Recharge vs Loop vs Skio After the $105M Acquisition (2026)

The subscription category got its biggest news in years on April 30, 2026: Recharge acquired Skio for $105 million in cash. Both platforms run separately for now, but a comparison that used to be three independent companies is now two corporate families, and that changes how you should read it. Facts checked June 11, 2026, against each vendor's listing, pricing page, and docs; no referral relationship with any app here.

The short version

• Recharge (4.8 stars, 2,166 reviews) is the incumbent: the deepest enterprise ecosystem, hands-on migration on its $499 Plus tier, and now Skio's owner. Its pricing carries the category's stiffest take: 1.49 percent plus 19 cents per order on the $99 Starter.
• Loop (4.9 stars, 677 reviews) is the value-and-independence play: a free plan to 50 subscriptions, the lowest take rates of the three (1 percent on Starter, 0.75 on Pro), no per-order fee, and free white-glove migration. After the acquisition it's the major mid-market platform not owned by Recharge.
• Skio (5.0 stars, 239 reviews) is the premium experience: passwordless one-time-passcode login, genuinely two-way SMS subscription management (reply MENU to skip, swap, pause, or add), dynamic build-a-box. One plan at $599 a month (or $499 annual) plus 1 percent and 20 cents per order, and it now answers to Recharge.

The take-rate math, because the base fee is a decoy

Subscription apps monetize on percentages, so the comparison only makes sense at your volume. Using each vendor's published rates at a $50 average order:

Recharge's 19-cent per-order fee is the quiet multiplier: at 2,000 orders it adds $380 a month before the percentage. Loop charges no per-order fee at all. Skio's flat $599 makes it overkill below roughly $30,000 a month and increasingly fair above it.

And below all of that sits the budget tier the big three don't talk about: Appstle (5.0 stars, 7,357 reviews, the largest review count in the category) runs free to $100 a month with zero transaction fees, and Seal (4.9, 2,733 reviews) starts free with flat subscriber-capped tiers from $5.95. Under about $10,000 a month in subscription revenue, the math usually favors them dramatically.

What you're paying the premium for

• Churn and cancellation flows: all three ship multi-step save flows; Recharge Plus adds A/B testing on them, Skio's drag-and-drop builder is the slickest, and all three integrate with Intelligems for offer testing.
• Customer portal: Skio's passwordless OTP login (email plus SMS code, no password ever) is its signature and genuinely reduces "how do I log in" tickets. Recharge and Loop both ship branded portals; Loop's includes one-click actions from its Starter tier.
• SMS management: Skio's two-way SMS (reply to skip, swap, pause, add products) is the deepest. Recharge's Concierge SMS does similar on Plus at 3 cents a segment. Loop doesn't document a native SMS portal.
• Bundles and build-a-box: Loop includes fixed and custom bundles from Starter; Skio does static and dynamic boxes (dynamic doesn't combine with prepaid); Recharge gates bundles to Plus.
• Migration: Loop's white-glove migration is free on paid plans, takes about two weeks, and the company claims 400+ Recharge migrations. Note what no one migrates: historical order data.
• The native option: Shopify's free Subscriptions app holds a 3.6 with reviewers citing no subscriber export, no bundles, and minimal retention tooling. It's a way to test the channel, not run it.

The reported complaints

From each listing's recent critical reviews, phrased as reported: Recharge's cluster on pricing escalation and lock-in ("fees amount to over 10% of our recurring revenue" from a seven-year merchant) and on payment-processing reliability after 2025 migrations. Loop's are structurally scarce (five one-star reviews in 677, the most recent substantive one about free-plan support limits). Skio's single one-star review dates to 2022, before its current maturity.

Decision rules

1. Under roughly $10,000 a month in subscription revenue: Appstle or Seal. Zero-percent take rates at that scale beat every feature on this page.
2. Mid-market, value plus a vendor that isn't your competitor's subsidiary: Loop. Lowest take, free migration, and independence is now a real differentiator, not a footnote.
3. Premium subscriber experience, SMS-managed, design-forward brand: Skio, priced honestly against the $599 floor, and with eyes open that its roadmap now lives inside Recharge.
4. Enterprise scale, deep ecosystem, dedicated support: Recharge Plus, negotiating the take rate at volume and getting the per-order fee on paper before signing.

Whichever platform runs your subscriptions, the products themselves still need to be machine-readable: subscription offers that exist only in an app widget are invisible to the AI assistants increasingly answering "where should I buy this monthly." The free AI readiness check shows what agents currently see.