UIButton not responding used in a custom UITableViewCell

I faced a similar issue. I was programmatically adding an UIButton to the UITableViewCell via addSubview. The button would not respond to touch events. Using Debug View Hierarchy, I finally discovered that any subviews added to the UITableViewCell was behind contentView, which was blocking user input from reaching the UIButton. The issue was resolved by adding the UIButton to contentView instead of the UITableViewCell.

I would have userInteractionEnabled set to true on the table view cell as well. I would prevent taps using the UITableView allowsSelection to false

Also remember to remove the target and action in tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath: since the cells are recycled, the button might already have the target and action, it might add a second.