App Store offer codes vs. promo codes: what's the difference

Apple has shipped two genuinely different systems for giving away paid content over the years, and it's easy to reach for the wrong one. Here's the actual distinction, not the marketing-speak version.

Promo codes

The older mechanism. A promo code redeems a specific version of a paid app (or a specific in-app purchase) directly through the App Store app or a redeem link, entirely outside of a subscription context. They're issued in fixed batches per app version through App Store Connect, and once you've used your allocation for a version, you don't get more until you ship an update.

Offer codes

The newer, more flexible mechanism, originally built for subscriptions but now usable more broadly. Offer codes are generated on demand — no fixed per-version batch limit in the same way — and redeem through a direct link (apps.apple.com/redeem?ctx=offercodes&...) that takes the user straight into the App Store to install, without them ever seeing a payment screen. That link-based flow is what makes offer codes the right fit for a giveaway you're distributing cold, through a site, social post, or email — there's no App Store Connect UI friction on the claimant's side at all.

Which one should you use

• Running a giveaway to people you've never met (a launch promo, a deal site listing, a social giveaway) — use offer codes. The direct-link redemption is what makes it work at any scale without support overhead.
• Giving a specific reviewer or partner a copy of a specific version — promo codes are still fine here, since you're not optimizing for frictionless mass redemption.
• Free tier, subscription apps — offer codes are natively built for subscription products (a free trial extension, a free month), which promo codes were never designed to handle cleanly.

The practical takeaway

If you're running any kind of public giveaway — which is the whole point of listing on a site like this one — generate offer codes, not promo codes. The redemption experience for the person claiming it is meaningfully better, and it's the format every deal-distribution flow (including code upload here) is built around.