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Apple’s App Store profits on commissions from digital sales

    Revenue          $32 B
    Operating Costs   $7 B [1]
    Estimated Profit $25 B 
    Operating Margin ~78%

[1] R&D, security, hosting, human review, and including building and maintaining developer tools Xcode, APIs, and SDKs.

Apple could take just 7% cut and still make 20% profits.

Fun Fact: During the Epic trial, it was revealed that Apple's profit margins on the App Store were so high that even Apple's own executives were sometimes surprised by the internal financial reports.

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edit: There is no ideological argument for voluntary action here. The entire goal is to force regulators to step in. The debate over 'good vs. bad companies' is just online noise and rhetorical trik, no one on either side of the political spectrum wants these systems to be fixed voluntarily with corporate altruism.

How long until they make the argument that they're entitled to 30% of your salary because you use Apple hardware to do your work?

You can be the patron of a creator and Apple in the same time! Jokes aside, this is awful...I like/use Apple products but this unacceptable, I hope everyone dodges this and pays through the website

2035: Apple takes 30% of my Patreon, Google matched it through their "Competitive Parity Agreement," and the EU fined them both €2 billion which they paid in 45 minutes of revenue then raised fees to 32% to cover legal costs.

The real innovation was convincing us this was inevitable.

Well, I certainly won't sell my fiction to Apple for them to turn it into a series in the future.

Unless they pay me 30% of all hardware and software revenue because popularity is a vehicle to sell more under the Apple brand.

I don't get it. Apple is the top 3 most valuable companies in the WORLD. THE WORLD. They act like a greedy friend that would ask you to pay back $1.54 for a meal of $1500, because you ordered a side of fries which they did not eat.

Aren't they making the majority of their money from selling hardware and iCloud subscriptions? Why they go on and milk developers, who make apps FOR THEIR ECOSYSTEM?!

Apps bad. Web good.

Why did we let mobile go down the one-app-per-website path?

To keep their growth rates going, these mega companies soon need to swallow the whole country’s GDP. I really wonder where this is going. They can’t keep growing at some point.

Always hated apple for their putrid business practices. Add this to the pile.

Just stop publishing the app, not every little thing needs an app. What the use for the app anyway? Notifications and apple pay?

> "According to TechCrunch, only 4% of Patreon creators are still using the platform's legacy billing system, with the rest having already switched over."

The very last line of the article.

I actually love Apple for pushing this matter this hard and sticking to its guns. This will bring in more regulatory scrutiny not just in the U.S. but in other countries as well. That will force Apple to give up (maybe in a decade or so) this practice of arbitrary rules and squeezing the last penny from others.

Thanks a lot, Eddy Cue, for all that you do to bring Apple down to its knees!

Incoming "please pay on webpage, else you have to pay 30% more" banner in the app

Just do what we all do to dodge this, have the Account management and purchasing abilities sit inside an embedded browser window that opens up from a button push in the app. Yes it adds a little barrier but with Apple Pay it is a very small barrier and the juice is worth the squeeze.

What are you going to do about it? Use Android?

I still can't believe developers love to work for this feudal overlord. They are building a wall around our profession. Have a little foresight and move your business elsewhere.

Really shitty to see how greed and money corrupts everything.

"Use our payment system"

"No thanks, our current system works just fine"

".. or get kicked off our store"

"Okay, I guess I'll do it then"

"Okay you're on our payment system; we take 30% off all purchased using our payment system."

"Get fucked"

I think I’m old enough to have experienced this cycle so many times with so many businesses that I just feel kind of silly to hate on Apple or Microsoft or whoever. They’re all just maximizing profits as designed.

I think people find it easier to scowl at the villain du jour than to dig into the deep complex issue of when capitalism doesn’t work, when the government isn’t doing enough, and what we could do about it… or the feeling that we really can’t do much.

Isn't Patreon effectively a sort of payment processor? So how is this different from Apple demanding a 30% cut of transactions conducted by (for example) Paypal? (Assuming Paypal has an iOS app ofc, I have no idea.)

So weird, why do you need Patreon dedicated app in appstore?

There is really so many people visiting Patreon, only because it's in Crapple appstore?

Or is this because they want to support as many payment methods as possible. And Apple Pay support requirements is to have an app?

Would be great, if they simple take a hit and gutted the app and redirect all people into website.

If they have good PR team, with proper messaging, they could make even more money, since people on Patreon usually don't like corpos.

I miss the old school monopolies, where MS was a bad guy because they dared to include browser.

And yes, I do legalese details of that are much more complex. But it just makes no common sense.

I assume this is only for purchases made using the app, right?

Otherwise it just wouldn't make sense. Google gets a cut of all revenue, Apple gets a cut of all revenue, x, y, z, ... there would be nothing left over.

Patiently waiting for a mandatory 30% fee on every transaction made with iOS banking software. Maybe that'll put a definitive stop to forcing mobile "apps" with jailbreak detection on customers and have banks think twice before crippling the functionality of their websites.

Please Apple, make this happen.

4% of Patreon iOS users. That's how many use the legacy system Apple is insisting they remove. The other 96% already are using IAP.

> Note: This image has been edited to include a pile of cash.

I giggled

Boycott Apple services. It’s the only way they will listen.

Attitude like a true mob boss.

That's why the DSA is a good idea that should be replicated worldwide.

Too many parasites between creators and consumers

Apple's ecosystem is the 8th wonder of this world. Nowhere else you can put a logo on a piece of cloth or aluminum wheel and sell them for hundreds of dollars. Greatest capitalist company of all time.

web is now so good that mobile apps lost any meaning to exist - unless you need to access some local hw or data on consistent basis(the app must run as daemon or something like that). in other words, if you app is a service, just use web. if it is not a service, then you just sell it as you would a desktop program.

This means Apple is literally going to take nearly 3x in fees from Patreon's customers than Patreon is taking from their own customers.

My understanding is that the reason the number 30% is so magical is a historical anomaly. When software was physically distributed back in the day, 15% of the MSRP was reserved for the distributor and another 15% for the retailer. When these digital marketplaces were set up, the companies just said "well, we're the distributor and the retailer, so we'll keep both". Forgetting the fact that the cost to distribute and retail the software is literally pennies on the dollar of what it used to be.

I think the irony in this case is that this is a greed problem of their own making. When Steve Jobs announced that apps on the original iPhone would only be $1-$3, he set off the first enshittification crisis in the software industry. In 2008, Bejeweled cost $19.99 if you wanted to buy it on the PC. On the iPhone it was $0.99! This artificially low anchor price is what kicked off the adoption of ad and subscription driven software models in the first place.

The core problem is still the same.

Until there will be a broad regulation that enforce any general purpose computing device to allow installing non-provisioned apps, we'll be in those situations.

seems that 96% are already doing this:

> According to TechCrunch, only 4% of Patreon creators are still using the platform's legacy billing system, with the rest having already switched over.

I've never used the Patreon app even once -- those creators I support, I set it up on the website.

Sad, mean, and pointless

Apple has an impressive commitment to evil, similar to Oracle. They get better at it every year.

Isn’t this what Epic just sued and won over?

I thought that already happened :)

But from past threads in a Linux Forum, seems this only applies to people using the Apple IOS App for Patreon. Not sure if using Apple Laptops.

But if you use Patreon's WEB Site directly, the fee cannot be collected by Apple.

That was my take anyways.

While its true that creators often share "extras" in return for support, it's crazy to call the support itself a "digital good." I can only assume they mean it is digitally good for their business.

Soon Google will do the same thing. And then what?

The practical way out is to just buy QQQ and get some of your money back.

Apple obviously needs this to save themselves from bankruptcy.

They work to make Apple rich. It's a bit like the mafia, but not as rememberable.

I call this the Apple "idiot tax" - 'cos you have to be an idiot in letting Apple exploit you (the developer and the user) this brazenly.

TLDR: if you still have any Patreon subscriptions through Apple’s in-app-purchase flow (look in Settings > Apple Account > Subscriptions) cancel them and restart them on patreon.com

If only we could find a way to blame Putin for this.

how is this legal

When the App Store first launched I think 30% was pretty fair fee for Apple to collect, but that was a long time ago, and before IAP/Subscriptions. Apple might still be entitled to some percentage but they've expanded to cover more and more things (like this Patreon change or Kindle back in the day) and now we have moved far, far beyond the pale.

Apple (perhaps like all corporations but I'm focusing on Apple) is a greedy company that has massively lost it's way. Tim Cook support fascists and/or anything to improve the bottom line, especially if it increases "services" [0]. Alan Dye (thank god he is now busy screwing up Meta) shipped the worst UI revamp I've seen in a while from a company Apple's size and the iOS/iPadOS/visionOS/macOS software is all in dire straits. And they managed to do all of this while alienating developers left and right and playing chicken with governments around the world [0] instead of relaxing their hold on their platforms.

But who cares? The stock price went up. /s

I was overjoyed to see Alan Dye leave (and Jony Ive) and hope that we don't have to wait too much longer to bid Tim Cook adieu. Whoever takes over next has a lot of work ahead to dig out of the hole Tim Cook dug for Apple.

Tim Cook might be the best thing for shareholders but he has been horrible for product quality (software and hardware) and for democracy.

[0] Pay no attention to how much of services revenue came from the Google search deal with the majority of the rest coming from casinos for children and adults alike.

[1] Like the EU DMA, which, I have publicly and privately voiced my dislike of parts of it but Apple has no one to blame but themselves. By keeping a white-knuckle grip on their revenue they forced governments across the world to pass laws (often bad IMHO) that fragment and confuse the entire iOS market.

"Nice business model ya got there, sure would be a shame if somethin' happened to it."

I think it’s not that simple. These are not my words and I cannot only post the link [0] as the author uses the referrer to hide his articles from HN, but here’s the text:

Once again, Patreon is going to strong-arm all of us into "charge at the moment of sign-up" instead of "charge on the first of the month." They have wanted this for years, and once again they are saying that Apple has given them cover to demand it. Here's what I wrote when they tried to pull this shit a year and a half ago and then chickened out:

Patreon has two billing models, monthly (bills on the first of the month, or whenever they get around to it) and daily (charges you the moment you sign up.)

For several years now, they have been trying really hard to get creators to switch to daily billing whether they like it or not, with a series of intrusive nags and dark patterns. E.g., the "Settings" tab always has an "unread" alert on it reminding me that I have not made the "recommended" change.

Now they're going to force everyone to switch, and they're blaming Apple for it. And, to be clear, fuck Apple, but also fuck Patreon, this is their choice and it's going to mean that I can no longer use their service.

Here's a support request I just sent them, again, after clicking 15 levels deep into their FAQ before finding the thing that might contact a human. Since the email alerting me of this change came from a "noreply" address because of course it did.

Feel free to send your own:

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Subject: Subscription billing is unacceptable

You recently sent mail saying that you're going to force me to switch from monthly billing to subscription billing.

Subscription billing is unacceptable for my Patreon. It does not work.

I sell monthly memberships to a physical nightclub. The memberships begin on the first of the month. I fulfill and mail the physical membership cards on the first of the month. If you make me switch to daily billing, that means I will have to do merch fulfillment on a daily basis instead, and I simply cannot do that.

If you force me to switch from a monthly cycle to a daily cycle I will have no choice but to stop using Patreon.

To be clear: I do not give a shit about the iOS app. Not one fractional fuck is given. If the solution to this problem is that people cannot sign up for, or access, my Patreon from the iOS app, that is 100% acceptable to me.

I know for a fact that none -- zero, 0% -- of my patrons have signed up using the iOS app. I know this because I had to warn them away from it, due to the 30% Apple Tax, and all of them complied. All of them. The iOS app is utterly meaningless to me and to my patrons.

(Also you are blaming this on Apple's bullying, which is simply not credible. You've been nagging me to change to subscription billing for years, with the little red error icon appearing everywhere. This is your decision. You are transparently using Apple as an excuse.)

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I said this same thing to you a year and a half ago, the last time you tried to pull this nonsense. Second verse, same as the first. Last time, support replied that they "completely get why this change would be upsetting" and "will bring my feedback to the team." Uh huh.

Patreon's absolutely awful level of service and support has been a huge problem for quite some time, but I am really not looking forward to having to figure out how to implement recurring monthly billing on my own.

Patreon, YOU HAD ONE JOB.

[0] https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/01/patreon-is-lying-again-and-...

With only two mobile OS providers, they should be highly regulated. But given Tim Cook gave Trump a golden award and attended the premiere of the Melania documentary, I doubt they’ll get any antitrust trouble. Disappointing rent seeking behavior.

Why would anyone use Patreon’s app?

Should be 50% at least.