: free trial, pay-as-you-go (discounted price per period), or pay-up-front (one discounted payment covering several months). Only the free-trial shape is $0. The paid shapes contribute real revenue at the intro price, which MRR math must use instead of the standard price.
Small Business Program
Apple's reduced-commission program: enrolled developers who earned up to $1M in proceeds the prior calendar year keep 85% instead of 70% (about 21% more per sale). For analytics: Apple's daily reports already state Developer Proceeds at the member's actual 85% rate, so report-derived numbers need no adjustment — the share only matters when estimating proceeds from a customer price.
Publishable key
An API key that is safe to embed in a client app (pk_live_…) because it can only do low-risk things. In RevenueHog's case, the optional SDKs use it to send user-level attribution. It identifies your org; it can't read revenue or change settings.
see: SDK API reference →
Attribution
Linking purchases to your own user IDs. Apple's notifications identify subscribers only by transaction IDs, so telemetry sees anonymous customers; an optional identify + attribute call from your app upgrades them to real users. In RevenueHog this is the one thing the optional SDKs add. Everything else works without them.
see: The optional SDKs →
Trial conversion
The moment a free-trial subscriber makes their first real payment. It's the transition from $0 to paying, and the first time they count toward MRR. Conversion rate (converts ÷ trial starts) is the number that decides whether a trial is marketing or charity.
Churn
Subscribers leaving: expirations after a cancellation, refunds, failed billing that never recovers. Counted as event volume over a window (and as a rate against the base at the window's start). The subtlety is what notto count: a billing retry isn't churn yet, and a cancelled trial never paid to begin with.
missing a term you expected? the guides and docs go deeper than any glossary entry can.