What is an in-app purchase?

An in-app purchase is how you charge for digital content inside your app: a subscription, a level, in-game currency, a premium feature. Apple has four types. Google has two, structured differently. Both stores require you to use their billing for digital goods, and both forbid you from using it for physical ones.

What it costs you is the part that moved. Three separate changes landed in 2026, and one of them is still in front of the US Supreme Court.

Apple's four types

Type	Apple's definition	Example
Consumable	Used once, then depleted and must be purchased again	Fish food in a fishing app
Non-consumable	Purchased once, does not expire or decrease with use	A race track in a game
Auto-renewable subscription	Dynamic content for a set period, renews automatically unless cancelled	Monthly streaming access
Non-renewing subscription	A service with a limited duration, does not renew	A one year article archive

Two rules attach to these and both cause rejections. Credits and in-game currency may not expire. And you must provide a restore mechanism for anything restorable, which means non-consumables and auto-renewable subscriptions.

Google Play is not the same shape

Do not map Apple's four onto Google's catalogue. Play has two top-level types.

One-time products are configured through purchase options, which set how the entitlement is granted, the price and the region, plus offers that modify the price. Whether something is consumable is decided in your code, by whether you consume the purchase token, not by picking a product type.

Subscriptions are configured through base plans and offers. A base plan renews automatically, is prepaid (a non-renewing top-up, the closest thing to Apple's non-renewing subscription), or is paid in installments, which is available in Brazil, France, Italy and Spain only.

Limits: 250 combined base plans and offers per subscription, 50 active at once.

What must go through in-app purchase, and what must not

Apple's guideline 3.1.1 is blunt. If you unlock features or functionality inside your app, you must use in-app purchase, and you may not use your own mechanism: not licence keys, not QR codes, not AR markers, not cryptocurrency.

The reverse rule catches more people. Guideline 3.1.3(e) says that if your app sells physical goods or services consumed outside the app, you must use something other than in-app purchase. That is not a choice. Groceries, a taxi ride, a haircut, a physical gift card posted to the customer: those take Apple Pay or a card, not IAP.

The named exceptions to in-app purchase are reader apps, multiplatform services, enterprise services, person-to-person services between two individuals, and free apps that are companions to a paid web tool.

Google's rule is the same in substance, with a different exception list and no reader-app category. Its nearest equivalent is the consumption-only exception, for apps where the purchase already happened somewhere else.

What it costs, as of September 2026

This section will age faster than the rest of this page. Treat the numbers as dated.

Apple, standard: 30% commission. It drops to 15% for auto-renewable subscriptions after a customer has accrued more than one year of paid service in that subscription group. Free trial days do not count toward that year.

Apple Small Business Program: 15% from the start, if you and your associated accounts earned no more than $1,000,000 in proceeds during the previous calendar year. Enrolment is one-time, not annual. Cross the threshold and you go back to 30% for future sales; fall below it again and you can requalify the year after.

Google Play, EEA, UK and US since 30 June 2026: the old single fee was split into a service fee plus a separate 5% billing fee when you use Play's billing. Auto-renewing subscriptions are 10% plus that 5%, so 15% all in. Other digital goods are 20% plus 5% on new installs, 25% plus 5% on existing ones. The first $1M of annual earnings is 10% plus 5%.

The headline "10% subscriptions" is the number that gets quoted. It is 15% once you include billing.

Google Play, rest of the world: unchanged for now at 15% on the first $1M and 30% above, with subscriptions at 15%. Australia moves by the end of September 2026, Korea and Japan by the end of December, everywhere else by September 2027. So the correct answer depends on which market you are asking about.

The European Union, from 1 October 2026: the Core Technology Fee, the initial acquisition fee and the store services fee are all eliminated and replaced by a single structure. Apple in-app purchase is 26%, alternative in-app payment processing is 20%, out-of-app offers are 15%, and alternative marketplaces or web distribution carry a 5% Core Technology Commission. Small Business Program members, Mini Apps and Video Partner participants, and subscriptions past their first year get reduced rates.

The United States link-out question is unresolved. Since the April 2025 contempt ruling, US apps may include buttons and external links to outside purchasing with no entitlement required, and Apple currently takes 0% on those purchases. In December 2025 the Ninth Circuit upheld the contempt finding but vacated the blanket zero-commission remedy, sending it back for a court-set rate. In August 2026 Apple proposed 15%, 10% and 5% tiers. That proposal has not been approved. The Supreme Court granted certiorari in June 2026 and briefing runs into November.

If you are building a US business model on link-outs, build it so a commission of up to 15% would not break it.

Free trials

Apple offers free trials, introductory offers (new subscribers, one per subscription group), promotional offers (existing or lapsed subscribers, up to ten per subscription), offer codes, and win-back offers for people who left. All use one of three discount shapes: free trial, pay as you go, or pay up front.

For a non-subscription trial, Apple's route is oddly specific: a non-consumable at price tier zero named "XX-day Trial", with the duration, what is lost afterwards and any later charges disclosed before it starts.

Google allows free trials from 3 days to 3 years and introductory pricing as a fixed amount, a fixed discount or a percentage. Offers attach only to auto-renewing base plans; prepaid plans cannot carry them. Google verifies a payment method before the trial starts, which some users see as a temporary hold.

The structural difference: Apple enforces one introductory offer per subscription group on its side. Google lets you define eligibility logic yourself.

Getting it approved

Before an in-app purchase can be reviewed, the Account Holder must have accepted the Paid Apps Agreement and supplied banking and tax details. You need a product name, description, price, availability, a tax category and in-app purchase keys.

Then the rule that catches everyone once: your first in-app purchase must be submitted with a new version of your app. Every one after that can go on its own.

The rejection causes worth checking against before you submit:

• No restore mechanism for non-consumables or subscriptions.
• Screenshots and description that do not disclose that featured content requires a purchase, under guideline 2.3.2.
• Subscription purchase screens that do not say clearly what the customer gets for the price, under 3.1.2(c).
• Subscriptions shorter than seven days, or that do not work on all the customer's devices.
• Loot boxes without published odds.
• In-game currency that expires.

On the code side, the Original API for in-app purchase is deprecated. Use StoreKit 2 unless your minimum target is iOS 14 or earlier. Apple's guidance is that you can verify transactions on your server or rely on StoreKit's verification, and its own comparison gives server-side validation two advantages for subscriptions: more subscription information, and resistance to a changed device clock.

What Uprate does with it

The pricing agent watches what you charge across 178 markets and flags the prices that are costing you revenue. The submission agent checks your Apple and Google submissions for blockers, including the disclosure rules above, and comes back with the exact field and the fix before you submit.

Nothing goes live until you approve it.