No jokes on this page

The honest page

Everywhere else we play a character. Here we don't. This is how the money actually works, written the way we'd want it explained to us.

What Paywall is

Paywall is an iOS app that blocks apps you choose (Instagram, TikTok, games — anything) using Apple's own Screen Time controls. You block them because you asked to. When you try to open a blocked app, you hit a wall with two ways through it.

The two ways through the wall

• Wait. Every wall opens free after a delay you set when you armed it. This option always exists, on every wall, every time, and it never depends on your balance or subscription state. It is not hidden and never will be.
• Pay. If you don't want to wait, you can open the app immediately for a price you set yourself in advance — minimum $0.50 per unlock. That charge is a real purchase, made through Apple's payment system, and we keep it. That is the entire point: the fee only changes your behavior if it actually costs you something.

The prices, precisely

• You set the price per unlock when arming a wall. The floor is $0.50 — research on fines says amounts that feel trivial backfire.
• You set a monthly cap (default $20). Once you hit it, you cannot spend more that month, no matter what. This is deliberate: the app should sting, not harm.
• Every price is shown before you confirm. There are no surprise charges, no price changes mid-wall, no fees you didn't configure yourself.
• Arming walls requires a subscription. The exact price will be published before launch, with a free trial. Unlock fees are separate and optional — many users should ideally never pay one.
• If we ever sell unlock credits in packs, they will never expire.

Refunds

Design-intended unlock fees are not refundable — a refundable fee wouldn't work as a commitment device, and we say so up front. But nobody should ever lose money to a technicality: if a charge happens because of a bug, a sync error, a crash, or anything else that wasn't your own decision to unlock, we refund it, no argument. If you think a charge was wrong, email us and we'll assume you're right.

Cancellation

The subscription is a standard Apple subscription: cancel any time in your iPhone's subscription settings, in the usual place, with the usual two taps. Cancelling disarms future walls; it never traps you behind an existing one — the free wait works regardless.

What we do with your data

The website collects one thing: the email you give the waitlist. The app's job is to block apps, not to study you.

Who is behind this

One person with a phone problem, building the tool they needed. Not a lab, not a growth team. If something's wrong, the person reading your email is the person who wrote the code: founder@joinpaywall.com.