Payments on the App Store

Whether your app needs in-app purchases is the most important decision to make before submission. Here's where things stand as of August 2026. Shipping Android too? Google has its own rules.

#The baseline rule

If you sell digital goods or subscriptions inside the app, Apple requires in-app purchase (guideline 3.1.1). The cuts: 30% standard, 15% in the Small Business Program (under $1M/year), and 15% on subscriptions after a subscriber's first year.

Physical goods, services consumed outside the app, and person-to-person payments are exempt.

#The companion app path

Most SaaS apps don't need any of that. Apple's guideline 3.1.3(f) lets a free app act as a stand-alone companion to a paid web tool, with no in-app purchases, provided there's no purchasing inside the app and no calls to action to purchase elsewhere. Apple's own examples include email services, cloud storage, and web hosting.

In practice: sign-ups and billing live on your website, the app serves existing customers, and nothing in the app mentions upgrading or pricing. This is the simplest path to approval and the one most Ruby Native apps take.

Two exceptions worth knowing. If users can buy things on your site and use them in the app, guideline 3.1.3(b) says those purchases must also be offered as in-app purchases, so keep purchasing and consumption clearly on the web side. And 3.1.3(c) exempts apps sold only to organizations for their employees, but offering any individual B2C accounts disqualifies you.

#The US carve-out

Since mid-2025, following the Epic v. Apple ruling, apps on the United States storefront may include buttons and links to purchase on the web, with no in-app purchase and currently no commission to Apple. The ruling survived appeal, though the case is still moving and Apple may eventually be allowed to charge a cost-based fee on link-outs.

The catch: this only applies to the US storefront. An upgrade link shown to every user violates the rules everywhere else, so it has to be limited to US users. The storefront is the Apple ID's store region, which only the device knows: your server can't detect it, and Ruby Native doesn't surface it to your Rails app yet. Until it does, treat US link-outs as a carve-out to watch, not something to build on.

#What to do

• You sell nothing digital, or only to businesses on the web: ship the companion path. No purchases, no upgrade CTAs, nothing to build.
• You want in-app conversion: build in-app purchases and accept the cut, or wait for the link-out landscape to settle.
• You're not sure: ship the companion path first. Adding purchases later is a normal update; removing them after a rejection fight is not.

This area changes quarter to quarter. Check the current App Review Guidelines at submission time.