Becoming an Olio Supporter means paying a small subscription for premium features while helping fund our mission. Here's everything you need to know.

An Olio Supporter pays a subscription to Olio to unlock premium features in the app, and supports our mission at the same time.

We're immensely grateful for our Supporters: their contributions help us grow the Olio community and our impact, so we can reduce more food and household waste and support more people. Find out more about our collective impact.

Alongside the warm fuzzy feeling of fighting waste and fuelling change, Olio Supporters currently enjoy:

Supporters unlock our 'Frequent' notification setting, which alerts you within 15 minutes of a new listing being added near you. That gives you a better chance of nabbing high-demand items before they're gone.

This benefit was introduced in June 2025 to help Olio stay free and sustainable. Sending faster alerts for millions of listings every day adds significant pressure on our systems, and limiting this feature to Supporters helps us manage infrastructure costs without putting paywalls on core features.

We have two packages: a monthly subscription at £2.99 (about the price of a cup of coffee) and an annual subscription at £17.99.

Note: Olio reserves the right to test different price models at any point. We won't notify our community or existing subscribers of such tests, to avoid any bias in the results.

The easiest way to become a Supporter is to open the menu in the top right corner of the Olio app and select 'Support Olio' at the top.

Yes. Your Supporter subscription is billed through the App Store (iOS) or Google Play (Android), so you can pay from your store balance instead of a card.

If you'd rather not use a card, you can buy an App Store or Google Play gift card with cash from many supermarkets and shops, then redeem it to your Apple Account or Google Account. That balance is used towards your purchases in the store, including your Olio Supporter subscription.

Please note: this is an App Store or Google Play gift card, not an Olio gift card. Olio doesn't sell gift cards, and we'll never ask you to pay by gift card code.

We previously tested a number of different prices, which is why some users may still be on different prices. Since May 2023, all new Supporters have been on the same price. Anyone who became a Supporter before that date stays on their original price plan for the time being (see below).

We have no immediate plans to move Supporters on the old pricing onto the new plan, but we can't rule it out in future. Any future price changes will be communicated at least 30 days before they take effect.

You may have restrictions in place for in-app purchases. To remove this restriction, follow the steps below.

Android

iOS

Olio is age restricted to 18+. You may not be able to download the app, purchase a Supporter subscription, or renew it if Google believes you may be under 18. To resolve this, verify your age in your Google Account. See Google's help guide to verifying your age.

Yes, both annual and monthly subscriptions renew automatically.

On your iPhone

On your Android phone

Your subscription renews automatically every month or year from the date of purchase. You can cancel at any time.

Android: you have up to two hours to return it for a full refund in Google Play. If you buy the Supporter version again, you won't be able to return it a second time.

iOS: you can request a refund directly from Apple.

For Android users (Google Play Store)

If you need to update an active subscription, you may need to go into Subscriptions in the Play Store app and manage the payment method for that subscription directly.

For iOS users (Apple App Store)

A few things Food Waste Heroes often ask about Supporter subscriptions:

No, anyone can be a volunteer. Being an Olio Supporter is completely separate from being a Food Waste Hero.

No, becoming a Supporter has no impact on your Food Waste Hero status.

Income from Supporter subscriptions is critical to covering the costs of running the app, so we need as many people as possible to become Supporters, including Food Waste Heroes who choose to.

We very much hope Food Waste Heroes feel fulfilled, recognised and appreciated through their volunteering, the 10% allowance, and recognition within the app.

From time to time, you may notice that the price of becoming an Olio Supporter or Patron differs between people. We understand this can feel surprising, or even frustrating, so we want to explain why we do it.

Like many organisations, Olio occasionally tests different prices with small groups of people. This is called 'price testing', and it's a standard way to understand what price works best for the people using a product or service.

The alternative would be to simply guess the right price. If we guessed wrong, we could set it too high and put it out of reach for too many people, or too low, so the programme doesn't generate enough income to do what it's designed to do.

By testing different prices, we can learn what works best across our community and use that evidence to set our pricing over the longer term.

We appreciate it can feel unfair to discover that someone else has been shown a different price. Price tests are temporary, and being shown a particular price isn't a judgement about you or how much we think you should pay. It simply means you've been included in one of the groups in a test.

Becoming an Olio Supporter or Patron is also completely optional. The core Olio experience stays free to use, while Supporter and Patron plans offer extra benefits, such as an ad-free experience, for people who'd like them while helping to support Olio.

As a mission-led business, it's really important that we find a model that keeps Olio accessible to as many people as possible while generating the income we need to keep Olio running and growing our impact. Price testing helps us make those decisions based on what our community actually does, rather than on guesswork.