Apple Small Business Program: Get the 15% Rate
The Apple Small Business Program drops Apple’s cut on paid apps and in-app purchases from 30% to 15%, and almost every Lovable founder shipping a first app qualifies. It isn’t automatic. You enroll in App Store Connect, and the lower rate only starts after Apple’s next fiscal month closes, so the time to do it is before your first sale, not after your first payout.
Everything here is from Apple’s App Store Small Business Program page, checked October 27, 2026.
Who qualifies
Two groups: developers who are new to the App Store, and developers who earned up to $1 million in proceeds across all their apps in the previous calendar year. “Proceeds” is Apple’s word for what lands in your bank, so sales minus Apple’s commission and some taxes. A million in proceeds at 15% is roughly $1.18 million in actual sales. If you’re reading a blog about wrapping a Lovable app, you’re under it.
The catch is the word “all”. Apple asks you to list every Associated Developer Account, meaning any developer account you own more than 50% of, or that owns more than 50% of yours. Their proceeds count together. A studio with four apps under four accounts is one business to Apple.
This is also why we tell every client to open their own Apple Developer account instead of shipping under ours. The account that publishes the app is the account that enrolls, and your app shouldn’t share a threshold with anybody else’s.
How to enroll
It takes about five minutes, and only the Account Holder can do it (not an Admin you invited, which trips people up when a cofounder set up the account).
- Sign in to App Store Connect as the Account Holder.
- Accept the latest Paid Apps agreement under Business. Without it you can’t sell anything anyway.
- Open the enrollment form, confirm your proceeds, and list any associated accounts.
- Wait for the approval email.
When the 15% actually starts
This is the part that costs money. Apple adjusts your proceeds 15 days after the end of the fiscal month in which your enrollment is approved. Apple’s own example: approved February 10, the lower rate starts March 14. Every sale between those dates is billed at 30%.
Apple’s fiscal months don’t line up with calendar months either. So an app that launches its subscription the same week it enrolls pays the full 30% on its launch spike, which for most apps is the biggest week they’ll have for a while.
We had a founder whose habit-tracker went live on a Tuesday with a launch discount, got picked up by a newsletter on the Thursday, and sold about 900 annual subscriptions in ten days. He’d enrolled the night before launch. Approval came two days later, and the rate didn’t change until the middle of the next month. The difference on those 900 subscriptions at $29.99 was a little over $4,000, all because the form went in three weeks too late.
Crossing $1 million
If you pass $1 million in proceeds during the year, the standard rate applies to your future sales from then until the year ends. Apple doesn’t claw back the 15% you already got. If you then finish a later year under the threshold, you can qualify again for the year after that. It’s a nice problem to have, but plan your pricing for 30% if you’re getting close.
Subscriptions have a separate rule that helps everybody: once a subscriber has paid for more than a year, Apple’s cut on that subscriber drops to 15% even outside the program. In the program you’re already at 15%, so that one doesn’t stack.
When none of this matters
Plenty of Lovable apps never pay Apple anything. If you sell real-world things, like bookings, deliveries or physical products, guideline 3.1.3 lets you keep Stripe, and there’s no commission. If the app is free with a paid web plan and you’re only on the US storefront, you can link to your own checkout. We went through those rules in Stripe or Apple in-app purchases.
And Google? Google Play’s rules changed this year. For buyers in the US, UK and EEA, installs from June 30, 2026 pay 10% on the first $1 million of yearly earnings plus a 5% billing fee if you use Google Play Billing, according to Google’s service fee page. In most other countries you still have to enroll in Google’s 15% tier through Play Console, the same as Apple. Two forms, both worth filling in before launch day.
Enroll the day you accept the Paid Apps agreement, even if your first paid feature is months away. There’s no downside I can find.
If you want the app built and submitted from your own developer account, that’s what our packages cover, from $300.