3c. App

This licence grants the use of fonts in applications to effectively display the content. In most cases, one must review the EULA to determine whether the licence covers desktop applications or is restricted to mobile software. The fonts are embedded in the app and loaded into the user interface.

The App licence is sometimes offered as App/ePub or App/Game. For foundries with a separate licence for games, we have observed that the metrics and pricing align with the App, so we have not made a separate analysis.

There is a predominant measuring unit here, the number of apps that will include the font. We use the general term ‘use case’ instead, as it is appropriate for other licences too. Some other metrics are connected to who sees/reads/interacts with the app (downloads and monthly users), but, in this case, the percentage in the sample is smaller (19%) than in web licences.

We have also identified five foundries that rely on the number of years as the only metric. The sample includes more non-perpetual licences for apps than for other purposes, with seven charging an annual subscription and eight imposing limits based on the number of years.

The font licence cost for apps is often higher than that for web and desktop, sometimes doubling or even increasing tenfold. However, a few foundries maintain the same basic fee. The result is a broad range, with most foundries keeping their prices below 250€ for one text font.

Popular measuring units in app licences

Use case
72
Number of employees
22
Monthly users
18
Downloads
18
Workstations
5
Number of years
5
Number of users
4
Operating systems
1

Pricing in app licences

660€
125€ (median)
8€

Popular tiers for Number of Apps

The number on the right indicates the amount of foundries that offer that particular tier. We show the 10 most popular tiers in the sample.

1 app
68
2 apps
40
3 apps
43
4 apps
24
5 apps
33
6 apps
17
7 apps
13
8 apps
13
9 apps
13
10 apps
28
Unlimited
16

Popular tiers for Number of Monthly Users

Three type foundries include an option for an unlimited number of monthly users. Counting all the different metrics for app use, a total of 27 offer an unlimited option.

5K users
9
10K users
12
25K users
7
50K users
9
100K users
13
250K users
9
500K users
11
1M users
11
5M users
9
10M users
5

Popular tiers for Number of Downloads

The lowest limit we have found is 50 app downloads; the highest value peaks at 1,000 million downloads.

5K downloads
4
10K downloads
12
50K downloads
8
100K downloads
10
250K downloads
5
500K downloads
11
1M downloads
14
3M downloads
5
5M downloads
11
Unlimited
5