Guideline 5.6 - Legal: Manipulative In-App Purchase Offers on Cancellation

Apple is rejecting your app because it attempts to manipulate customers into making unwanted In-App Purchases. Specifically, the app displays a discounted offer when the user cancels the initial purchase flow — for example, showing a reduced-price 'Yearly - Unlimited' subscription after the user dismisses the original paywall.

Under guideline 5.6 (Developer Code of Conduct), developers must not use manipulative or coercive tactics to pressure users into purchases they did not intend to make.

Apple considers it manipulative when an app detects a user's intent to decline a purchase and immediately counters with a discounted or reframed offer designed to exploit the cancellation moment. The key issue is not offering discounts per se — it's the timing and context. Presenting a lower price specifically in response to a user attempting to leave the purchase flow creates a high-pressure sales tactic that Apple views as manipulating the customer's decision.

Common triggers include: showing a modal with a discounted price when the user taps the close button on a paywall, presenting a 'special one-time offer' immediately after dismissing a subscription screen, or reducing the displayed price in real-time as the user navigates away. Apple's reviewers are specifically trained to test cancellation flows, so this pattern is caught consistently.

There's also a caveat to this rule. In the past, Apple used to include language in their rejections from this guideline that said you couldn't show a "better offer" immediately after a user declined a purchase. In Apple's parlance, "better" equals cheaper. So there's an argument that you can show a different product, different intro offer, or different subscription tier entirely and potentially be compliant.