Do Google and Apple really take 30%? App store fees explained for Indian businesses

A business owner sat across from me last month, phone in hand, half-decided not to build the app she clearly needed. She ran a growing skincare brand, sold well on Instagram and WhatsApp, and wanted her own app so repeat customers could reorder in two taps. Everything about it made sense. And then she said the sentence I hear all the time: "But I heard Google and Apple take 30 percent of everything. I can't give away a third of my sales."

She had almost talked herself out of a good idea because of a number she had misunderstood. Here is what I told her, and what I want to tell you, because this one misunderstanding stops more sensible apps from getting built than almost anything else.

If you sell physical products or real-world services, Google and Apple take nothing from your sales. Zero. The famous 30 percent does not apply to you at all. Her skincare app would collect payments through a normal Indian gateway, keep about 98 percent of every rupee, and the app stores would not see a paisa of it.

That is not a trick or a loophole I know and others don't. It is written plainly into both stores' own rules. The trouble is that the "30 percent" headline gets repeated everywhere without the one condition that makes it true or false for your business. This post is that condition, explained fully: who actually pays a store commission, who pays nothing, how much it really is when it does apply, the India-specific rules that lower it further, the trap that gets apps thrown out of the store, and a worked example with real numbers so you can see exactly where you stand before you build anything.

The one question that decides whether you pay a single rupee

Forget percentages for a moment. There is only one question, and your answer to it decides everything:

Is the thing you sell used inside the app, or out in the real world?

That is the whole test. Both Google and Apple draw the same line, in almost the same words. If what a customer buys is a digital thing that is created, delivered and consumed inside the app, the store's billing and commission apply. If what a customer buys is a physical product or a real-world service that is used outside the app, you use a normal payment method and the store takes nothing.

Apple states it directly in its App Store Review Guidelines. Guideline 3.1.5 says that if your app lets people buy goods or services that will be consumed outside the app, you must use a purchase method other than in-app purchase, such as a normal card payment. In other words, for real-world things, Apple forbids you from using its own paid system, which is the same system that carries the commission. Google's Payments policy works identically: Google Play's billing system is required only for in-app digital content, and physical goods and real-world services are outside it, to be handled by an ordinary payment processor.

So the mental model is simple. Picture what your customer walks away with:

• They walk away with a thing you ship or a service someone performs (a dress, a cake, a haircut, a doctor's appointment, a plumber's visit)? That is the real world. No store commission.
• They walk away with a digital item that only exists on the phone (game coins, a premium filter, a subscription to videos they watch in the app)? That is in-app digital. Store commission applies.

Almost every confusion about the 30 percent disappears once you hold on to this single distinction. Let me take each side in turn, starting with the side that covers most of you.

The big relief: physical goods and real services pay nothing

If your business sells something physical, or a service a human performs in the real world, this entire topic is a non-issue for you. You are in the same position as Amazon, Flipkart, Zomato, Swiggy, Uber, Ola, Urban Company and every other real-world app on your phone. They all take card and UPI payments directly inside their apps, and Google and Apple take no commission on those sales, because the goods and services are consumed outside the app.

You do exactly the same. You plug a normal Indian payment gateway into your app, the same kind you would use on a website, and you collect the money yourself. Razorpay, for example, offers an Android and iOS payment kit that accepts UPI, cards, net banking and wallets, at a platform fee of around 2 percent per transaction. Cashfree, PayU and others are similar. That roughly 2 percent is your only cost of collecting the money, and it is the same whether the customer buys on your app, your website or a payment link. (I have written a full guide on how to accept online payments in India and the fees nobody explains if you want to go deeper on choosing a gateway.)

Here is the range of businesses this covers. If you recognise yourself anywhere on this list, the 30 percent is simply not your problem:

Notice how wide that is. It is the large majority of Indian small businesses. For all of them, an app is a pure win: a faster ordering and booking experience for loyal customers, and no third party clipping the sale. You keep about 98 percent, exactly as you would anywhere else.

If your customer ends up holding a real thing or getting a real service, the app stores take nothing. That covers most Indian businesses. Build the app without fear.

When the cut actually applies: digital things used inside the app

Now the other side of the line. The commission exists, and it is real, for one specific category: digital goods and services created and consumed inside the app, with no physical form. If this is your business, you do need to understand the fee, so let me be precise about what counts.

The clearest examples:

• In-app currency and virtual items in a game: coins, gems, extra lives, a new outfit for a character.
• Feature unlocks: a photo editor's premium filters, a productivity app's "pro" version, a dating app's paid boost or the ability to see who liked you.
• Virtual gifts in a live-streaming or creator app.
• Subscriptions to content consumed inside the app: a meditation app's premium plan, a video app's ad-free tier, a news app's paywalled articles, an online course whose lessons you watch inside the app.

The tell is always the same. There is nothing to ship and no one performing a service in the real world. The value is delivered entirely on the phone, the moment the customer pays. For these, both stores require you to use their billing system, and they take their cut.

The one that catches people out is the service that could go either way. Think of yoga. A yoga class you attend in a physical studio, booked through the app, is a real-world service: no commission. A library of yoga videos you stream inside the app for a monthly fee is digital content: commission applies. Same subject, opposite answer, because one is consumed in the real world and the other on the phone. If your product sits near this line, decide which side it is on before you build, because it changes both your pricing and how the app has to be constructed.

Even when it applies, it is usually 15 percent, not 30

Here is the next piece of good news, and it matters even for genuine digital-goods businesses: the number you should plan around is 15 percent, not 30.

Both stores run a reduced rate for smaller developers, and the threshold is so high that nearly every business reading this qualifies.

• Apple runs the App Store Small Business Program. If you earn under one million US dollars a year (roughly 8 crore rupees) from the App Store, your commission drops from 30 percent to 15 percent. You have to enrol, but the enrolment is straightforward.
• Google Play offers a matching reduced service fee: the commission on your first one million US dollars of earnings each year is 15 percent, again after you accept the reduced-fee terms in the Play Console.
• Subscriptions get favourable treatment too. Apple charges 15 percent on subscriptions once a subscriber has been paying for a year, and small-business members pay 15 percent from day one. Google has charged 15 percent on subscriptions from the start of the subscription for several years.

To put the threshold in perspective: one million US dollars is about 8 crore rupees per year, from that one store, in digital in-app sales alone. If you are earning that much from in-app digital goods, you have a large business with people to advise you and you are not reading a small-business blog for reassurance. For everyone else, 15 percent is the rate.

There is one more thing worth knowing, though I would not lose sleep over it: through 2025 and 2026, both stores have been actively restructuring these fees under pressure from courts and regulators around the world. Google, for instance, moved to a new structure in 2026 that splits the old single commission into a separate service fee and billing fee, with lower headline percentages in some regions and the option to route payments outside Google's own billing. The details differ by country and keep shifting, which is precisely why you should never treat any single percentage as permanent, and why it is worth checking the current official rate at the moment you launch. But the direction of travel is clear, and it is downward, in the developer's favour. The realistic planning number for an Indian small business selling genuine in-app digital goods is 15 percent, and possibly less.

Here is the whole picture in one table:

The India twist: the CCI case and "user choice" billing

India did something most countries have not, and it works in your favour, so it is worth knowing.

In October 2022, the Competition Commission of India (CCI) ruled that Google forcing developers to use only its own billing system for in-app digital purchases was an unfair, anti-competitive condition that abused Google's dominant position. It penalised Google 936.44 crore rupees. Google appealed, and in March 2025 the appellate tribunal (NCLAT) reduced the penalty to 216.68 crore rupees, but the core requirement to open up billing stood.

The practical result for you is "user choice billing". For digital in-app sales to Indian customers, Google now has to let you offer an alternative to its own payment system alongside it. When a customer pays through the alternative, Google's service fee is reduced by a few percentage points compared with using Google's own billing. It is more work to set up, and the fee does not vanish (as widely reported when Google introduced it, the service fee still runs into double digits for most app types), but it is a genuine, legally-backed way to lower the cost, and it exists precisely because an Indian regulator forced it into being.

Apple's rules are also in motion. Courts in other markets have forced Apple to allow apps to link out to external payment options in some cases, and its guidelines have been changing through 2025 as a result. The lesson is not to memorise today's exact terms but to understand that the ground is shifting steadily towards developers keeping more, and to check the current official position for both stores when you actually launch.

Don't try to be clever: what gets apps thrown out

I have to be blunt about one thing, because it is a genuinely expensive mistake.

If your product really is a digital, in-app good, do not try to sneak a Razorpay or UPI button into the app to dodge the store's commission. It is one of the most common reasons apps get rejected or removed. Apple flags it under guideline 3.1.1, which requires in-app purchase for digital content, and Google removes apps that route in-app digital sales around Play billing. Both stores' reviewers and automated systems have seen every version of this trick, and getting caught can mean your update is refused or your listing is pulled entirely. Losing your place in the store costs you vastly more than the 15 percent you were trying to save.

There is, however, a completely legitimate way to lower the fee, and it is structural rather than sneaky. It is called the "reader app" pattern, and plenty of well-known apps use it. You let customers buy your subscription on your own website, in a normal browser, where you can use any payment gateway you like. The app itself becomes a place where they simply log in and use what they already bought, with no selling happening inside the app. Because the sale did not occur in the app, the store's billing rules are not triggered. Spotify, Netflix and many course and content apps take exactly this approach: you sign up on the web, and the app just lets you in.

The line between clever and forbidden is actually easy to see. Changing where the sale happens (moving it to your website) is allowed. Hiding an in-app digital sale behind a side-door payment button is not. Stay on the right side of that line and you keep both your lower fees and your app.

A worked example: Anjali's products versus Vikram's course

Let me make all of this concrete with two composite examples, built from the kinds of businesses I actually work with.

Anjali sells physical products. Her skincare brand has an app so repeat customers can reorder. A customer buys a bundle for 1,499 rupees. Because it is a physical product shipped to the customer, no store commission applies at all. She collects the 1,499 through Razorpay in the app, pays roughly 2 percent (about 30 rupees) as her gateway fee, and keeps around 1,469 rupees before her own product and shipping costs. Google and Apple receive nothing. Her app is a straightforward win: a smoother buying experience for loyal customers, and her margins are identical to selling on her own website. There is genuinely nothing here to fear, and she was right to build.

Vikram sells a digital course. His app gives paying members a library of video lessons they watch inside the app, for 999 rupees a month. This is digital content consumed on the phone, so store billing applies. Let us look at his real options:

Three lessons jump out. First, the 30 percent he was dreading was never his rate; as a small business he pays 15 percent. Second, 15 percent to have his app distributed to millions of phones, with payments, refunds and trust handled for him, is not outrageous for a purely digital product, it is a real service he is buying. Third, if he is willing to add some friction, he can steer signups to his website with the reader-app pattern and keep far more, at the cost of a clunkier first-time experience (the customer leaves the app to pay, then comes back to log in), which can mean fewer impulse subscriptions. There is no single right answer; there is a trade-off he now understands before pricing his plan, which is the entire point.

Notice the deeper contrast. Anjali never needed to think about any of this. Vikram did, and getting it wrong, either by dodging the rules and risking removal, or by pricing at 999 while assuming he would keep it all, would have hurt. Knowing which of the two of them you are is the most valuable thing in this whole article.

So how should you price and structure your app?

Pulling it together into a plan you can act on:

1. First, place yourself. Physical goods or real-world services? You pay the stores nothing. Digital goods used inside the app? Plan for 15 percent. If you are genuinely unsure which side a product sits on, resolve it now, not after the app is built, because it affects the design.
2. If you sell physical or real-world things, build freely. Plug in a standard Indian gateway, keep about 98 percent, and price exactly as you would on your website. Do not add a rupee to your prices "for the app store cut", because there isn't one.
3. If you sell digital in-app goods, enrol in the small-business programmes on both stores from day one so you are on 15 percent, not 30, and build that 15 percent into your price rather than being surprised by it. A 999-rupee plan that must survive a 15 percent cut is really an 849-rupee plan to you; price with that in mind.
4. Decide consciously about the reader-app route. If commission on digital goods is a real drag on your economics, moving signups to your website is a legitimate way to cut it, but weigh the money saved against the friction it adds for a first-time buyer. For a low-price impulse product, the friction may cost you more than the fee. For a considered, higher-value subscription, the web signup is often worth it.
5. Never route in-app digital sales around store billing to save the fee. The downside, a removed app, dwarfs the saving. Reduce the fee by structure and by qualifying for the lower rate, never by hiding the sale.
6. Check the current rates when you launch. These fees are being actively cut and restructured in 2025 and 2026, and India's rules are their own thing. Whatever exact number applies, it will not be higher than the picture here, and is likely lower.

The honest summary is this. The 30 percent that scares people is a worst-case number, for a large company, selling digital goods, that most Indian small businesses will never touch. If you sell real things or real services, ignore it entirely. If you sell digital in-app goods, expect 15 percent in exchange for genuine distribution and payment infrastructure, and design your pricing and signup flow around that with open eyes. Either way, the fee should be a footnote in your decision, not the thing that stops you building an app your customers would love.

If you would like a straight answer on whether your specific app even touches these fees, and to have it built with payments set up correctly from the first day, whether that means a simple Razorpay gateway for a products app or a clean reader-app structure for a subscription, that is exactly the kind of thing we settle at the start of every project at the Roy Digital App Studio. And because the money side and the ownership side always travel together, it is worth reading, in the same sitting, who actually owns your app when you get one built, so that both your payments and your app itself are firmly yours from day one.