Camera app VSCO, which has an ad-free social feed and makes its money on subscriptions, says 2M+ people paid $20 in 2018 for its premium service
The camera app VSCO is unlike its social counterparts. Though it has a feed similar to Facebook's News Feed and Twitter's Timeline … Tweets: @kantrowitz , @kantrowitz , @kantrowitz , and @caseynewton . Thanks: @kantrowitz Tweets: Alex Kantrowitz / @kantrowitz : This week's newsletter: A look at what a social network without ads looks like. Spoiler: No like counts, no follower counts, no engagement-driving algorithm, no obsession with “time on site.” A look at VSCO, a camera app w/ 2+ million paying members: https://link.buzzfeed.com/... https://twitter.com/... Alex Kantrowitz / @kantrowitz : News in here: VSCO surpassed 2 million paying members in 2018 and is on track to hit 4 million in 2019, per @joeldflory. At $20 a subscription, that's $80 million in projected revenue this year. https://link.buzzfeed.com/... tip @techmeme Alex Kantrowitz / @kantrowitz : tl:dr: Subscriptions work. They created a healthier relationship between builder and user. Social media companies should consider them more seriously. And perhaps you'll consider subscribing to the Tech Giant Update? If, so here's the link: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ... Casey Newton / @caseynewton : This @kantrowitz piece on subscription social networks (https://t.co/...) made me look up how long ago Twitter started considering a paid service for power users. It's been two years! https://www.theverge.com/... Thanks: @kantrowitz
Context & Ripple Effects
VSCO has spent years running the experiment most social platforms only discuss: a feed with no ads, no like counts, and no follower counts, funded entirely by subscriptions. After its 2015 Series B backed the camera-first approach, the company now discloses the numbers behind the bet — over 2 million people paid $20 for premium in 2018, and it projects $80M in 2019 revenue on a path to 4 million subscribers.
That disclosure lands as a counterpoint to the engagement-driven feeds of Facebook's News Feed and Twitter, and it set up the arc the later coverage confirms: by late 2019 VSCO was trending toward 4 million paying users at a reported $550M valuation, and by 2024 the company was profitable — even as its top-tier Pro product settled at 160K subscribers alongside 200M total users, showing how hard paid conversion stays.
First-order effects
- VSCO can fund product development from roughly $40M-plus in 2018 subscription revenue without optimizing for time-on-site, freeing it to omit the engagement mechanics its feed rivals treat as mandatory.
- The disclosed subscriber count turns 'ad-free social' from a niche stance into a measurable business other founders and investors can benchmark against.
Second-order effects
- Ad-dependent rivals face a comparison point: when Meta, Twitter, and Snapchat later rolled out subscription fees and features, the coverage framed them as aimed at professional creators filling feeds because regular users post too infrequently — the inverse of VSCO's mass-market $20 tier.
- Pricing pressure emerges across tiers: VSCO moved from a $20 consumer plan to a $59.99/year Pro product, splitting what casual users get free from what professionals pay for.
Third-order effects
- If subscription funding holds while ad-funded feeds keep chasing engagement, expect the broader pay-to-play pattern where functionality users once expected free — security, visibility, support — migrates into premium tiers across consumer social.
- The structural question this data point sharpens: whether paid models can scale beyond a small converting minority, since VSCO's own trajectory shows millions of payers coexisting with a user base of 200M who mostly never subscribe.
The trend: Consumer social platforms are testing whether direct subscription revenue can replace advertising as the core business model, with VSCO supplying the earliest large-scale proof and cautionary conversion numbers.