Apple Asks Court for 5–15% Cut on Payments Made Outside the App Store
Apple has asked the court overseeing its antitrust case with Epic Games for permission to collect a commission of up to 15 percent on purchases that go through external payment systems rather than Apple's own App Store billing. The proposal, filed with Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, sets out a tiered fee structure that mirrors the brackets Apple already uses for in-app purchases — but at lower rates. Engadget
Under the plan, the highest external-purchase rate of 15 percent would apply to apps that currently pay Apple's standard 30 percent cut for purchases processed inside the App Store. Apps enrolled 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 says 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 dispute now in its fifth year. In 2021, Judge Gonzalez Rogers ordered Apple to let developers link to external payment systems so they could avoid paying Apple's 30 percent commission. Despite that order, Apple kept collecting a 12 to 27 percent cut from external-payment transactions, and Epic accused the company of failing to comply. 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 reversed 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 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 case is now reaching the U.S. Supreme Court, captioned Apple Inc. v. Epic Games, Inc., under docket number 25-1311. Oyez
Apple has long maintained that most developers pay nothing. The company says about 86 percent of developers never pay Apple a commission on the App Store, and that as of March 2024 there were only 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 offers a useful point of comparison. On June 30, Google opened the Play Store to external billing and lowered its commission to a flat 10 percent regardless of which payment system a customer uses. In July, Google began 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 give up its claim to a share of transactions that happen entirely outside its billing infrastructure. The company's argument is that its platform, app discovery features, and software development tools create value that entitles it to ongoing compensation even when a customer pays on a third-party website. The judge rejected that reasoning once already in this case, when she 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 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 Epic originally sought. A Small Business Program developer paying 15 percent on App Store billing would pay 5 percent on external purchases. The math favors external payments at every tier, but the actual margin depends on the cost of running 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.
