Why Are Free Apps Free? Reading Ads, Pricing and Data Use

The short answer

When you install a free app, the word "free" does not tell you how much you can use or how your data is handled. Three things are worth checking: what the features cover, the pricing terms, and data handling. Do not decide by price alone ("free means risky", "paid means safe"); look at each one using the information the developer and store publish.

How an app can be free

There is more than one way a free app pays for itself.

• Showing ads
• Offering the basics free and charging for extra features or storage (freemium)
• Accepting donations or supporter payments
• Serving as a gateway to the company's other business, such as its main service or shops

Even so, you cannot conclude that a free app sells personal information, or that a paid app collects nothing. Check pricing and data handling separately.

What is free, and when charges begin

The conditions that tend to cause trouble later are these.

• Limits on how many items or how much storage you can keep
• Exporting your data being a paid feature
• Whether ads appear, and whether paying removes them
• Whether a free trial turns automatically into a paid subscription, and on what date

For example, if you log a year of spending in a free budgeting app and only then find that exporting costs money, deciding whether to stay or switch becomes harder. Reading the store description and the in-app pricing screen at the start helps you avoid that.

Privacy information and privacy policies

On Apple's App Store, each app's page has a privacy section showing the types of data the app may collect and how they are used, grouped under headings such as "Data Used to Track You" and "Data Linked to You". Developers report this information themselves. According to Apple, if the free and paid versions of an app collect data differently, the developer must declare both.

The developer's privacy policy may explain in more detail how collection differs by situation, so read it as well. If you use a different app store, check how that store presents this information.

Permissions, ads and tracking are different things

A permission lets an app use something on your device, such as the camera, photos or location. The question is whether a permission matches the purpose of the feature. A QR scanner asking for the camera makes sense. For permissions with no obvious link, you can try using the app without granting them.

That said, asking for a permission does not by itself make an app malicious. And an app being able to see your photos is not the same as it sending them to an outside server. Whether data leaves the device is something to check in the privacy information and policy.

The same goes for ads. Showing ads and tracking are not the same thing. Apple describes tracking as linking data collected in an app with data from other companies' apps, websites and so on for advertising, or sharing it with data brokers.

Can you take your data with you?

Think about the day you stop using the app, too. Whether you can export your records, in what format, and what happens to your data when you delete your account all vary by app. The more important the records you keep in an app, the more it is worth checking this before you start.