Apple's default commission is 30% of every price an end user pays, and that number is not a rumour or a blog estimate: it is Section 3.4(a) of Schedule 2 of the Apple Developer Program License Agreement, in writing. The same schedule contains the escape clause that most small publishers never file. Section 3.4(b), the App Store Small Business Program, reduces the commission to 15% on paid apps and in-app purchases — the same store, the same customers, half the fee, for as long as your proceeds stay under one million dollars.

Apple's marketing page makes it sound like a formality. Operationally it is a filing with real deadlines, a combined-account eligibility test, and a disqualification clause aimed squarely at people who split one business across several developer accounts. This is the working version of the guide: who qualifies, how the four ownership tests define an "associated" account, what to click, when the rate actually changes, and what happens the month you cross the line.

Four numbers control this programme: 30% — the standard commission. 15% — the programme rate. $1,000,000 — the proceeds ceiling, measured across every account you own or control. 15 days — how long after the end of each fiscal calendar month Apple takes to approve eligible developers, and how long after approval the adjusted rate begins to apply.

1. What the programme actually changes

Under the standard terms in Section 3.4(a), Apple takes 30% of all prices payable by each end user, with exactly one discount built in: auto-renewing subscription renewals are charged at 15% once a subscriber has accrued more than one year of paid service within the same Subscription Group. Everything else — one-off purchases, first-year subscriptions, most in-app purchases — sits at 30%.

Under Section 3.4(b), a developer approved for the App Store Small Business Program is charged a reduced commission of 15% of all prices payable by each end user, for sales to users located in the regions listed in Exhibit B of Schedule 2 (as updated from time to time in App Store Connect).

Two consequences follow. If your revenue is mostly paid apps or first-year subscriptions, the programme halves your Apple fee outright. If your business is built on long-term subscribers, the benefit is narrower — you already get 15% on renewals after year one, so the programme's value is concentrated in year-one subscriptions and non-subscription sales. And if you are on the alternative terms in the EU, Apple's own FAQ states that Small Business Program members get a further reduced commission of 10%.

2. The eligibility test is proceeds, not revenue

The threshold is written precisely: you and your Associated Developer Accounts must have earned no more than $1,000,000 in total proceeds during the twelve fiscal months occurring in the prior calendar year, as calculated by Apple under standard business practices. Proceeds are defined as sales net of Apple's commission and certain taxes and adjustments — so the number you compare against $1M is smaller than your gross sales by roughly the commission you already paid. Developers new to the App Store can qualify as well, and the accounts involved must be in good standing as Apple Developer Program members.

Apple's FAQ gives the working estimation method, and it is worth following literally: take the App Store payments deposited into your bank account during the prior calendar year, then modify that figure with the taxes and adjustments shown in Payments and Financial Reports in App Store Connect; if your bank account is not in USD, convert each fiscal month using a publicly available exchange rate corresponding to the end of that fiscal month, then convert to USD. Finally, add the proceeds of every Associated Developer Account. That last step is where most multi-account operators discover they are not eligible — or that they have been quietly misreporting.

3. Associated Developer Accounts: the four ownership tests

Schedule 2 defines an Associated Developer Account as any Apple Developer Program account that you own or control, or which owns or controls your account. Apple's page spells out four situations that create the relationship:

You must list them at enrolment, and the obligation does not end there: the agreement states that if there is a change in your relationship to an Associated Developer Account, you must update that information. Per Apple's page, the details required for each account are the name (individual or organisation), the Team ID, the Account Holder email address, and a description of the relationship. Practical advice: collect those four fields for every account you control before you open the enrolment form, because the form does not let you save half an answer.

4. Enrolment: three requirements and one signer

Apple's requirements are short. To enrol you must be the Account Holder in the Apple Developer Program — an admin or app-manager role cannot enrol — review and accept the latest Paid Apps agreement (Schedule 2 to the Apple Developer Program License Agreement) in App Store Connect, and list all Associated Developer Accounts where they apply.

The order matters. The Paid Apps agreement lives with the other agreements inside App Store Connect, and enrolment cannot proceed while the current Schedule 2 is unaccepted — a stale agreement is the single most common reason an affected account stalls at the first step. If you run several accounts, sign in one at a time as the Account Holder of each; there is no bulk enrolment interface.

5. When the 15% actually starts

Nothing here is instant. Schedule 2 states that Apple determines eligibility and approves qualified developers within fifteen (15) days of the end of each fiscal calendar month. Apple's programme page adds the second half of the mechanism: proceeds are adjusted fifteen (15) days after the end of the fiscal calendar month in which enrolment is approved — the page's own example being an approval on 10 February, with adjusted proceeds beginning 14 March.

Read that as an operational rule: enrolling on the 3rd of a month does not change the rate for that month. Budget the first month as a full-rate month and check the following month's statement.

6. Crossing $1,000,000 mid-year

The clause is explicit: once the total proceeds of you and your Associated Developer Accounts exceeds $1,000,000 in the current calendar year, the standard commission rate applies for the remainder of that calendar year. There is a recovery path but it is not fast: if proceeds fall back to no more than $1,000,000 in a future calendar year, you may re-qualify in the following calendar year.

For a portfolio heading for the threshold, this argues for a monthly proceeds review rather than an annual one. The programme does not send a warning at $999,000, and the change in rate is retrospective to the month the threshold was breached only in the sense that all future sales that year are charged at 30%.

7. App transfers count against every party

This is the part that surprises buyers of established apps. Schedule 2 provides that if you participate in a transfer of a licensed application — as transferor or recipient — the proceeds associated with that application are included in the total proceeds of every App Transfer Party, and if an app is transferred multiple times in a year it is counted for each and every party. Buying a high-revenue app in October can therefore push the recipient's combined proceeds past $1M and out of the programme for the rest of the year, while the seller's own account keeps the same proceeds in its calculation. When valuing an app purchase, the commission-rate consequence belongs in the model.

8. The clause that matters most for multi-account operations

Schedule 2 states that you and your Associated Developer Accounts will be disqualified from the App Store Small Business Program and terminated at Apple's discretion if you engage in any suspicious, misleading, fraudulent, improper, unlawful or dishonest act or omission relating to qualification — and gives two worked examples: providing false or inaccurate information to Apple, and creating or using multiple Apple Developer Program accounts to improperly benefit from the programme.

Put that next to the disclosure duty in the same section and the compliance picture is unambiguous: the unit of eligibility is the controlled group of accounts, not the individual account. Two accounts held by the same person, each reporting $600,000 of proceeds, are not two small businesses under this schedule — combined they are $1.2M and neither should be enrolled. The remedy written into the agreement is disqualification plus termination at Apple's discretion, which lands on the account relationship, not just on the discount.

9. Verify the rate is really being applied

After approval, check Payments and Financial Reports in App Store Connect, where the commission and adjustment lines are itemised per fiscal month. Because of the 15-day rule, the first statement that reflects the reduced rate will normally be the fiscal month following approval, not the month of approval. Two adjacent items must also be in order before money moves at the reduced rate: the Paid Apps agreement must be current, and your tax and banking information complete — the Small Business Program changes the commission, not the payment prerequisites.

10. One 2026 side benefit worth knowing

Apple's programme page states that developers enrolled in the Small Business Program with fewer than two million first-time App Store downloads are eligible to use Apple Foundation Models running on Private Cloud Compute with no cloud API cost, subject to the Private Cloud Compute entitlement being assigned to the account. For a small publisher shipping an app with any AI feature, that entitlement may be worth more than the commission saving — and it is gated on enrolment in this programme, so the filing has to happen first.

Step-by-step: what to do

  1. Add up last year's proceeds per Apple's method — bank deposits, adjusted for taxes and adjustments shown in App Store Connect, each fiscal month converted at its month-end rate — across your account and every account you own or control.
  2. Map your Associated Developer Accounts against the four ownership tests, and collect the name, Team ID, Account Holder email and relationship description for each.
  3. Sign in to App Store Connect as the Account Holder and accept the current Paid Apps agreement (Schedule 2).
  4. Enrol in the App Store Small Business Program and list the associated accounts.
  5. Wait for the fiscal-month approval cycle; expect the adjusted rate to start 15 days after the end of the month in which enrolment was approved.
  6. Verify the commission line on the next Payments and Financial Reports statement.
  7. Set a monthly proceeds check so the $1M run rate is visible months before Apple's own calculation lands.

The point of the programme

The Small Business Program is not a loophole, it is a filing — and Apple's own schedule is explicit that eligibility is judged on reported proceeds across the controlled group of accounts, with disqualification available if that reporting is gamed. The 15% rate is genuinely available to almost every small publisher that keeps its paperwork accurate and its relationships disclosed. It is available to almost nobody who tries to split one business across five accounts to stay under the line, because the agreement's definition of "associated" already anticipated that move.

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