The Cost of Privacy: are privacy-first business models sustainable?
Most apps don’t make money from subscriptions. They make money from you. Your data — browsing history, app usage, personal behaviour — is worth cold, hard cash.
We ran the numbers for our app, Magic Lasso Adblock, and here’s what we found:
Current Subscription revenue per user: $25.50/year
Potential Data broker revenue per user: $30+/year
Meaning: we could more than double our profit margins overnight by selling user data.
And it gets worse: Apple’s 15-30% App Store tax only applies to subscriptions — not data deals. So the platform that markets itself as privacy-first is actively incentivising the opposite.
Still, we said no. No tracking, no selling, no compromises.
But it raises the question: are privacy-first business models sustainable?
Why I’m sharing this:
Transparency. Most apps won’t admit what user data is actually worth, let alone publish the numbers. We wanted to show the real opportunity cost of building with privacy at the core.
If you’re building a consumer product, you’ll face this trade-off sooner or later:
Take the easy data money 💰
Or build a slower, subscription-driven business with trust at the centre 🛡️
We’ve chosen the second path. But would you?
Question: If you were in our position, would you forgo 2x profits to protect user privacy?
Read the full breakdown here:
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