Patreon: adding Apple’s 30 percent tax is the price of staying in the App Store

Patreon memberships sold on the iOS app will soon be subject to Apple’s 30 percent commission on in-app purchases. In a post on Monday, Patreon says Apple is forcing the platform to use the company’s in-app payment system starting in November or “risk being kicked out of the App Store.”

As part of the change, creators will need to switch to Patreon’s subscription billing method to keep earning money through the platform’s iOS app. That means Apple’s 30 percent commission will apply when a new membership is initially purchased, as well as each time it’s renewed. To help offset the costs of the new fee, Patreon will give creators the option to automatically increase their prices in the iOS app.

The fee will only apply to memberships purchased on Patreon’s iOS app starting November 4th, 2024. Existing subscriptions on Patreon won’t be affected by the change, nor will memberships sold on Patreon’s website or Android app. But with Patreon already having a set of platform fees, Apple’s commission will put creators in a tougher spot.

“Unless creators choose to absorb the Apple App Store Fee themselves, new transactions in the Patreon iOS app will be more expensive than the same purchase on the web because of Apple’s App Store Fee,” Patreon writes. Some creators can delay the switch to the new billing method until November 2025, but they won’t be able to sell memberships in the iOS app once Apple’s requirements go into effect.

Up until this year, Patreon has been allowed to skirt Apple’s 30 percent commission by using alternative payment processors. In 2021, Patreon CEO Jack Conte said during an interview with Decoder that it doesn’t have “some special contract with Apple” and the company has had to “deal with the App Store policies and review process like anybody else.” He said Apple may have given Patreon a pass because “users don’t come to Patreon to discover creators and content.”

But last year, Patreon announced it would have to make the switch to Apple’s payment in-app system, with Apple’s 30 percent commission on digital goods going into effect at the beginning of 2024. Patreon said Apple would extend the fee to new memberships and subscriptions later in the year.