How Apple Makes Billions From the App Store—and Why 90% of Sales Now Escape Its Commission Cut

Apple told developers on 4 June 2026 that its App Store moved more than £1T ($1.4T) in billings and sales during 2025, up from £974B ($1.3T) a year earlier, according to a study by economists at Analysis Group commissioned by the company. For more than 90% of that, developers handed Apple nothing. The slice it does tax lands almost entirely on the streaming and app subscriptions millions pay for monthly.

That headline figure does quiet work. It lets Apple look like a modest landlord taking a small cut, while the part it taxes stays hidden.

The Number Apple Wants You to See, and the One It Doesn't

Split the total apart, and the picture sharpens. Analysis Group put physical goods and services at £824B ($1.1T): groceries, retail, ride-hailing, food delivery, and travel. Apple has never charged commission on any of it. Order an Uber, book a hotel, buy trainers on Amazon, and Apple takes zero.

The slice Apple does tax is digital goods and services: games, streaming, and enterprise software. That came to £112B ($149B) in 2025, per Analysis Group, up from £98B ($131B) a year before. On that narrow band, Apple charges 15% to 30%, by developer size and transaction type. Set the three categories side by side and the taxed sliver almost vanishes, as the chart below shows.

So the line that 90% of App Store activity is commission-free holds, but only because most of what people buy through apps is physical goods that Apple was never going to tax. The word doing the work is 'facilitated'. Whether an Amazon order really depends on the App Store, or would have happened on the web anyway, is left open.

Where the Real Money Lands

Apple does not disclose App Store revenue on its own. It folds the commission into its Services division, which hit a record £82B ($109.16B) in its 2025 financial year, up roughly 14% year on year and now its second-largest business after the iPhone, according to Apple's annual report filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Independent estimates show how much comes from the store's cut. App intelligence firm Appfigures calculated that Apple earned over £7.6B ($10.1B) from US App Store commissions in 2024 alone, more than double its £3.6B ($4.76B) estimate for 2020. Globally, Appfigures put the 2024 haul above £20.5B ($27.39B). A near-zero-cost fee on digital sales is among the purest profit lines it owns.

The Rulings That Started Prising the Gate Open

For years, developers had no way around the toll. That changed in the United States. In April 2025, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers found that Apple had wilfully violated an earlier injunction by charging a 27% fee on purchases made outside the app and using warning screens to scare users off, according to the US District Court for the Northern District of California. The order was immediate: Apple could no longer take a cut on external purchases, and developers could point customers to cheaper checkouts.

Why should an iPhone owner care? Because the savings can reach the customer. Spotify acted within days, adding pricing and external links and telling the court the move had already lifted subscriptions. Substack, Amazon Kindle, and Patreon followed. Developers were quick to say publicly what the change exposed, as the post below shows.

The gate is not fully open. In December 2025, the Ninth Circuit partly upheld the ruling but said Apple may still charge some reasonable fee on external transactions, sending the case back to define 'reasonable', per the US Court of Appeals. In Europe, the pressure is heavier: the European Commission fined Apple €500M in April 2025 for breaching the Digital Markets Act's anti-steering rules, a penalty Apple is appealing while reworking its fees.

What It Means for the Bill in Your Pocket

Strip away the trillion-pound framing, and the stake is simple. Apple's money sits almost entirely on digital subscriptions and in-app purchases, the exact things millions pay for monthly. When a court forces an app to show a cheaper web price, that gap can land in the customer's favour.

The clearest wins so far are in the US, where the ruling bites. British iPhone owners are watching a slower version of the same fight, driven by the Digital Markets Act next door and the UK's own Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act. The trillion-pound headline will keep running. The number worth watching is on your next subscription screen.