Apple names its price for link-outs: 15%, 10%, 5%

Apple has told the district court in the Epic Games case what it wants to charge for purchases made outside the App Store's in-app purchase system: 15% for standard apps that pay a 30% IAP commission, 10% for the Video, News and Mini Apps Partner Programs and for subscription renewals, and 5% for Small Business Program apps ^[3]. The proffer arrived just as the Supreme Court denied Apple's request to pause the lower-court proceedings while it reviews whether the company can be held in contempt for charging 27% on off-App Store purchases ^[2][4], which turns link-out economics from a contingency into a number developers can model.

The move from 27% to a proposed 15% for standard apps is a 12-point reduction on the rate that triggered the contempt fight ^[16]. Measured against the IAP alternative, the linked-out rate is exactly half the 30% headline commission ^[17]. That 15-point spread is the whole business case: it is what a developer has to cover its own payment processing, fraud, tax handling and support with, before any of it becomes margin.

Apple is arguing that the spread is wide enough. According to the filing, fact and expert evidence on the proposed rates was submitted concurrently ^[5], and Apple says 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 the proffered rates, resulting in substantial competitive pressure on IAP" ^[6]. Apple also says the rates let it "recover at least some compensation for the value that its IP-protected tools, technologies, and services provide to developers" ^[7].

The benchmark Apple chose is instructive. It points to Google Play's linked-out rates of 20% standard, 15% program and 10% subscription, and notes that Epic agreed to those rates ^[9]; it also invites comparison with the Samsung Galaxy Store and Amazon's Android App Marketplace ^[10]. On Apple's own numbers, its standard proposal comes in five points below Google's standard linked-out rate ^[18] and matches Google's subscription rate exactly ^[19]. That is a deliberate framing for a court that has to decide whether a fee is tolerable, not whether it is generous.

The legal test explains the shape of the offer. The Ninth Circuit reversed the district court's outright ban on commissions for linked-out purchases and held that such commissions are problematic only if they are effectively prohibitive ^[12], after Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers enjoined Apple to let developers direct users to alternative purchasing methods ^[15]. Apple is therefore not trying to prove its rates are fair; it is trying to prove they are not prohibitive, which is what the concurrent expert evidence on profitable link-outs is for ^[5][6]. Apple also maintains that the rate-determination proceedings should still be paused pending the Supreme Court's review, and says it filed the proposal only to comply with Judge Gonzalez Rogers's instructions ^[11].

For operators, the practical question is whether 15% plus your own payments stack beats 30% and Apple's. At the partner-program and Small Business rates of 10% and 5% ^[3], the arithmetic gets harder to justify for most teams, which is the point of a tiered proffer.

Epic now gets its chance to respond ^[13], and Apple is expected to file its Supreme Court brief by September 14 ^[14]. Watch whether Epic contests the expert modeling of profitable link-outs rather than the headline percentages, and whether the court treats Google Play's 20% standard rate as a ceiling or as evidence that any rate in this range clears the prohibitive test.