SAN FRANCISCO — Apple filed its proposed external-link commission structure with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on Aug. 14, setting a 15 percent fee for standard apps and a sliding scale of discounts for developers in specific partner programs. The filing came the same day the Supreme Court rejected Apple's bid to pause lower court proceedings — ending the company's effort to delay disclosing the structure until the high court resolved a separate contempt question.
The contempt issue stems from Apple imposing a 27 percent commission on purchases made through external links after a court order required it to allow those links. The court also took issue with rules Apple imposed governing how developers could present those links to users. That dispute had given Apple grounds to argue the lower court case should wait, but the Supreme Court closed that path Thursday.
Under the tiered structure Apple proposed, developers enrolled in the Small Business Program would pay a 5 percent commission on payments processed outside the App Store. Developers in the Video Partner Program, the News Partner Program and the Mini Apps Partner Program would pay 10 percent. Subscription renewals, regardless of program, would also carry a 10 percent rate. Standard developers not in any partner program face the full 15 percent fee.
The proposal represents a reduction from the 27 percent fee Apple had tried to apply to external-link transactions, which the court flagged as a potential violation of its earlier order. Apple's original in-app purchase commission for most developers stood at 30 percent inside the App Store payment system — the rate at the center of Epic Games' original antitrust complaint.
Apple's legal argument, laid out in the filing, is that it retains the right to charge fees on purchases users make through iOS apps because those transactions depend on the platform infrastructure, developer tools and services Apple builds and maintains. The company frames external-link fees as a reasonable cost-recovery mechanism, not an anticompetitive restriction.
To support that argument, Apple pointed to Google Play's link-out fee structure. Google charges 20 percent on external purchases for standard apps, 15 percent for apps in special programs and 10 percent on subscription renewals. Apple said in its filing that Epic Games accepted those Google rates — a pointed detail given Epic is the plaintiff in the case.
Apple's proposed 15 percent standard rate sits five points below Google's comparable rate, a framing the company will likely use in court to argue its structure falls within industry norms rather than functioning as punitive. Whether a federal judge accepts that comparison as dispositive is a separate question — the court's contempt inquiry suggests it views Apple's prior conduct skeptically.
Epic Games brought the original case challenging Apple's App Store policies as anticompetitive, specifically targeting the requirement that developers use Apple's payment system and pay commissions of up to 30 percent. The Fortnite maker won a partial ruling requiring Apple to allow external payment links, but Apple's subsequent imposition of the 27 percent link-out fee drew a contempt inquiry that has kept the case active.
Apple stock closed at $305.93 on Aug. 15, up 0.2 percent on the day, suggesting investors are not reading the commission proposal as a material revenue threat in the near term. The external-link fee structure affects only U.S. iOS transactions routed through developer-hosted payment systems — a subset of total App Store volume that remains undisclosed.
The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California now holds the proposal and must determine whether Apple's tiered structure satisfies its prior order on external links. If the court rejects the proposal or finds Apple's earlier 27 percent rate constituted contempt, Apple faces either a revised fee mandate or sanctions.
