What does Fold’em cost?

The full answer

Free for 7 days when Apple offers the trial to your account, and with the trial on nothing is charged on the day you choose. The subscription is not the protection: what you buy is the app, and your protection has no end date at all, so it runs until it is ended. The plan you choose does not change the road to ending protection: a request takes the same steps on either.

Two subscriptions, one job

Fold’em sells two auto renewing subscriptions, 1 month and 12 months, and no other kind of product. A redeemed invite code switches the paywall to an invite version of the same two, which carries an introductory offer of its own, and you are shown one pair or the other and never both. In the United States the approved prices are $9.99 a month and $49.99 a year; everywhere else the paywall prints the price Apple returns for your own store and currency, which is the only price that is ever charged. The yearly subscription carries a per month discount, and the paywall marks it with its saving against paying for 1 month twelve times over, which at US prices is 58 percent. A saving that is not positive is not printed at all.

Beside each subscription the paywall prints a daily estimate, worked out from that same localized price, so it can be compared to what a single bet costs. There is no free tier, no one off purchase and no lifetime plan. Family Sharing is off on both, so a subscription covers the Apple ID that bought it.

The plan is not the protection

The product keeps these two apart on purpose. Your protection is the blocking itself, and it has no end date: it holds until it is ended, either by a request to end it that was granted or by the release that follows the subscription going away. Your plan is how often Apple charges you. They are chosen on different screens and they do not talk to each other. Buying twelve months does not commit you for twelve months, and buying one month does not release you after one.

Billing therefore cannot become a request to end protection. Switching plan, cancelling renewal or letting a charge fail never starts protection and never counts as asking. What the subscription does control is whether the app is entitled to enforce at all: lose it and a 72 hour lapse window opens, after which protection ends unless the subscription is restored. That window is a separate mechanism with its own article. That is the only thread between the money and the block, and it runs one way.

What this does not do

Fold’em never sees or holds a card number: Apple takes the payment and tells the app only whether a subscription is active. The price on this page is the approved United States figure and is not a quote for another country; the paywall and the App Store are the only places a price is authoritative. Buying a subscription does not start protection, and paying for a longer one does not commit you for longer. There is no paid button anywhere in Fold’em that ends a block, at any price.