Key Takeaways

  • Apple wants 15% of every dollar spent through external links inside iOS apps — even though it processes nothing, hosts nothing, and guarantees nothing for those transactions.
  • The Supreme Court forced Apple's hand; the company fought to keep this number secret until after the high court ruled on its separate contempt appeal.
  • Small developers get a 5% rate, but only if they stay small; the moment they grow, the full 15% kicks in.
  • Google charges 20% for the same link-out privilege, and Apple thinks that makes its 15% look reasonable. It doesn't.

Apple has finally named its price for letting iPhone users leave its walled garden. Fifteen percent. That is the commission the company demands on every purchase made through an external link inside an iOS app — a link Apple does not host, a payment Apple does not process, a transaction Apple does not secure. The filing landed Thursday in federal court only because the Supreme Court refused to let Apple keep stalling. The company had argued it should wait until the justices decided whether Apple's previous 27% link-out fee violated a court order. The justices said no. So Apple coughed up the number.

Fifteen percent is not a processing fee. Payment processors charge two to three percent. Fifteen percent is not a discovery fee. The user already found the app. Fifteen percent is not a trust fee. The developer built the product, supports the customer, owns the relationship. Fifteen percent is rent. Pure rent on the mere fact that an iPhone exists in the user's pocket.

Apple frames this as a discount. Its lawyers point to Google Play's 20% link-out rate as proof of reasonableness. That is a strange benchmark. Google's 20% applies to the same hollow service — a link, nothing more. That Epic Games agreed to Google's terms under pressure does not make the model fair; it makes the duopoly durable. Two giants, same extraction logic, different decimals.

The tiered structure reveals the real strategy. Small Business Program members pay 5%. Video, News, and Mini Apps partners pay 10%. Subscription renewals drop to 10%. These carve-outs exist to buy peace. They split the developer coalition. They give the smallest players a reason to stay quiet. They hand selective breaks to categories Apple needs — streaming video, journalism, lightweight mini-apps — while the broad middle bears the full 15%. Grow past the small-business threshold and the rate triples. That is not a gradient. That is a wall.

Apple's defense rests on a single sentence: it deserves compensation for the "tools, technology, and services" that make the App Store possible. But the link-out purchase uses none of them. The developer brings the server, the payment gateway, the fulfillment, the support. Apple brings the operating system — already paid for by the hardware sale — and the permission to exist on it. That permission is what Apple monetizes. Not service. Permission.

The Epic Games lawsuit exposed the mechanics. Apple invented the 27% link-out fee after a court ordered it to allow external payment links. The fee was designed to make the links economically pointless. Developers would lose more to Apple than they saved on payment processing. The court called that contempt. Apple appealed. While the appeal dragged on, Apple refused to propose a new rate. Now the Supreme Court has shut the door. The 15% is what remains when the contempt fee gets shaved down just enough to survive scrutiny.

Developers should recognize the trap. A 15% link-out commission means every direct relationship carries an Apple tax. Sell a $100 subscription through your own website, triggered from your own iOS app — Apple takes $15. Sell a $500 enterprise license — Apple takes $75. The more value the developer creates, the more Apple extracts. The margin does not scale with cost. It scales with the developer's success.

Regulators in Brussels, London, and Tokyo have already ruled that gatekeepers cannot tax transactions they do not intermediate. The EU's Digital Markets Act forbids exactly this. Japan's new law forbids it. The UK's draft regime forbids it. Apple's 15% proposal is a pre-emptive surrender dressed as a concession. It hopes a U.S. court will bless a rate that would be illegal in half the developed world.

The small-business 5% rate is the cleverest piece of misdirection. It sounds generous. It covers 90% of developers by count but a fraction of revenue. The companies that move real money — the Spotify, the Netflix, the major publishers — pay the full freight. Apple protects its revenue base while buying headlines about "supporting small developers."

Subscription renewals at 10% reveal another truth: Apple knows recurring revenue is where the money lives. A one-time purchase pays 15% once. A subscription pays 10% forever. The lower rate is not mercy. It is a volume play. Apple prefers a smaller slice of an infinite stream over a larger slice of a single event.

Google's 20% is not a ceiling. It is a floor. Both companies have settled on the idea that the platform deserves a double-digit cut of commerce it does not touch. That consensus is the real antitrust problem. Two firms, controlling 99% of mobile OS market share, independently arriving at the same extraction logic. The Supreme Court's refusal to pause the case may be the only reason we see the number at all.

Developers have a choice now. Accept the 15% and build it into pricing. Or fight. The Epic case continues. The contempt ruling stands. The DMA enforcement looms. Apple's proposal is not final. It is an opening bid in a negotiation the company never wanted to have. The only reason it happened: a court forced the cards onto the table.

Fifteen percent for a link. That is the headline. Everything else is footnotes.