# $0.99 to see results, then 3 days later it charges 39.99: Cognius makes its money from a quiz page, the app just delivers the results

> Source: https://stringers.io/en/apps/ios_6812234006.html (Stringers / 什么值得做, generated 2026-11-08)
> Stringers answers one question every day: what small product can one or two people build in a few months and actually make money from. Numbers come from 15 databases we collect daily, each with source and date.
> For agents: these verdicts and the underlying databases (verified revenue, App Store / Google Play charts, ad libraries, GitHub, Product Hunt…) are queryable live over MCP — tools today / hot / products / directions / direction / data. Setup: https://github.com/komako-workshop/stringers (the user logs in at stringers.io → "配置 agent" to get a personal URL). Site index: https://stringers.io/llms.txt

> It runs quiz ads on Instagram in 11 languages. The $0.99 entry price gets people to pay on impulse, and if they don't cancel it converts to $39.99 a month. People who pay are told to download the app, and downloads and ratings (mostly billing complaints) grow along with ad volume.

[Mobile App](https://stringers.io/en/apps/index.md) · iOS · written 11-6

C

Cognius: Know Yourself · Mindly Apps Ltd

# $0.99 to see results, then 3 days later it charges 39.99: Cognius makes its money from a quiz page, the app just delivers the results

**What it is** An app with 40 psychology self-tests including IQ, personality, and attachment style. AI turns the results into card-style readings, plus an AI chat guide. In practice it is the delivery end of a paid web quiz.

**Why it took off** It runs quiz ads on Instagram in 11 languages. The 0.99 dollar entry price makes people pay on impulse, and if they don't cancel it auto-converts to 39.99 dollars a month. People who pay are asked to download the app, so downloads and ratings (mostly charge complaints) rise with ad spend.

**C** **How you could follow it** Don't copy its pricing, copy its structure: a web quiz, web checkout, then a handoff to the app, AI-written personalized reports, prices stated clearly, and test Meta ads first in cheap smaller-language markets.

Grade C: this is a mature gray playbook that myIQ, BetterMe and others have run for years. The category is crowded and Cognius is itself a follower. Its money comes from ad-buying skill and unclear auto-renewal, with high chargeback, account-ban and delisting risk. The part worth learning is the funnel structure; copying the whole thing isn't worth it. Few people know about it yet

Data (updated daily) · First launched 2026-09-28 · Korean rating 18 · 11-06 charted in 11 stores

iOS · best category chart rank · by store

Korea Czechia SK

Data 2026-10-28 → 2026-11-06 (10 days, 10 observations). Lower rank is higher; gaps mean it wasn't charted that day

iOS · rating count · Korea

Data 2026-10-31 → 2026-11-06 (7 days, 7 observations). Apple doesn't publish download counts; rating growth is a proxy for downloads.

Cognius: Know Yourself is an "AI psychology self-test" app that launched at the end of September. Over the past two weeks it has charted in health categories in 11 countries including Korea, Czechia and Egypt. But App Store isn't what pulled it up. In front of it sits a web quiz page that has been running ads since June. It first takes 0.99 dollars to show test results, then if you don't cancel it charges 3 dollars a month after 39.99 days, and only after you pay does it ask you to download the app. The app's downloads and ratings are really carried along by the sales that quiz page makes.

### A Korean one-star review

In 2026 Nov 3, a 1-star review appeared in the Korean App Store:

> I clicked through an Instagram ad to a Korean page that looked good. At about 0.9 dollars it seemed cheap, so I paid. Then 3 days later it auto-charged me 39 dollars. The app is all in English and no help at all, I don't even know what this app is, so why was I charged?

The same week, the Korean store had a dozen more reviews with similar titles: "Auto-billing", "Charged without consent", "50k won gone, refund me". The Korean store has 20 ratings, averaging 1.7 stars (App Store Korean store, 11-06). A US store review from Oct 30 was clearer: "I finished the test, paid 1 dollars with Apple Pay to see my result. After paying, it asked me to download the app to see the result I had already paid for."

Put these reviews together and you have Cognius's entire business.

### What it is

On the store page it's an "AI emotional companion": 40 psychology mini-tests (attachment style, stress response, communication style, empathy, plus ADHD and autism self-tests), with AI turning results into card-style readings and an AI guide that remembers your results and chats with you. The developer is Mindly Apps Ltd, registered in Nicosia, Cyprus, and it has only this one app. It supports 11 languages, and the store description is written in Spanish.

Its real entry point is the web: quiz.cognius.app, titled "What kind of person are you?", starts by asking for your gender. cognius.app/iqtest is the IQ test. The site is built on an off-the-shelf quiz-funnel tool, runs dozens of page variants for A/B testing, and takes payment through Stripe, bypassing Apple.

### How much it grew

|  | Metric | Sources |
|---|---|---|
| iOS US store | 64 ratings, average 4.0 | App Store,11-06 |
| iOS Korea store | 20 ratings, average 1.7, up 16 in a week | App Store,11-06 |
| iOS new ratings by store | 10-28 to 11-06: about 20 new ratings | Daily App Store data by store |
| Charted | Ranked #11 to #83 in 203 countries' health free charts, not in the overall chart | App Store,11-06 |
| Google Play | 10-31 5,037 installs → 11-06 7,884 installs, up over 2,800 times in a week | Google Play,11-06 |
| Trustpilot(cognius.app) | 876 reviews, 3.4 stars; page built 2026-06 | Trustpilot |
| Version | Launched just over a month ago, now at 1.0.14 | App Store |

The app numbers are small. The countries where it charted, like Czechia, Slovakia, Azerbaijan and Kuwait, have very low bars in health charts, where a few downloads can reach the top 200. The real sign of scale is 876 reviews on Trustpilot: for an app only a month old, the web side has likely been paid for by thousands or tens of thousands of people (inferred, roughly estimated from review count).

The timeline shows the order: the Trustpilot page was created in June, and by Jul 11 there was already a Facebook post saying "Cognius app is a scam" with 141 comments, all about the 39.99 dollar charge. The web quiz page ran at least three months before the app.

### Where the money comes from

Pricing is in cognius.app's subscription terms:

- Trial 0.99 dollars (or 0.99 euros, 0.99 pounds) for 3 days;

- Auto-renews monthly at 39.99 dollars (39.99 euros, 34.99 pounds) unless canceled;

- There are also 7-day 4.79-dollar and 30-day 7.99-dollar entry prices, which likewise convert to 39.99 dollars a month when they expire;

- Subscriptions bought on the web can only be canceled in the web account or by contacting support.

In this setup, the 0.99 dollars isn't there to make money, it's there to get your card on file. The real money is the 39.99-dollar charge on day 4. A US-store user wrote in Oct 23: a 39.99-dollar charge failed twice, then a 27.99-dollar attempt also failed, and finally a 20-dollar charge went through. Looks like they retry at a lower price after a failed charge (my inference, based on this one review only).

It also built a separate page, iq.cognius.app, titled "Questions About Your Cognius Charge?", which says "Skip the 30-day bank dispute process and contact us directly, we usually resolve it within hours." Almost every negative Trustpilot review gets a templated reply from support, and many people say a single email got them a refund. Refunding users is small change for it. What it fears is users going to their bank for a chargeback, because a high chargeback rate gets the Stripe account banned and the whole quiz page shuts down. So refund handling is part of the business too.

### Where users come from

Only one thing can be confirmed: **paid Meta and Instagram ads** . Korean users say they clicked through an Instagram ad to a Korean page, and some say "the ad popped up and I just took an IQ test on a whim". How many ads ran and how much was spent can't be found from outside.

Almost no other channels show up. Searching cognius on TikTok turns up no videos, nobody discusses it on X, and on Reddit it is only named in a warning thread in r/iqtest. Instagram has a few scattered people posting their IQ scores (one Indonesian user posted 119), a very small amount.

Why did it surface in a dozen-plus countries at once? Because it translated the quiz page into 11 languages and ran ads by country. The app is just the step after payment, which is why reviews come in Korean, English, German, Russian and Spanish.

### Who it's competing with

Cognius didn't invent this business. It is one of a large group of similar players:

| Product | Form | Scale | How it differs from Cognius |
|---|---|---|---|
| myIQ | Web + app | Claims 80M+ people have taken it, heavy Instagram ad spend | IQ only, far larger in scale |
| IQBrain | Web | Multiple charge complaints on Reddit and Apple forums (1.98 dollars → 28.80 dollars) | No app |
| Testora, iqscore.me | Web | Complaints on r/iqtest | Also 0.99 dollars → 39.99 dollars a month |
| Breeze: Self-Discovery | iOS / Android | US store 75k rating | Long-running "quiz + self-discovery subscription", retains users with long-term content in the app |
| BetterMe: Mental Health | iOS | US store 16k rating | A big company that also started from web-quiz paid acquisition |
| Innie | iOS | US store 1,386 ratings, listed 2026-02 | An "AI self-discovery" app that rose in the same period, not relying on paying to see results |
| 16Personalities, Truity and others | Web | massive traffic | free results |
| ChatGPT | General AI | — | users let AI interpret personality tests themselves |

What Cognius adds beyond a plain IQ page is 40 psychology tests, AI-written card-style readings, and an AI guide that remembers you. That makes it look more like a real product, and gives people a reason to "download the App." But almost nobody in the reviews mentions these features. They're all talking about the charges.

One more detail: the same Cyprus company has already applied this playbook to dog training with a Woof Method, "two-minute quiz, get a custom training plan." It looks like a team that specializes in quiz funnels, running one category and then moving to the next.

### If it were you

**C: you can learn something, but copying it isn't worth it.** This is a mature gray-market play. Big players like myIQ and BetterMe have run it for years, and Cognius itself is just following the trend. Whether it makes money comes down to two things: whether you can run Meta ads, and whether you're willing to take on the risks of chargebacks, delistings, and account bans. The App itself has nothing worth copying.

**Who it suits:** small teams that already run Meta ads and can work out their acquisition costs and payback periods; or people with a subscription product who want to move part of their revenue off the App Store and onto the web.

**Who it doesn't suit:** indie devs who've never run ads and want to rely on organic App Store traffic; anyone hoping to win on product experience (users in this category pay because the ads push the test in front of them, not because the readings are good); anyone who can't stomach a screen full of 1-star ratings and refund emails.

**What's worth learning is the structure, not the pricing:**

1. web quiz → web payment → download the App to see results. Apple doesn't get its 30% cut, and on the web you can run A/B tests and multilingual landing pages freely. Off-the-shelf quiz funnel builders now exist, so you don't have to write your own.

2. "Pay a little to see your results" filters for people willing to pay better than a free trial does, and it captures payment cards along the way.

3. Use AI to turn a quiz result into a long, personalized reading, so people feel the money was worth it. The marginal cost is close to zero.

4. Copy the same quiz pages across categories: psychology, dog training, and the model also works for weight loss, language learning, and parenting.

**A different approach:** state the price clearly. The first screen says "Try for 3 days, then X per month, cancel anytime with one click." Set the monthly fee at a level users don't feel scammed by, and seriously work on retention inside the App. Conversion will be lower than Cognius's, but you won't be fighting chargebacks every day, and EU and South Korean consumer protection rules won't come after you. Those dozens of South Korean one-star reviews show that users in these markets will publicly complain, and regulators are strict about unclear auto-renewals.

**How to acquire users:** paid ads are the only route, mainly Meta and Instagram. The ad creative is the quiz question itself: "What's your IQ?" "What's your attachment style?" Start with a small-language market, where ads are cheap and there's less competition.

**When to move:** this play isn't tied to a time window, since similar operations have run for years. The real time limit is on Cognius itself. If its Stripe account gets banned, or Apple pulls the App over a flood of billing complaints, that could happen within months.

**What would show we got it wrong:** if six months from now Cognius's App itself keeps users, the US rating climbs into the thousands, and positive reviews start praising the AI guide and the quality of the readings, that would suggest "AI psychology self-tests plus companionship" has real demand beyond the ad funnel. At that point, a transparent-pricing, better-experience version would be worth a closer look, maybe even at a B or an A.

[iOS store page ↗](https://apps.apple.com/app/id6812234006)

**Research notes: competitor table, acquisition evidence, full research report**

Competitors

| Name | Where | Launched | Scale | How it differs from this one |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| myIQ(myiq.com) | Web | Years ago | Claims 80M+ test takers, heavy Instagram ad spend | IQ only, much larger scale; Cognius adds personality/attachment tests, AI readings, and an App |
| IQBrain(iqbrain.org) | Web | 2024 years ago | Multiple Reddit and Apple community threads about billing complaints | Pure web with no App; Cognius has an App and AI chat |
| Testora.pro / iqscore.me | Web | 2025–2026 | Unverified; complaints on r/iqtest | Pricing structure nearly identical ($0.99 → $39.99/month), but Cognius adds an App |
| Breeze: Self-Discovery Journey(Basenji Apps) | iOS | 2019-04 | iOS US 75k ratings | Established quiz funnel + self-exploration subscription with long-term in-App content; Cognius leads with AI-personalized readings and a memory-enabled guide |
| BetterMe: Mental Health | iOS | 2018-03 | iOS US 16k ratings | A big player that also buys traffic through web quiz funnels, with much larger brand and content scale |
| Innie: Self Discovery & Care(Ora Labs) | iOS | 2026-02 | iOS US store 1,386 ratings | A new AI self-exploration App that emerged around the same time, relying on the in-App experience rather than paid results |
| Dimensional: Personality Test | iOS | 2020-12 | iOS US store 8,690 ratings | Mostly free, offers multi-dimensional personality and social comparisons, doesn't rely on auto-renewals |
| 16Personalities / Truity / Attachment Project | Web | Years | Free testing site with massive traffic | Free results; Cognius charges before giving results |
| General-purpose large models like ChatGPT | Big-company features | — | — | Substitutable in capability; what Cognius sells is a packaged report pushed in front of you by ads |

Where users come from

- **Verified** **Meta/Instagram paid ads → web quiz** : South Korean App Store review: "Clicked through from Instagram to a nice Korean page, paid $0.9 because it was cheap, then got charged $39 after 3 days"; another user said "an ad popped up and I took an IQ test on a whim"; our Meta ad library doesn't index this Page

- **Verified** **Web payment, then App download (web2app)** : US review: "Paid $1 to see results, then was asked to download the App to see them after paying"; cognius.app runs a FunnelFox quiz flow (a dozen-plus ff-*-variation variants) with Stripe for payment

- **Verified** **Multilingual, multi-country localized ads, small-country category charts** : 11 languages; reviews in Korean, English, German, Russian, and Spanish; ranked 83–203 on Health & Fitness category charts in 11 countries including Czechia, Slovakia, Azerbaijan, Egypt, and Kuwait (appstore library)

- Inferred **Organic sharing of IQ scores by users** : users on Instagram post cognius.app/iqtest links to share their scores

- Inferred **TikTok / X / Reddit recommendations / press** : TikHub returns 0 results for cognius; x-radar has 0 posts in 60 days; Reddit only has scam-warning threads

## Cognius: Know Yourself (iOS id6812234006) research report

> 2026-11-06. Developer Mindly Apps Ltd (Nicosia, Cyprus, registration no. HE 491585). Listed on iOS 2026-09-28; Google Play version com.mindlyapps.cognius listed 2026-09-21.

### Bottom line

Cognius didn't grow on the App Store by itself. It's **an App that serves as the landing page of a web quiz funnel (IQ tests / "what kind of person are you" personality tests)** . Meta/Instagram ads drive people to the quiz pages on cognius.app, where they pay $0.99 after the quiz to "see results" and also start a 3-day trial that auto-charges $39.99/month if not canceled. People who've paid are asked to download the App to see their results, so App downloads and ratings rise with ad spend. Payments are collected on the web via Stripe, bypassing Apple. Rating growth is mostly driven by **people who paid and got charged coming back to leave 1 stars** , not by product quality.

### 1. Data

| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| iOS ratings across all stores (our library) | 10-28 3 → 11-06 24 reviews, +7 over the last 19 days | appstore library (data card) |
| iOS US store rating | 64 total, average 4.02 | iTunes lookup,2026-11-06 |
| iOS South Korea store rating | 20 total, average **1.7** ; in the library over 7 days +16 | iTunes lookup / appstore library |
| Charted | Ranked 11–83 on Health & Fitness category charts in 203 countries including Czechia, Slovakia, Azerbaijan, Egypt, Kuwait, Venezuela, Paraguay, and South Korea, but never reached the overall chart | appstore library 2026-11-06 |
| Google Play | 10-31 5,037 installs → 11-06 7,884 (7 days +2,847); rating 89 → 176 | googleplay library |
| Language | 11 languages (English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Turkish, Czech, Arabic) | iTunes lookup |
| Current version | 1.0.14 (11-06 updates), with 14 releases in just over a month | iTunes lookup |
| Trustpilot cognius.app | 876 reviews, 3.4 stars; page built 2026-06-23 | trustpilot.com/review/cognius.app (creation date inferred from the business-unit ID timestamp) |
| Trustpilot iq.cognius.app | About 15 more, nearly all billing complaints | trustpilot.com/review/iq.cognius.app |

**Key timeline** : Trustpilot page created 2026-06; on Facebook, 2026-07-11 already had a "Cognius app is a scam" post (141 comments, about a $39.99 charge). **The web funnel was running at least 3 months before the App** . The App was only added at the end of September.

### 2. How it makes money (funnel breakdown)

1. **Entry point** : ads land on `quiz.cognius.app/start-v3` (titled What kind of person are you?, asking gender first) or `cognius.app/iqtest` (IQ test), with a mirror domain at `cogniushq.com/iqtest`.

2. **A/B quiz flows** : the site's cookies include `ff-sess` and more than a dozen FunnelFox quiz-flow variant IDs such as `ff-*-variation`, suggesting several funnel versions are being tested at once. Payments go through Stripe (`__stripe_mid`).

3. **Pricing** (cognius.app/subscription-terms): a three-day trial for $0.99 / €0.99 / £0.99; if not canceled, it auto-renews at **$39.99/month (€39.99, £34.99)** . There are also $4.79/7 and $7.99/30 intro-day offers, all moving to $39.99/month afterward. Subscriptions bought on the web can only be canceled through support or the web account.

4. **The App's role** : a user review in their own words: "I paid $1 to see results, then was asked to download the App to see them" (US review 10-30). The App delivers results, provides AI chat companionship, and drives retention, while also letting users keep subscribing from inside the App.

5. **Handling refunds and chargebacks** : a dedicated `iq.cognius.app` landing page titled "Questions About Your Cognius Charge?" says "Don't go through a 30-day bank dispute, contact us directly." This is meant to keep chargeback rates down and protect the Stripe account. Every negative Trustpilot review gets a templated support reply, and some users say a single email got them an instant refund.

### 3. Where users came from (growth tactics)

| Channel | Evidence | Confirmed? |
|---|---|---|
| Meta / Instagram paid ads → web quiz | South Korean user review: "Clicked through to a nice Korean page on Instagram, paid $0.9 because it was cheap, then got charged $39 after 3 days"; another user said "an ad popped up and I took an IQ test on a whim"; people on Instagram post cognius.app/iqtest links to share scores (an Indonesian user shared a 119 score) | Confirmed (user reports); our Meta ad library didn't track this Page, so creative volume is unknown |
| Multilingual, multi-country localized ads | 11 languages; reviews in Korean, English, German, Russian, Spanish; charted in small countries like Czechia, Slovakia, Azerbaijan, Egypt, Kuwait — their category charts have low bars, a few downloads is enough | Confirmed |
| web payment → app download (web2app) | "Pay $1 and you're told to download the app to see results"; Play +7 days, +2,847 installs, iOS rating climbing | Confirmed |
| Organic spread from users bragging about their IQ scores | Users posting test links on Instagram on their own ("I challenge you") | Partly confirmed, small volume |
| TikTok, X, Reddit recommendations, media, PH/HN | TikHub search for cognius: 0 videos; x-radar 60 days, 0 posts; Reddit only has r/iqtest warning threads | None |
| App Store search optimization | Named "Know Yourself", subtitle "Your AI emotional companion", but it hasn't charted on any overall list, so search traffic should be small | Not verified |

### 4. Competitors

There are many products doing the same thing ("pay a few cents to see test results → auto-converts to a high-priced subscription"), making this a mature gray-area category:

| Product | Where | Launched | Scale | How it differs from Cognius |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| myIQ(myiq.com) | Web + app | Years ago | Claims 80M+ people have taken it; heavy Instagram ads; Quora complaints of being charged 28 times | Only does IQ, at much larger scale; Cognius is IQ + personality/attachment/ADHD self-tests + AI chat |
| IQBrain(iqbrain.org) | Web | 2024 years ago | Multiple Reddit and Apple community complaints ($1.98 → $28.80) | Web-only, no app; Cognius adds an app and AI chat, which gives it a "product" feel |
| Testora.pro, iqscore.me | Web | 2025–2026 | All run the $0.99 → $39.99/month playbook; complaints on Reddit r/iqtest | Almost identical price structure; Cognius is one of them, just with an app added |
| Breeze: Self-Discovery Journey(Basenji Apps) | iOS / Android | 2019 | iOS US 75k ratings | A veteran of the test-funnel + self-discovery subscription model, offering long-term in-app content; Cognius's pitch is "AI-written interpretations + an AI guide that remembers you" |
| BetterMe: Mental Health | iOS | 2018 | iOS US 16k ratings | A big company that also started with web test funnels, in the mental health category |
| Innie: Self Discovery & Care(Ora Labs) | iOS | 2026-02 | iOS US store 1,386 ratings | A newer "AI self-discovery" app that launched around the same time |
| Dimensional: Personality Test | iOS | 2020 | iOS US store 8,690 ratings | Legit multi-dimensional personality tests and social comparison, mostly free |
| 16Personalities / Truity / Attachment Project, etc. | Web | Years | Free testing site with massive traffic | Gives results for free; Cognius charges to see results |
| General-purpose large models like ChatGPT | Big-company features | — | — | Users can already get AI to interpret personality tests themselves. What Cognius really sells isn't capability but "ads pushing it in front of you + a packaged report" |

### 5. Why it charted

1. **What it runs on is an ad funnel, not an app** : the web funnel has been running since 2026-06 (Trustpilot, Facebook complaint threads from July); the app is just the delivery end added in September. App rating growth is a by-product of funnel volume.

2. **Unit economics rely on trial-to-auto-billing** : $0.99 to get in, then $39.99/month after 3 days. Many people don't realize it's a subscription (lots of complaints quote this). Even if a fair share refund or dispute the charge, enough unnoticed users get billed for a month or two to cover ad spend.

3. **Test content is naturally clickable** : IQ scores, "what kind of person are you," attachment styles, ADHD/autism self-tests. These are the easiest hooks on social media. AI turns each result into a card-by-card personalized interpretation, which makes $0.99 feel worth it.

4. **Multilingual plus small-country seeding** : 11 languages, ads that land on Korean pages; small countries like Czechia, Azerbaijan, and Kuwait have low category-chart bars, so it charts easily. That's where the "charted in many countries" on the data card comes from.

5. **Treats complaint handling as part of the business** : dedicated billing explainer pages, templated replies, and proactively telling users not to contact their bank. This keeps the dispute rate under the payment processor's red line, which is what lets the funnel keep running.

### 6. Differentiation

Compared with its peers, it differs in two ways: (a) it expands from a single IQ test to 40+ psychological tests (attachment, stress response, communication, empathy, ADHD/autism self-tests); (b) results are turned into card-style text interpretations by AI, plus an AI guide chat that remembers your results. This makes it look more like a "product" than a plain IQ web page, and gives people a reason to download the app. **But that's not why it grew** : users come in because of ads and the $0.99 low barrier, and they pay because of auto-renewal. Almost no reviews mention the AI guide. Korean App Store ratings of 1.7 and US one-star reviews are mostly about billing complaints.

### 7. How many people have seen it

- Revenue isn't disclosed (not on TrustMRR, founder identity unknown, the company site mindlyapps.com has one sentence and an email address).

- No coverage from media, big X accounts, Product Hunt, or HN (x-radar: 60 days, 0 posts).

- It's seen mainly through **complaints** : 876 Trustpilot reviews, Facebook warning threads, named on Reddit r/iqtest, listed on ScamAdviser / Gridinsoft.

- Bottom line: among people who build products and invest, **few know about it** . Among consumers, it's known as a "subscription trap."

### 8. Copycats

No one copying it was found. The category itself is crowded with the same playbook (myIQ, IQBrain, Testora, iqscore.me), and Cognius is a follower, not the originator. The same company has already moved the same funnel to dog training: Woof Method (woofmethod.com, "two-minute quiz gives you a custom training plan," benchmarking against Woofz). That suggests they run a "funnel factory" that copies by category.

### 9. What to borrow

- web2app structure: web quiz (built with FunnelFox, multiple A/B variants) → Stripe collects payment → app delivers results. This bypasses Apple's 30% cut and lets them run A/B tests and multilingual landing pages on the web.

- A "pay a small amount to see results" hook filters for people willing to pay better than a "free trial" does, and it also captures payment cards.

- Uses AI to produce personalized long-form reports so a test result feels valuable, and copies the same funnel across categories (psychology → dog training).

- Small countries have low category-chart bars, so a little volume gets it charted, which adds a bit of trust signal to the store page.

- **Risk warning** : this approach depends on users not noticing auto-renewal. Chargebacks, refunds, Trustpilot one-star reviews, App Store removal, and payment processor bans are all high risks. EU and Korean consumer protection laws are strict on unclear auto-renewals. What's worth learning is the funnel structure, not this pricing.

### 10. Still unclear

- Ad volume, creatives, and spend: our Meta ad library doesn't index this Page, and the TikTok ad library only covers Europe, so nothing was found.

- Real revenue and refund rate: 876 Trustpilot reviews suggest paying users number in the thousands to tens of thousands, but the refund and chargeback ratio is unknown.

- How much revenue comes from in-app subscriptions versus the web Stripe checkout, and the split between them.

- Team background: no founder found. Whether it's related to the 2021-year-old "Mindly Therapy" app (developer name Mindly) wasn't verified; likely unrelated.

- The US store has 64 ratings averaging 4.0, which doesn't match the wall of 1-star reviews. Possibly in-app prompting for good reviews; not verified.

### Sources

- App Store: [apps.apple.com/app/id6812234006](https://apps.apple.com/app/id6812234006); iTunes lookup (us/kr/es/mx); review RSS [itunes.apple.com/{kr](https://itunes.apple.com/{kr),us,de}/rss/customerreviews/id=6812234006/sortby=mostrecent/json

- Our library: appstore (app_profile, daily data card), googleplay (app_profile, app_day, com.mindlyapps.cognius), metaads (not indexed)

- [cognius.app](https://cognius.app), [cognius.app/subscription-terms](https://cognius.app/subscription-terms), [quiz.cognius.app/start-v3](https://quiz.cognius.app/start-v3), [iq.cognius.app](https://iq.cognius.app), [cogniushq.com/iqtest](https://cogniushq.com/iqtest)

- [www.trustpilot.com/review/cognius.app](https://www.trustpilot.com/review/cognius.app), [www.trustpilot.com/review/iq.cognius.app](https://www.trustpilot.com/review/iq.cognius.app)

- [www.facebook.com/taboovoudoo/posts/cognius-app-is-a-scam-/29…](https://www.facebook.com/taboovoudoo/posts/cognius-app-is-a-scam-/2967309003611205/)(2026-07-11)

- [www.reddit.com/r/iqtest/comments/1v2t0t1/](https://www.reddit.com/r/iqtest/comments/1v2t0t1/) (names Cognius.app and iqscore.me)

- [mindlyapps.com](https://mindlyapps.com), [woofmethod.com/legal/terms](https://woofmethod.com/legal/terms) (Mindly Apps Ltd, HE 491585)

- [www.appbrain.com/app/cognius-understand-yourself/com.mindlya…](https://www.appbrain.com/app/cognius-understand-yourself/com.mindlyapps.cognius)

- [funnelfox.com/](https://funnelfox.com/) (FunnelFox, the web2app quiz builder)

- Competitor scale: iTunes search API (US store, 2026-11-06)

This article was written by AI from public data and the data we collect daily. Numbers are sourced, and inferences are labeled.