Apple and Google developer fees, explained for merchants

By Abdalla Kamesh · Published September 11, 2026 · 4 min read

Two platform fees stand between your store and an app listing. They are small, they are non-negotiable, and the confusion around them costs merchants more in delay than the fees cost in money.

The two numbers

Apple Developer Program: $99 per year. An annual membership, charged yearly, required to distribute an app on the App Store at all.

Google Play Developer account: $25, one time. Paid once, for the life of the account.

That is the entire platform bill: $124 in year one, $99 every year after. There is no per-app fee, no listing fee, and no charge for updates.

What the fees do and do not cover

They cover: the right to distribute apps, access to the developer consoles, code-signing infrastructure, TestFlight and Play’s testing tracks, crash reporting, and platform analytics.

They do not cover: any commission. This is the point most relevant to a store. Apple’s in-app purchase system — and its commission — applies to digital goods and services sold inside an app. Physical goods sold through your own checkout are not in that scope. Your WooCommerce store keeps processing payments on your own gateways, with your own settlement, and the platforms take nothing from those transactions.

This is why the architecture matters: a store app that keeps the payment step on your store’s own secure checkout pages is not routing sales through Apple or Google at all. In StoreToNative that is how it works by design, and there is no commission on our side either.

When each fee is charged

Apple charges at enrollment, then annually on the anniversary. Enrollment is not instant if you enroll as an organization — see below.

Google charges the $25 during account creation, before you can publish anything. It is a one-time charge per account, so an agency managing several clients’ apps still pays it once per client account, not per app.

What happens if Apple’s membership lapses

This matters and is widely misunderstood. If your Apple Developer Program membership expires:

Your apps are removed from the App Store. Not hidden — removed from sale.
Existing installs keep working, because the app is already on the device.
You cannot ship updates until you renew.
Your listing, reviews and ratings are retained if you renew reasonably promptly, but this is not something to test.

Set a calendar reminder eleven months out. An app that vanishes from the store because a card expired is an entirely avoidable outage.

Google’s $25 is one-time, so there is no lapse to worry about — but a policy violation can suspend an account, and a suspended Play account is very hard to recover. Read the policy pages once; they are shorter than they look.

The requirements that cost time, not money

The fees are the easy part. These are the delays, and none of them can be shortened by paying more.

Apple, individual enrollment. Usually fast. Your app is listed under your personal name as the seller, which is fine for a sole trader and wrong for a brand.

Apple, organization enrollment. Requires a D-U-N-S number that matches your legal entity name exactly, plus a verifiable website and evidence of authority to sign. The D-U-N-S lookup and verification typically takes around a week. The most common stall is a name mismatch — a comma or an “Inc.” that differs from the registered name.

Google Play, personal account created after 13 November 2023. Before you can apply for production access, Google requires a closed test with at least 12 testers opted in for 14 continuous days. Continuous is the operative word: testers dropping out interrupts the count. Recruiting twelve people who will keep an app installed for two weeks is a genuine task — start it the day you have a build.

Google Play, organization account. Needs a D-U-N-S number, which Google notes can take up to 30 days.

Add it up: a brand that wants both stores under organization accounts should start the paperwork a month before it wants to be live.

The Android escape hatch

While the Play paperwork runs, Android has an option iOS does not: a signed APK your customers install from a direct link, with no Play account involved. Every StoreToNative build produces one, on every plan including the trial.

This is how most merchants get an app into real customers’ hands during the waiting period — a QR code on a packing slip, a link in an order email. It is a real distribution channel for a known audience, not just a test tool. The trade-offs, including what Android’s own security prompts look like to a first-time installer, are in direct APK distribution.

A checklist for this week

Decide individual or organization. Organization if you have a brand and a registered entity; it looks right on the listing and it is required for some categories.
If organization: request the D-U-N-S number today, with the exact legal name from your registration documents.
Create the Google Play account and pay the $25. The clock on the 12-tester requirement cannot start until this exists.
Enroll in the Apple Developer Program and set the renewal reminder immediately.
Line up your twelve testers. Staff, family, your most loyal customers. Tell them it is fourteen days.
Build the app while you wait. The trial is 14 days, which happens to be the same length as Google’s tester window.

Do these in this order and the paperwork runs in parallel with the build instead of after it. That single sequencing choice is usually the difference between launching in two weeks and launching in six.

Related reading

Apps built with StoreToNative are published under your own accounts, which is both an Apple requirement and the reason the listing stays yours.