Apple today submitted a court-ordered proposal outlining the commission it believes is reasonable to charge on U.S. apps tied to purchase options outside of the App Store.
Apple charges half its commission on standard apps, so apps that would pay 30% for an in-app purchase would pay 15% when linked to an online purchase option. Small business program participants who would normally pay 15 percent would pay 5 percent.
- 15 percent – Standard applications.
- 10 percent – Apps that are part of the News Partner Program, Video Partner Program, Mini Apps Partner Program, and Subscription Renewals.
- 5 percent – Applications eligible for the Small Business program. Apps are eligible if they earn less than $1 million per year.
These proposed fees are what developers would pay when someone uses their app, clicks on a link in the app, and then makes a purchase on the website using the link. So if someone using the Spotify app clicked a link in the app to go to the Spotify website and then purchased a subscription, Spotify would have to pay Apple a 15% fee. Apple says the fees were calculated based on expert analysis and are lower than the link rates charged by Google in the Epic v. Google case.
Apple submitted the proposal to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, where Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers was tasked with determining what reasonable fees Apple should charge for its intellectual property.
The appeals court suggested that the fee could be limited to the direct costs of facilitating the links, and under this approach the fees would be zero. Apple says a zero commission would not reflect the value it offers developers, and the suggested commission gives it fair compensation for the App Store platform.
To recap, Apple was ordered to change its App Store rules to allow developers to link to purchasing options outside of the App Store in 2021 during its legal dispute with Epic Games. The appeals delayed the App Store update for several years, but Apple eventually implemented a 12-27% fee that was nearly identical to its usual App Store fee when factoring in fees from third-party payment processors.
Epic Games complained about Apple’s pricing structure and Judge Gonzalez Rogers found Apple in contempt of court. In April 2025, it banned Apple from charging fees on links, and since then Apple has not collected any money when an app sends users to a website to make a purchase. Apple appealed the decision, and the appeals court upheld the ruling for contempt, but said Apple was entitled to be compensated for its intellectual property. The appeals court remanded the case back to the district court and Gonzalez Rogers to determine the appropriate fee amount.
Having lost the contempt finding rendered by the court of appeal, Apple appealed to the Supreme Court. The justices agreed to hear the case during the term that begins in October. Apple repeatedly tried to suspend the calculation of fees until the Supreme Court ruled on the case, but without success.
The district court will now evaluate Apple’s fee proposal and hear Epic Games’s response, and Apple must implement the fees set by the court. Apple wanted to suspend the fee calculation because if the Supreme Court ruled that the appeals court erred in upholding the contempt ruling, it could overturn the district court’s decision barring Apple from charging fees.
