US external purchase links: there is no October 2026 fee, and here is what is actually true

Nothing changes for US external purchase links on 1 October 2026, as far as anything Apple has published. There is currently no entitlement to apply for, no commission to pay and no transaction report to file on a link-out from a US storefront app. Apple has proposed a fee structure to a court, the court has not approved it, and no start date exists to plan around.

If you arrived here because you read that reporting and service fees begin on 1 October, that claim does not trace back to a source. This piece sets out what is verifiable, so you can tell the difference.

What Apple's own rules say today

The App Store Review Guidelines are the authoritative developer-facing text, and they are unambiguous about the US. From 3.1.1(a):

Developers may apply for entitlements to provide a link in their app to a website the developer owns or maintains responsibility for in order to purchase digital content or services. These entitlements are not required for developers to include buttons, external links, or other calls to action in their United States storefront apps.

From the wider 3.1.1 text, on where the prohibition applies:

The entitlements are limited to use only in the iOS or iPadOS App Store in specific storefronts. In all other storefronts, except for the United States storefront, where this prohibition does not apply, apps and their metadata may not include buttons, external links, or other calls to action that direct customers to purchasing mechanisms other than in-app purchase.

The same carve-out appears in the reader apps section, 3.1.3:

Reader app developers may apply for the External Link Account Entitlement to provide an informational link in their app to a web site the developer owns or maintains responsibility for in order to create or manage an account. This entitlement is not required for developers to include buttons, external links, or other calls to action in their United States storefront apps.

And in 3.1.5(a), on NFTs, the US is again the exception:

except for apps on the United States storefront, the apps may not include buttons, external links, or other calls to action that direct customers to purchasing mechanisms other than in-app purchase.

Four separate places in the guidelines, all saying the same thing: on the US storefront, you do not need permission, and the linking prohibition does not apply. That is the current rule, quoted from the live document.

What I could not find, and where I looked

Being specific about the absence matters more than asserting it, so here is the search:

  • Apple's developer news RSS feed carries 140 posts running back to August 2024. None announces a US external-links fee, a US entitlement, a transaction reporting requirement, or anything dated 1 October 2026. The external-purchase posts in that feed are about the European Union.
  • Apple's Upcoming Requirements page currently has no future-dated entries at all. The most recent items are "SDK minimum requirements, Since April 28, 2026" and "Age Rating Updates, Since January 31, 2026". If Apple had a dated US requirement in the pipeline, this is the page it would sit on.
  • App Store Connect Help has no page for a US external purchase link transaction report. The only closely related page is "Provide tax information for commissions and fees related to external purchases and alternative distribution", under Manage tax information, which exists because those commissions and fees are real in other storefronts.
  • There is no Apple support page at a US external-entitlement path. Requests for one land on the general support index.

An absence of evidence is not proof, and Apple can publish something tomorrow. But a requirement that takes effect in six weeks and appears nowhere in Apple's own channels is not a requirement you should be planning around.

Why the confusion is understandable

Because a fee genuinely is being decided right now, in court, and the numbers being discussed are concrete enough to look like policy.

The short history. A court injunction required Apple to let developers direct users to alternative payment methods. Apple complied by allowing external links, and applied a 27% commission to purchases made through them. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers found Apple in contempt over that commission. Apple appealed the contempt finding, and the Supreme Court agreed to review it.

Crucially, two proceedings are running at once. The Supreme Court is reviewing whether Apple can be held in contempt. Separately, the district court is deciding what commission, if any, Apple may charge on linked-out purchases going forward. The second is the one that will produce a number and a date.

Here is the timeline for the past fortnight, as reported by 9to5Mac:

Date What happened
30 June 2026 Supreme Court agreed to hear Apple's appeal of the contempt ruling
11 August 2026 Judge Gonzalez Rogers denied Apple's request to pause the fee proceedings, giving Apple 24 hours to file its proposed fee
12 August 2026 Justice Elena Kagan granted a temporary administrative stay while the Court considered a longer one
13 August 2026 The Supreme Court denied the longer stay; Apple filed its proposal, and separately moved for a settlement conference
14 September 2026 Apple's Supreme Court brief is expected

Judge Gonzalez Rogers's order denying the pause, as quoted in that reporting, said that "the Supreme Court's grant of a narrow review of the contempt proceedings does not substantially impact the factual issues that must be resolved to ensure compliance with the injunction", and added: "Given Apple's propensity to delay, this phase will likely take time. We are approaching the five-year anniversary of this Court's decision. Further delay is unwarranted."

"This phase will likely take time" is the sentence to hold on to if you are trying to plan.

The numbers Apple has proposed, and why they are not rates

Apple's filing of 13 August 2026 proposed the following commissions on linked-out purchases, as reported:

  • 15% for standard apps, meaning those subject to the 30% in-app purchase commission
  • 10% for the Video Partner Program, the News Partner Program, the Mini Apps Partner Program, and subscription renewals
  • 5% for Small Business Program apps

Read those as an opening position in a contested proceeding, not as a schedule. Apple's own filing, as quoted, argues that "large numbers of U.S. developers collectively accounting for the lion's share of App Store revenue will be able to link out profitably at the proffered rates". Epic's public response was that it "believes these fees are far outside of the bounds of the Ninth Circuit's guidance on permissible fees", and that Apple "admitted that under the Ninth Circuit's definition of 'necessary costs' they would charge 0% for purchases made via linkouts to the web".

Both sides have an interest in how you read that. What is not in dispute is that the court has not ruled, that Apple has also asked for a settlement conference which Epic did not consent to, and that no effective date has been set by anyone.

So the range of plausible outcomes is genuinely wide: something at or near Apple's proposal, something much lower, zero, or a negotiated settlement that looks like none of the above. Anyone quoting you a specific rate and a specific date today is guessing.

What to do while it is unresolved

If you already link out on the US storefront. Keep going. Nothing in the current guidelines requires an entitlement, and no commission is being collected on those purchases. Do not sign up for anything, do not start filing reports nobody has asked for, and do not remove a working link on the strength of a rumour.

Keep your own transaction records anyway. Not because Apple has asked, but because if a commission is imposed with a start date, the first thing you will need is a clean count of linked-out transactions from your own payment processor, split by storefront where you can. That is a report you should have regardless, and building it now costs a day rather than a panic.

Model the downside before you restructure pricing. If your business case for linking out only works at 0%, it is fragile. Run the numbers at 15% as well. If linking out still beats 30% in-app purchase at 15%, the worst reported proposal cannot hurt you. If it does not, you have learned something useful about your own margins rather than about Apple.

Do not confuse the US with the EU. Outside the US, external purchase links genuinely do run through entitlements and addenda, with commissions and fees attached, and App Store Connect has tax pages that exist for exactly that reason. If you ship to both, they are two different mechanisms and only one of them is currently free of an entitlement.

Watch three places, in this order. Apple's developer news feed and Upcoming Requirements page, because a real requirement will appear there with a date. The App Store Review Guidelines, because the four US carve-outs quoted above are where a change would show up first. And the district court docket, because that is where the number comes from.

Treat any dated claim with suspicion until it is on an Apple page. Including this one. If someone tells you the date, ask them for the URL. The reason this article exists is that the 1 October figure has been circulating without one.

AppSubmit does not currently model US link-out commissions, because there are none to model, and it will not show an inferred rate as though it were a published one. That is the same standard applied here: an unknown labelled as unknown is more useful than a confident number that turns out to be wrong.

Sources

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Last reviewed 2026-08-17. Apple and Google change their rules without notice, so check anything decision-critical against their live documentation.