What It Costs to Publish an iOS App on the App Store
Publishing an iOS app on the App Store costs 99 USD per year for an Apple Developer Program membership, plus Apple's commission on anything you sell through the app — 30% at the standard rate, or 15% for developers in the App Store Small Business Program. There is no per-app fee, no submission fee, and no charge for updates. Some organisations pay the 99 USD too, and some qualify for a waiver and pay nothing at all.
That is the complete list of costs Apple charges you. Everything else you will read about — design, localisation, tooling, marketing — is optional spending you choose, not a price of admission. This article separates the two, quotes Apple's own numbers and conditions for each, and then makes the case that the expensive mistake in shipping an iOS app has never been the 99 USD.
The Short Answer
- Apple Developer Program: 99 USD a year. One membership covers unlimited apps and unlimited updates.
- Fee waiver exists. Nonprofit organisations, accredited educational institutions and government entities can enrol at no cost — with conditions, the sharpest being that you cannot sell anything.
- The Enterprise Program at 299 USD is not a cheaper route. It is for private in-house distribution and cannot publish to the App Store.
- Commission applies only if you sell. A free app with no in-app purchases pays Apple nothing beyond the membership.
- A lot comes included. TestFlight, App Store distribution, App Analytics, sales reports, peer group benchmarks and code-level technical support.
- The real cost is the category you enter. Building into a term you cannot rank for costs more than every fee on this page combined.
The One Mandatory Cost
To distribute on the App Store you need an Apple Developer Program membership. Apple's enrollment page states the fee as 99 USD per year, with the caveat that "prices may vary by region and are listed in local currency during the enrollment process."
Two mechanics worth knowing before you enrol:
It renews. Apple notes that "if you're enrolling using the Apple Developer app, membership is provided on an annual basis as an auto-renewable subscription that renews until cancelled." If your membership lapses, your apps are removed from the App Store — this is not a one-time entry fee you can let expire once you have shipped.
It covers everything you publish. There is no per-app charge and no per-submission charge. One membership, unlimited apps, unlimited versions. For an indie developer with three apps, the effective cost is 33 USD per app per year.
Who Pays Nothing: The Fee Waiver
This is the most under-known fact in App Store economics, and it is worth checking before you pay.
Apple operates a fee waiver for the Apple Developer Program. To be eligible you must be a legal entity with the status of one of the following:
- A nonprofit organisation, officially recognised by a relevant authority in your region of operation
- An accredited educational institution, officially recognised by an official accrediting body
- A government entity
Apple's conditions are strict, and two of them disqualify most readers of this article:
| Condition | Effect |
|---|---|
| Must not be an individual, sole proprietor, or single-person business | Rules out almost every indie developer |
| Must not have signed the Paid Applications Agreement — or must have terminated it | You cannot offer paid apps or in-app purchases |
| Must not otherwise sell digital goods or services through any of your apps | The waiver is for genuinely free apps only |
Apple adds one further condition for the EU: "if you operate an alternative app marketplace on iOS in the European Union (EU), you may only distribute apps from developers who have also received this same fee waiver."
Recognition is regional and specific. Apple names examples — the IRS in the United States, a local register of charities in the EU, the Ministry of Civil Affairs in China mainland for nonprofits; the Department of Education, the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, or the Ministry of Education for accredited institutions.
Practical read: if you are a solo developer, you are paying the 99 USD. If you are shipping on behalf of a registered nonprofit, a school, or a public body and the app is genuinely free with nothing sold inside it, check the waiver before anyone raises a purchase order.
The Enterprise Program Is Not a Cheaper Alternative
Apple's Developer Enterprise Program costs 299 USD per year, and it comes up often enough in "how much does it cost" discussions to be worth closing off.
It is for organisations that need private distribution of proprietary apps to their own employees. It does not publish to the App Store. If your goal is a public listing, the Enterprise Program is not an option at any price — the 99 USD Developer Program is the only route.
The Second Cost: Apple's Commission
The membership fee is the only thing Apple charges you up front. After that, Apple takes a commission on what you sell — and only on what you sell. A free app with no in-app purchases and no subscriptions pays Apple nothing beyond the 99 USD.
The short version, stated the way Apple states it, as the share you keep:
| Situation | You receive |
|---|---|
| Standard rate | 70% |
| App Store Small Business Program | 85% |
| Subscription, after one year of paid service | 85% |
The Small Business Program applies the 15% rate to developers who earned no more than 1 million USD in proceeds in the previous calendar year, and to developers new to the App Store — which is to say, almost certainly you. It is opt-in, and not enrolling is a voluntary 15-point increase in what Apple takes.
The full treatment of how commission interacts with your pricing model — including why year two of a subscription is worth 21% more per dollar than year one — is in how to price an iOS app. This article is about the cost of being on the store; that one is about what to charge once you are.
What the 99 USD Includes
It is easy to read the membership fee as a toll. It is closer to a bundle, and several items in it are things developers pay third parties for.
TestFlight. Beta distribution and tester management, included. No separate service, no per-tester charge.
App Store distribution. Hosting, worldwide delivery, payment processing, tax handling and refunds across every storefront.
App Analytics and sales reports. Impressions, product page views, conversion rate, downloads, retention, proceeds. This is first-party measurement of your own app that no third-party estimate can match — a point worth remembering when reading modelled competitor numbers, as covered in what App Store download estimates actually tell you.
Peer group benchmarks. The one genuinely competitive thing Apple gives you free. In App Store Connect Analytics, Apple shows how your metrics compare against similar apps — conversion rate, day 1/7/28 retention, crash rate, proceeds per paying user and more — against your peer group's "25th, 50th, and 75th percentile values." Peer groups are formed by App Store category, business model and download volume. Apple is careful about the claim: benchmarks are "designed to provide directional insight, not an exact ranking" (App Store Connect Analytics Help).
Code-level technical support from Apple engineers, plus the developer tools and services the platform ships with.
The Costs Apple Does Not Charge You
Everything below is real spending that shipping an app tends to involve. None of it is a fee, none of it has a published price, and any specific figure you see quoted for these is someone's average, not a rate card. Budget them as categories and decide each one deliberately.
Your time. By an order of magnitude the largest input, and the one most consistently left out of "cost to publish" articles because it cannot be invoiced.
A device to build on. Xcode requires a Mac. If you do not already have one, this is usually the largest genuine cash cost in the list.
Store assets. Icon, screenshots and optionally an app preview video. You can produce these yourself; many developers pay someone. Apple allows up to 10 screenshots, and notes that "the first one to three images appear in search results when no app preview is available" — which makes them a conversion asset, not decoration.
Localisation. Optional, and it compounds: every locale multiplies your metadata, screenshots and any In-App Event copy. Worth doing where the market data supports it, not by default.
Third-party services. Backend hosting, crash reporting, analytics beyond Apple's own, push infrastructure. Many have free tiers that outlast an indie launch.
ASO tooling. Optional. The inputs Apple names as ranking factors are all observable for free, and what you can do without a budget is covered in how to get free iOS app download estimates.
The Cost That Actually Decides the Outcome
Here is the part that matters more than every number above.
Ninety-nine dollars is not a meaningful barrier to entry, and that is precisely the problem: it is not a meaningful barrier for anyone else either. Apple's 2025 App Store Transparency Report records 2,172,472 apps on the store and 60,597,750 registered developers. The membership fee filters nobody.
What actually determines whether your app earns anything is the competitive position you chose before you started building. Six months of work aimed at a keyword where the top five apps each pull tens of thousands of monthly downloads is an expensive decision that no fee schedule will show you. The same six months aimed at a term with thin, poorly rated, un-updated incumbents is a different business entirely.
That check costs nothing and takes minutes. It is the cheapest expensive decision you will make.
Check the Category Before You Pay the Fee
App Store Operator is a free, open-source MCP server that puts App Store competitive data inside Claude — search rankings plus estimated monthly downloads, estimated monthly revenue, rating count, rating score, publisher country and top markets for the top-ranked apps on any keyword. Register it with one command:
claude mcp add --transport stdio app-store-operator -- npx -y app-store-operator@latest
Then ask the question that should precede the 99 USD:
Research the top rivals for "receipt scanner" in the US App Store, and tell me whether the incumbents look defended or vulnerable.
Two of the four tools — search_app_store and prepare_iae — need no account at all. The two analytics tools, research_rivals and get_app_details, open a browser window once for a one-time sign-in to a free SensorTower account, then reuse that saved session locally. Results cache for 24 hours, so a sweep across several candidate niches in one sitting is cheap. Details on what each tool needs are on the pricing page, and the alternatives page compares this against the paid platforms if you are weighing whether to spend anything at all.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does it cost to publish an app on the App Store?
99 USD per year for an Apple Developer Program membership, which covers unlimited apps and unlimited updates. Apple notes that prices may vary by region and are shown in local currency during enrolment. On top of that, Apple takes a commission on anything you sell through the app — 30% at the standard rate, or 15% under the App Store Small Business Program. A free app with no in-app purchases pays nothing beyond the membership.
Is the Apple Developer Program a one-time fee?
No, it is annual. Apple describes membership enrolled through the Apple Developer app as "an auto-renewable subscription that renews until cancelled." If the membership lapses, your apps are removed from the App Store, so it is an ongoing cost of being listed rather than a one-time entry fee.
Can I publish an iOS app for free?
Only if you qualify for Apple's fee waiver. It is available to nonprofit organisations, accredited educational institutions and government entities that are legal entities — not individuals, sole proprietors or single-person businesses — and that have not signed the Paid Applications Agreement, meaning the apps cannot offer paid downloads or in-app purchases. Individual developers pay the 99 USD.
What is the difference between the 99 USD and 299 USD Apple programs?
The 99 USD Apple Developer Program is what you need to publish on the App Store. The 299 USD Apple Developer Enterprise Program is for organisations distributing proprietary apps privately to their own employees and does not publish to the App Store. It is not a premium version of the standard program.
Does Apple charge a fee per app or per update?
No. One Apple Developer Program membership covers unlimited apps and unlimited updates. There is no submission fee and no per-app charge.
Do I have to pay Apple's 30% commission?
Only on what you sell through your app, and most small developers pay 15% rather than 30%. The App Store Small Business Program applies a 15% commission to developers who earned no more than 1 million USD in proceeds in the previous calendar year, and to developers new to the App Store. It is opt-in — you have to enrol. A free app with no in-app purchases or subscriptions pays no commission at all.
What do I get for the Apple Developer Program fee?
App Store distribution with payment, tax and refund handling worldwide; TestFlight for beta distribution; App Analytics and sales reporting; peer group benchmarks comparing your app's conversion, retention and crash metrics against similar apps; and code-level technical support from Apple engineers.
Spend the Money on the Right Question
The fees are simple, public, and small. Ninety-nine dollars a year, waived for some organisations, plus a commission that only applies once money changes hands. There is very little to optimise there beyond remembering to enrol in the Small Business Program.
The decision worth spending real effort on is upstream of all of it: whether the space you are about to build into can be entered at all. Before you launch is the checklist for that, the competition analysis framework is the method, and how to price an iOS app covers what to charge once you have decided to go.
Start with the competitive check:
claude mcp add --transport stdio app-store-operator -- npx -y app-store-operator@latest
Run your first competitive research in 60 seconds.
App Store Operator connects Claude to App Store and SensorTower data — no browser, no API keys, no manual copy-paste.
View setup guide →