Meta vs RevenueCat vs Adjust. Or, more generally, ad platform vs subscription management platform vs MMP.
Nobody wants to reconcile these numbers. The differences are messy, the definitions are complicated, and the results often look inconsistent.
But making all three tools agree is not the goal. You can lose in two directions:
- Trust attributed revenue that never becomes cash, and eventually run out of money, which shuts you down.
- Become so conservative that you stop spending while braver competitors take the market, which pushes you out.
The goal is to understand what each comparison can and cannot tell you.
| Comparison | The question it answers | Check first | What it cannot tell you |
|---|---|---|---|
| Meta vs RevenueCat | What revenue can be matched to paid? | The unattributed share | The full paid total. Under ATT, revenue per channel is often a floor, though a wrong match or a different revenue definition can push it either way |
| Meta vs Adjust | How much credit should paid receive? | Campaigns, spend, timing, windows match | Whether paid was incremental |
| Adjust vs RevenueCat | Did the revenue actually arrive? | Same complete dates, same refund and fee treatment | Store payouts. It checks what was actually charged, not yet what the stores paid |
Each section below takes one row and lists what to match or look for before you trust the gap.
Meta vs RevenueCat: what revenue can be matched to paid?
RevenueCat sees the charge, but under ATT much of the revenue stays unattributed.
What to look for:
- The unattributed share
- Stable paid and organic proportions
- A repeatable gap, not identical totals
Meta vs Adjust: how much credit should paid receive?
This is the useful budget comparison, but only after you match the campaigns, spend, timing basis, and attribution windows. In one account I measured, campaigns on 1 day view ran about 20% ahead of the MMP on installs.
Match first:
- Campaigns and spend
- Snapshot against snapshot
- Click and view windows
Adjust vs RevenueCat: did the revenue actually arrive?
Compare total snapshot revenue over the same complete dates, with the same currency, timezone, and refund and fee treatment.
What to look for:
- Totals stay close
- Complete weeks move together
- Edge and partial weeks are excluded
- Sandbox and test purchases removed
- Same date basis on both sides, install cohort or purchase date
Consistency does not mean identical numbers
When looking for consistency, do not ask whether the numbers are identical. Ask four questions:
- Are the same users and campaigns being compared?
- Are the same dates and timing logic being used?
- Are the attribution rules aligned? Against the MMP, I widen the view window in the MMP’s Meta configuration instead of cutting view attribution on Meta’s side.
- Does the difference stay reasonably stable over time? If not, it is not trustworthy yet.
A trustworthy difference is explainable, repeatable, and measured on the same basis, and that is enough to make a decision. What none of these comparisons tells you is whether paid was incremental, and that is a separate test. For Google App campaigns on iOS, where the three numbers are Google Ads, the MMP and SKAN, I cover the same problem in why they report different conversions.
If your three numbers disagree and you cannot tell which gap is normal, the growth audit is where I check this for an account, and it is bookable on its own at any spend level.
Sources
All opened and checked on 29 September 2026. None of these pages shows a date of its own.
- Apple Developer: User Privacy and Data Use, for tracking and the advertising identifier needing the user’s permission through ATT.
- Meta Business Help Center: Measure the results of your app ads, which says MMP results can differ from Ads Manager, typically because of different attribution windows.
- Meta Business Help Center: About attribution models and attribution settings, for the click and view windows Meta supports.
- RevenueCat Docs: Meta Ads, where revenue can be sent before or after store commission and estimated taxes.
- RevenueCat Docs: Adjust, for the same revenue choice, refunds sent without revenue, and sandbox events sent to Adjust in sandbox mode.
- RevenueCat Docs: Reconciling with App Store Financial Reports, for why RevenueCat revenue and Apple’s reports differ: transaction date against settlement date, exchange rates, and estimated taxes and commission.
- Adjust Help Center: Currency conversion, for revenue converted into the app’s reporting currency.
- Adjust Help Center: Set up your view in Datascape, for the UTC offset and the sandbox environment filter.
- Adjust Help Center: Attribution windows, for the impression window, 24 hours by default.
- Adjust Help Center: Set up Meta in Adjust, for the attribution settings on Meta’s network details page.