The Supreme Court takes Apple's link-out case and your web checkout plan needs a margin of safety

On June 30 the US Supreme Court agreed to hear Apple's appeal in its case with Epic Games, limited to the first question in Apple's petition, which concerns the civil contempt finding. For a subscription or ecommerce app that sends US users from an ad to a web checkout, the practical effect is that the fee Apple may charge on those purchases will not be settled this year. A ruling is expected by June 2027. If your margins depend on a zero commission, you are building on a rule that can still change.

Where things stand

The sequence, as reported, is this. In April 2025 the district court found Apple in contempt for charging a 27 percent commission on purchases made through external links, and ordered it to stop charging any commission on them. In December 2025 the Ninth Circuit upheld the contempt finding but said a total ban on commissions went too far. It said Apple may charge a commission based on costs that are genuinely and reasonably necessary for coordinating external links, and no more, and sent the question of the rate back to the district court. In May 2026 the Supreme Court declined to pause the contempt order while the appeal proceeds. On June 30 it granted review, limited to the contempt question.

Reporting on the grant notes that Apple has not been collecting a commission on US external-link purchases for nearly a year. That is the current state, and it applies to the US case. It is not a global rule, and other jurisdictions have their own regimes and disputes.

Three outcomes to plan for

We do not know which way the Court will go, and neither does anyone else. A sensible plan holds up under all of the following:

1. The status quo persists. No commission on US link-outs until the case ends.
2. A cost-based commission is set by the district court. The Ninth Circuit's language points to a number tied to Apple's actual costs. Nobody has published the figure.
3. The contempt finding is reversed or narrowed. Apple could then argue for a higher commission, and the rate before the dispute, 27 percent, is the historical reference point.

You do not need to guess the probabilities. You need to know how your unit economics behave across the range.

Stress-test your economics at three commission levels

Suppose a subscription app sells a $100 annual plan, and the blended cost to acquire a paying user is $60. At zero commission on a web purchase, margin before other costs is $40. At a 15 percent fee it drops to $25, and at 27 percent to $13. Those are round, hypothetical numbers, but they show the shape: a fee that looks modest on revenue is large relative to margin when acquisition cost is high.

Run that for your own plans. Then decide which campaigns still pass your payback threshold if the commission returns, and which only work at zero. For the second group, avoid scaling budgets on the assumption that the zero commission is permanent. Build a floor into your ROAS or payback targets for those campaigns that you could still live with at the higher rate.

Keep both purchase paths alive

A funnel that depends entirely on the web checkout is exposed to rule changes in one direction, and a funnel that ignores it leaves margin on the table in the meantime. The more resilient approach is to keep in-app purchase working well, so that you can shift volume back if the economics change, and run the web path as a measured alternative.

• Keep in-app purchase conversion healthy. If it becomes the fallback, you do not want to discover it has degraded.
• Track each path separately. Conversion rate, refund rate and retention by purchase path tell you if the cheaper path attracts a different kind of customer.
• Do not build irreversible dependencies. Pricing that is only viable on web, or promotions that exist only in one path, are harder to unwind.

Fix measurement before you scale the web path

A purchase completed on the web is outside the App Store, so your ad platforms and your measurement partner may not see it the same way. Before you scale spend into a web funnel, confirm that the click ID or equivalent survives the trip from ad to web page to purchase, that web purchases are matched back to the installed app user, and that revenue reported to Apple Ads, Meta and Google is consistent with revenue in your billing system. Small gaps are normal at first, but a large unexplained gap is more likely a tracking problem than an insight.

Also compare cohorts. Users who buy on the web may be a different group from those who buy in the app, so check payback and retention for each before treating web revenue as incremental.

What not to do

• Do not rewrite your pricing model around the current rule.
• Do not count a margin gain as permanent in budget forecasts. Show it as a scenario.
• Do not assume other countries follow the US result.

The takeaway: treat the zero-commission web path as a real but temporary advantage, size it against three commission scenarios, and keep your in-app path and measurement strong enough to move volume either way.

Sources

• Supreme Court of the United States: Docket for No. 25-1311, Apple Inc. v. Epic Games, Inc.
• The Next Web: Supreme Court will hear Apple's appeal over the App Store contempt finding in Epic case
• MacRumors: Apple Wins Ability to Charge Fees on External Payment Links as Appeals Court Modifies Epic Injunction