Apple's outside-link fee is gone; Google's isn't free.

For most of the last two years, adding a link in your iOS app that sent a customer to pay you directly instead of through Apple's checkout was technically allowed and practically useless — Apple charged 27 percent for the privilege and showed the customer a warning screen on the way out. Since April 2025 neither of those exists, by court order, and Apple is still fighting to get them back. Google's equivalent has been open longer and never pretended to be free, and next month it starts actually charging what it always said it would. Here's what each store lets you do right now, and whether it's worth doing.

What the April ruling actually banned

The external-link entitlement dates to Apple's compliance with the original Epic v. Apple injunction in early 2024: apps could add a single link out to a payment page you controlled, gated behind an application to Apple and a review of the wording. Apple's compliance came with two catches it designed itself — a 27 percent commission on anything bought within seven days of tapping the link, and a full-screen warning telling the customer they were leaving the app and losing Apple's purchase protections. Both catches made the entitlement close to worthless: developers who built the flow watched most customers bounce at the warning screen, and the fee ate most of what routing around Apple's checkout was supposed to save.

On April 30, 2025, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ruled that Apple had willfully violated the original injunction and rewrote the remedy herself. The new order bans Apple from collecting any commission on purchases made through an external link, and from restricting the placement, formatting, or content of the link or button that sends the customer there. Apple updated its App Review Guidelines two days later. What's left is close to what Epic asked for in the first place: a plain link, styled however you want, that takes a customer to a payment page you control, for a 0 percent cut.

It isn't settled, and it isn't worldwide

Two things to hold onto before you build around this. First, geography: it applies to the US storefront only. Every other country's App Store still runs the standard commission and, in most of them, still requires the older, more restrictive flow — this isn't a global change to how Apple handles outside payments, just a US one, and a court-ordered one at that. Most apps also still have to offer Apple's own in-app purchase alongside the external link; the ruling removed the fee and the friction, not the requirement to give the customer both options.

Second, it's still being litigated. The Ninth Circuit largely upheld the contempt ruling in December 2025, and in April 2026 Apple lost its bid to pause the new rules while the case continued — so the zero-commission rule has stayed in effect through the appeal, not despite it. Apple has since taken the fight to the Supreme Court and filed its opening brief this month, asking the justices to throw out the contempt finding entirely. Nobody knows how that goes. Build the external link if the savings are worth it today, but don't architect your whole US pricing strategy on the assumption that this state is permanent — an entitlement that exists because of an active contempt order is a different kind of guarantee than a published policy.

Google's version was never a loophole

Google Play's equivalent — alternative billing and external content links, both opt-in programs for developers serving US users — predates the current Apple fight and was never marketed as free. You register in the Play Console, integrate a specific version of the Play Billing Library, and Google still shows the customer an information screen before they leave the app to pay you. None of that changed this year.

What's new is the bill. Google's fee schedule depends on when the app was installed and which Google programs you're in: 10 percent on a developer's first $1M of annual earnings regardless of billing method, then a standard rate of 20 percent for installs on or after June 30, 2026, or 25 percent for anything installed before that date. Enroll in Play Games Level Up or the Apps Experience program and the standard rates drop to 15 and 20 percent respectively. Auto-renewing subscriptions are flat 10 percent across every tier. And for developers already enrolled, Google's own documentation says it hasn't actually been collecting on those transactions yet — reporting and payment of the fee start October 1, 2026. If alternative billing has felt free so far, that ends in under two weeks.

The math, if you're deciding whether to bother

Run the comparison against what you already pay, not against zero. Apple's standard commission is 15 percent under the Small Business Program (under $1M in prior-year proceeds) or 30 percent above it, and Google's baseline is close to the same split. Apple's external link drops that to 0 percent outright — the entire commission, gone — which is why it's worth building for almost anyone doing meaningful US revenue. Google's alternative billing at 10 percent, against a 15 percent baseline you may already be paying, saves five points: real money, but not the same order of magnitude, and it comes with the same burden either store hands you once you take the link — you own the payment page, the receipts, and the refund conversations that used to be the store's job.

For most solo developers, the honest tradeoff is this: build Apple's link if you have meaningful US revenue and the litigation risk doesn't bother you, and skip Google's unless you're already close to its higher tiers, because five points of margin rarely covers the cost of building and supporting your own checkout.

None of this moves the number you actually control

Whatever you charge and whoever processes it, a US visitor still has to decide to buy before any of these commission rules apply to them — and that decision gets made on your listing, in the screenshots and copy they see before either store's checkout, or yours, ever loads. ShotCanvas is built for that part: import your screens, pick a template or let AI compose the set, and export pixel-exact frames for every App Store and Google Play slot.