What Apple announced
In Get your subscriptions ready for iOS 27, Apple introduced two ways to buy a subscription for several people at once:
- Volume Purchasing, from 22 October 2026. Organisations that use Apple Business and Apple School Manager can buy your subscription through a single In-App Purchase and assign seats with a device management provider.
- Group Purchases, this winter. One subscriber buys several seats and invites others to join. Apple handles the seat assignment and the invitations.
Apple’s examples are a work team splitting the cost of a productivity app, a small business equipping a handful of employees, a department in a larger company, and collaborators sharing a creative tool.
On by default
The detail that matters most: since the announcement, multiseat purchases are enabled by default for subscriptions in App Store Connect. You can switch them off entirely, or choose where they are offered: the App Store, Apple Business and Apple School Manager. Apple’s help page, Manage purchase options for an auto-renewable subscription, covers the settings.
Who should leave it on
In our view, multiseat suits apps that are useful to several people in the same organisation or group: productivity, education, creative and team tools. It suits less well an app built around one person’s private life, such as a journal, a health log or a companion chat, where a seat bought by an employer may not be what either side expects.
Either way, decide on purpose rather than by default. If your app should offer seats, check that it makes sense for someone who did not buy the subscription themselves. If it should not, switch multiseat off.
Bundles and Suites come later
The same announcement covered Bundles, which sell several subscriptions in one purchase, within one app, across several apps from one developer or even across apps from different developers, and Suites, one subscription that works across a set of apps from a single developer. Apple says both arrive later this year with iOS 27 and later, and developers request access through a form on the Bundles and Suites page.
The one technical requirement
Apple’s advice for getting ready is short: make sure your app uses StoreKit 2 for In-App Purchases. If it still uses the original StoreKit API, which Apple deprecated in iOS 18, that is the change to plan first. Our StoreKit 2 guide shows the code.
Sources: Apple’s Get your subscriptions ready for iOS 27 (16 September 2026) and Updated Apple Developer Program License Agreement now available (13 October 2026), which adds terms for multiseat subscriptions.
Related: StoreKit 2 subscriptions · Subscription app development · Paywall best practices