Apple puts a number on link-out commissions: model against 15%, not 27%

Apple filed two things in the Epic case on the same day: a proposed commission structure allowing it to charge up to 15% on purchases completed through payment systems outside the App Store in the US ^[1][4], and a separate motion asking Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers to refer both parties to a settlement conference before Magistrate Judge Joseph C. Spero ^[6]. For app teams, the practical consequence is that the external-payment take rate is now being negotiated inside a bounded range with 15% at the top, and financial models still built on 27% are stale.

The timing matters. According to 9to5Mac, the commission proposal landed just as the Supreme Court rejected Apple's request to pause the lower-court proceedings while it reviews Gonzalez Rogers' contempt finding over Apple's decision to charge 27% after being ordered to let developers direct users to outside payment methods ^[3]. So the 27% regime is the thing under contempt review, not the thing being proposed, and Apple's own filing is now the high end of the argument.

The arithmetic is the point. Moving from 27% to 15% is a 12 percentage point difference ^[1], which raises developer net revenue on a link-out dollar from 73 cents to 85 cents, roughly 16% more net per dollar ^[2]. That is enough to change whether a web checkout funnel is worth building at all, and enough to change the discount you can afford to offer users for taking it.

Two cautions before anyone reprices. First, "up to 15%" is a ceiling in a proposal, and the source does not detail how Apple would tier beneath it. Second, this is not settled: Epic said it "believes these fees are far outside of the bounds of the Ninth Circuit's guidance on permissible fees" ^[5]. So the plausible landing zone is somewhere between zero and 15%, which still argues for modeling at 15% as the conservative case rather than 27%.

The settlement motion is the more revealing document. Apple's counsel conferred with Epic's counsel on August 11, 2026 about seeking the conference, and Epic did not consent ^[7]. Apple argues the court can order the parties into talks anyway, and notes the Ninth Circuit itself encouraged both sides to agree on an appropriate link-out commission ^[8]. Apple also argues that a confidential, non-adversarial discussion would increase the likelihood of a practical resolution and could obviate the need for prolonged remand proceedings ^[9]. The filing contains no settlement offer or terms ^[10].

Read plainly: the party that lost on contempt is the one asking for the closed room, and the party that won is declining. Epic has little reason to trade away a public ruling that could set the number lower than 15%, and Apple has every reason to convert an open-ended remand into a fixed, negotiated rate it can operate against.

What to watch: whether Gonzalez Rogers orders the conference over Epic's objection, since that determines if the rate gets set by ruling or by deal; whether Apple's proposal survives scrutiny against the Ninth Circuit's guidance that Epic is invoking ^[5][8]; and what the Supreme Court does with the underlying contempt finding it has agreed to review ^[3]. Until the number is fixed, treat 15% as the planning assumption and anything lower as upside.