Hi everyone,
I’m seeing a consistent one-day discrepancy between the expiresDate returned by the App Store Server API and the “Expires on” date shown in the iOS Settings / App Store subscription list. I’d like to confirm whether this behavior is expected or if I’m misunderstanding the way Apple rounds dates.
Reproduction steps
Step
Action
Result
1
Purchase a 1-month auto-renewable subscription on 23 June 2025 14:00 JST (UTC+9)
Transaction succeeds
2
Immediately fetch the transaction with GET /inApps/v1/subscriptions/{transactionId}
Response contains "expiresDate": "2025-07-23T05:00:00Z" (= 23 July 2025 14:00 JST)
3
On the same device open Settings › Apple ID › Subscriptions (or App Store › Account › Subscriptions)
UI shows Expires on: 22 July 2025
The same happens for every monthly renewal and on multiple devices. Region is Japan, device time zone Asia/Tokyo.
What I understand so far (and my hypothesis)
Apple’s docs say a monthly subscription renews “on the same calendar date” of the next month, so renewal in this example is 23 July.
If the renewal is scheduled for 23 July at 14:00 JST, the subscription is fully usable until the end of 22 July in calendar terms, because the new billing period starts the moment the 23rd begins in Apple’s canonical time zone.
Therefore, it might be intentional for the UI to display 22 July—i.e., “you can keep using it through the 22nd; on the 23rd it renews.”
This hypothesis makes sense internally, yet it still looks confusing to end users who read “Expires on 22 July” and assume access ends at 00:00 on the 22nd, a whole day earlier than in reality.
Questions
Is showing the day before the renewal date the official/expected behavior? If so, could Apple clarify that the “Expires on” label represents the last full calendar day rather than the exact expiry timestamp?
Which value should we surface in-app when telling users “Your subscription is valid until …”?
The server’s expiresDate (precise to the second, converted to user time zone), or
A UI-style date that’s one day earlier, matching Settings / App Store?
Does Apple have a public document describing this rounding/visual convention?
Have other developers encountered user confusion about the apparent 1-day “shortening” and, if so, how did you word your in-app messaging?
Any insight from Apple engineers or fellow developers would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you!
Topic:
App & System Services
SubTopic:
StoreKit
Tags:
Subscriptions
App Store
StoreKit
App Store Server API