The App Store gives you 100 promo codes per version, and they only unlock the app itself.

How many promo codes does each store give you, and when does the count reset?

Apple's number is 100, and the unit it is attached to matters more than the number. App Store Connect Help says you can request up to 100 promo codes per version of each platform your app supports. There is no monthly or six-monthly refill published alongside it. The allowance follows your release train, so an app on iOS and macOS has its own 100 for each of those platforms, and the next version brings another set. Every code is valid for four weeks from the date it was generated and can be used only once.

Google's numbers are quarterly and split in two. You can create up to 500 promo codes per quarter across all non-subscription promotions in an app, in any mix you like. Google's own worked examples are 500 paid app codes, 500 codes for one one-time product, 250 of each, or 100 codes for each of five one-time products. Subscription promotions are counted separately and do not eat into that 500. There the limit is 10,000 one-time use codes per quarter per subscription product, or a custom code whose redemption limit you set between 2,000 and 99,999.

The quarter boundary has two edges nobody warns you about. Unused codes do not carry over, so an unspent allowance is simply lost at the end of a quarter. And on the first day of a new quarter the console can refuse to make new codes at all. Google's advice there is to wait 24 hours and try again, which is worth knowing if your campaign starts on the first of the month. One more thing you cannot undo: once a promotion exists you cannot change how many codes are in it, and you cannot switch it to a different type.

App Store Connect Help, request and manage promo codes, read 10 October 2026

Play Console Help, create promotions, read 10 October 2026

Can a promo code pay for an in-app purchase?

On Google Play yes. On the App Store no, and this is where most plans go wrong. Apple describes a promo code as a free copy of apps on iOS, macOS or tvOS, offered to potential customers or reviewers. It unlocks the download, not the paywall behind it. If what you want to give away is a month of your premium tier, a promo code is the wrong object and the Promo Codes page is the wrong screen.

The right one on Apple's side is an offer code. You create an offer against a specific In-App Purchase or subscription, set who is eligible, then generate codes for it. App Store Connect Help gives offer codes a far bigger budget than promo codes: up to 1 million codes per app per quarter, shared across all subscriptions, with the same per-quarter ceiling for In-App Purchase offers and up to 10 active offers at a time. One-time-use codes come in batches of 500 to 25,000 and must carry an expiry date of at most six months. A custom code is a name you choose, up to 64 characters, with a redemption limit of up to 25,000 at a time and an expiry date that is optional. Redeeming any of them inside your app needs the right StoreKit method and a recent OS, so check that before you print anything. If you are still deciding what to sell, the walkthrough on subscriptions covers the products these codes attach to.

Google keeps one word for all three cases, which is simpler to say and stricter in practice. A promo code can give a user a free paid app, a one-time product or a subscription. A subscription promo code is always a free trial of between 3 and 90 days, applied to that subscription's backwards compatible base plan, and it replaces any free trial or offer already sitting there. Custom codes exist only for subscriptions, are only redeemable inside your app, and only work for people who have never subscribed. Before any of this works for subscriptions or one-time products you have to integrate In-app Promotions in the app, and Google is explicit that an inactive product cannot be promoted at all.

Play Console Help, create promotions, read 10 October 2026

How do you create the codes and get them to people?

The App Store path is short. Open Apps, select your app, click Promo Codes in the sidebar, and the page opens with Generate selected. Under App Promo Codes, enter how many version codes you want. Click Generate Code at the top right, read and agree to the contract terms for Apple to distribute free versions of your app, then confirm. The codes land on the History tab, where you can view them, copy them, or download a text file. That table also records the date each batch was generated, which is the only way to work out when the four weeks run out. You need the Account Holder, an Admin, an App Manager or a Marketing user to do it.

The Play Console path is a form. Go to Promo codes under Monetize with Play, click Create promo code, then review and agree to the Promo codes Terms of Service. You name the promotion, pick start and end dates, select the promotion type, and enter how many codes you want. For a subscription you also choose the subscription and the trial length. For a custom code you type the code and its redemption limit. Set the status to On, click Create, wait a few seconds, then use the download link to get a CSV file of one-time use codes.

Google's rules for custom codes are worth reading before you invent one. They have to be unique per app, so you cannot reuse a code for a later campaign. They must be alphanumeric, and they are not case sensitive. They cannot contain offensive words. Google also suggests putting a year or a date at the end so you can tell later which campaign a code belonged to, which costs nothing and saves an argument. Both stores leave distribution to you: Apple says any means, Google suggests printing the codes or sending a deep link by email or an in-app notification.

App Store Connect Help, request and manage promo codes, read 10 October 2026

What do promo codes not do, and where do they actually help?

They do not create demand. One hundred free downloads is a hundred downloads, and the people who take a free code are not the people who were going to pay. Where codes earn their place is in the handful of cases where money is the obstacle rather than interest: reviewers and journalists who will not buy an app to evaluate it, awards judges, people at an event, a customer you want to apologise to, and the testers who helped you get the thing finished. Apple names reviewers in its own one-line description of what promo codes are for.

A redeemed app behaves almost like a bought one. Apple says the customer can update to new versions as normal. The exception is that they cannot rate or review the app, so a pile of codes will never move your star rating. Codes can redeem versions that are not released yet, which is what makes them usable under an embargo. Codes for tvOS or multi-platform apps must be redeemed on an iOS device first. Promo codes cannot be generated at all for apps available only through Apple Business Manager or Apple School Manager, and an app removed from sale on every storefront can neither generate nor redeem them, even when a version is sitting in Ready for Distribution.

On Google Play the cliff is the end date. Once a promotion's end date has passed the code is expired, nobody can redeem it, and you can no longer view or update it in Play Console, so anything you printed is now litter. Set the end date later than you think you need and pause the promotion instead if you want it to stop early. Treat codes as one line in a launch plan rather than the plan: pair them with the slower work of getting your first users and with app store optimisation, which is what brings people who pay.

Play Console Help, create promotions, read 10 October 2026