Apple Asks Court for 5–15% Commission on External App Store Payments
Apple has asked the court overseeing its antitrust litigation with Epic Games to allow it to collect a commission of up to 15 percent on purchases made through external payment systems, rather than through the App Store's own billing. The proposal, filed with Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, outlines a tiered structure that mirrors, at reduced rates, the commission brackets Apple already applies to in-app transactions. Engadget
Under the proposal, the highest external-purchase commission, 15 percent, would apply to apps that currently pay Apple a 30 percent cut for purchases processed through the App Store. Apps in Apple's News Partner Program, Video Partner Program, and Mini Apps Partner Program, along with subscription renewals, would pay 10 percent. Apps in the Small Business Program would pay 5 percent. Apple stated that the "vast majority" of developers on its platform qualify for the Small Business Program, which has charged a 15 percent commission on App Store-billed purchases since 2020. Engadget MacRumors
The filing is the latest turn in a case that has run for five years. In 2021, Judge Gonzalez Rogers ordered Apple to allow developers to link to external payment systems so they would not have to pay a 30 percent commission. Despite that order, Apple continued collecting a 12 to 27 percent cut from external payment transactions, prompting Epic to accuse it of non-compliance. Last year the judge found Apple in contempt of court and ordered it to stop collecting fees from external payments. The appeals court upheld the contempt ruling but overturned the prohibition on Apple collecting fees from external payments, sending the question of what Apple may charge back to the district court. Engadget Reuters
The April 2025 contempt ruling had also barred Apple from impeding developers and determined that Apple must not levy a new commission. Apple's current proposal effectively asks the court to replace that blanket prohibition with a defined fee schedule. Reuters
The litigation is now reaching the U.S. Supreme Court. The case is captioned Apple Inc. v. Epic Games, Inc., under docket number 25-1311. Oyez
Apple has long maintained that the large majority of developers pay nothing. The company has stated that about 86 percent of developers never pay Apple a commission on the App Store, and that as of March 2024 there were just two circumstances in which a developer pays Apple a commission. Apple Newsroom Separately, Apple announced an App Store update in 2021 that closed an investigation by the Japan Fair Trade Commission. Apple Newsroom
Google's parallel dispute with Epic provides a useful contrast. Google opened the Play Store to external billing on June 30 and lowered its commission to 10 percent regardless of the payment system a customer uses. In July, Google started allowing third-party app stores on Android. After Epic argued that Google makes it too complicated to install rival app stores, a judge ordered Google to remove the "anticompetitive friction" from the installation process. Google also proposed, in a settlement with Epic, a capped service fee of either 9 percent or 20 percent on transactions in Play-distributed apps that use alternative payment systems. Engadget Reuters
The structural difference between the two platforms is straightforward. Google has committed to a single, flat 10 percent commission on external payments. Apple is proposing a tiered structure that tops out at 15 percent for its highest-revenue developers and bottoms out at 5 percent for small businesses. Whether the court accepts Apple's proposed rates, sets different ones, or imposes conditions on how external links function remains before Judge Gonzalez Rogers.
What is clear is that Apple is not proposing to relinquish its claim to a share of transactions that occur entirely outside its billing infrastructure. The framing is that Apple's platform, discovery surfaces, and SDK ecosystem create value that entitles it to ongoing compensation even when a user completes payment on a third-party web page. That argument has been rejected once already in this case, when the judge found Apple in contempt for continuing to collect such fees. The appeals court's decision to overturn the fee prohibition, however, left the door open for Apple to propose a structured alternative, which is precisely what this filing does.
For developers, the practical stakes are concrete. A developer currently paying 30 percent to Apple on App Store-billed purchases would pay 15 percent on external purchases under the proposal, a meaningful reduction but not the zero-rate outcome that Epic originally sought. A Small Business Program developer paying 15 percent on App Store billing would pay 5 percent on external purchases. The arithmetic favors external payments in every tier, but the margin depends on the operational cost of maintaining a separate payment flow, handling fraud, chargebacks, and tax compliance outside Apple's system.
The Supreme Court's eventual engagement with the case, under docket 25-1311, could resolve whether platform operators retain a constitutional or statutory basis to impose such commissions at all, or whether the district court's ongoing supervision of the remedy remains the controlling framework.
