Apple's 15% link-out fee and what it means for indie devs
Apple wants 15% on purchases made outside the App Store. Epic says the right number is zero. Here's how I'd model the decision before re-architecting billing.
The Apple App Store external link fee just got a number attached to it, and the number is not zero. In a court filing reported by The Verge, Apple proposed charging 15% on digital purchases made through links that leave the app entirely.
If you ship anything on iOS, or you're planning to, this is the sentence that matters: the escape hatch everyone assumed was free may come with a bill.
💰 What Apple actually proposed
The filing lays out a tiered structure rather than one flat rate. Apple's proposed commissions on external-link purchases:
| Category | Proposed fee |
|---|---|
| Standard apps | 15% |
| Video Partner Program, News Partner Program, Mini Apps Partner Program | 10% |
| Subscription renewals | 10% |
| Small Business Program apps | 5% |
| Apple's own stated "necessary costs" | essentially zero |
That last row is not a typo, and it is the whole fight. Apple told the court that its "necessary costs" to permit external purchases, as the Ninth Circuit defined that term, "would be essentially zero." It then asked for 15% anyway, arguing the rates let it recoup "at least some compensation" for the tools, technologies, and services it gives developers.
Apple also said an expert analysis suggests that "large numbers of U.S. developers collectively accounting for the lion's share of App Store revenue will be able to link out profitably" at those rates.
⚖️ Why Epic is calling this out of bounds
Epic's reply was fast and blunt. Their position, in their own words from the statement quoted in the report:
Apple admitted that under the Ninth Circuit's definition of "necessary costs" they would charge 0% for purchases made via linkouts to the web... Epic believes these fees are far outside of the bounds of the Ninth Circuit's guidance on permissible fees.
The legal spine of this: California district judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ruled in April 2025 that Apple "willfully" failed to comply with her 2021 injunction, and Apple currently cannot take a commission on external purchases at all. A Ninth Circuit appeals panel then said Apple should be able to charge a commission, but tied it to "necessary costs." Apple's filing is its attempt to define that phrase in its own favour.
Key takeaway: Apple has conceded on the record that its actual cost of allowing link-outs is near zero, then proposed 15%. Everything Epic files next will be built on that single admission.
🌐 The part nobody outside the US should skip
Here's the framing trap. This is a US court, ruling on the US storefront. If you're building from Colombo or Kandy and selling to a global audience, the ruling does not automatically change your terms in every market. What it changes is the price of the US portion of your revenue, which for most small app businesses is the portion that actually pays the bills.
Three things follow from that:
- Your billing stack becomes region-conditional. A link-out flow that saves money for US users may be pointless or non-compliant elsewhere. That's real engineering work, not a config flag.
- Link-out is not free money. Once you're taking payment yourself, you own the payment processor fee, chargebacks, refunds, tax handling, invoicing, and support tickets from failed cards. Apple's proposed cut sits on top of all of that.
- The forex layer is yours now too. Card revenue landing in USD and converting to LKR is a cost line that IAP payouts also had, but you now control (and carry the risk on) directly.
🛠️ How I'd model this before touching any code
Don't re-architect billing because of a headline. Run the arithmetic first. My process would be four steps:
- Split your revenue by storefront country. If the US is a small slice, this filing is news, not a project.
- Build the real per-transaction cost stack for the link-out path, not the optimistic one.
- Compare against your current effective rate, including whatever program tier you're in. Small Business Program developers face a proposed 5%, which is a very different decision from a standard app's 15%.
- Price the engineering time. Payments code you maintain forever is a permanent tax on a small team.
An illustrative stack for step 2 (these are placeholders — substitute your own contracted rates):
| Cost line | Who takes it |
|---|---|
| Apple's proposed link-out commission | Apple |
| Card / payment processor fee | Your PSP |
| Cross-border and currency conversion | Your PSP / bank |
| Sales tax, VAT, or GST remittance | You, per jurisdiction |
| Refunds, chargebacks, fraud loss | You |
| Support and reconciliation time | You |
Add those up honestly. If the total lands within a few points of what you pay today, the migration is a loss dressed as a win. If you want to sanity-check the currency side of that stack, our USD to LKR freelancer earnings calculator shows what actually reaches your account after conversion, and the profit margin calculator is a fast way to see whether a few percentage points move your margin at all.
⏳ Nothing is settled, and the clock is long
Two details in the report should slow anyone down before shipping a migration:
- Epic said it has roughly 60 days to file its opposition, supported by expert witnesses.
- The Supreme Court has said it will hear arguments on whether Apple willfully violated the April 2025 ruling.
So the final rate is unknown, the enforcement question is still open at the highest level, and the numbers in this filing are a proposal, not a policy. Anyone telling you the fee is 15% today is reading the press release, not the docket.
💡 What this means for you
If you're a student shipping your first app, ignore the drama and ship. Rates below your first thousand dollars of revenue are a rounding error, and Small Business Program status keeps you at the bottom of every tier that has been proposed.
If you run a small team with real US revenue, do the modelling now and the migration later. Write down your current effective take rate, build the cost table above with your actual processor quotes, and set a threshold: "if the settled rate is above X, we move." Then wait for the court, because the difference between Apple's 15% and Epic's argued 0% is the entire business case, and neither side has won that argument yet.
The useful lesson generalises past Apple. Every platform you build on will eventually try to price the exit as closely as it prices the front door. The developers who handle that well are the ones who already know their per-transaction economics to the decimal before the policy changes, not after.