Apple Requiring Patreon to Use In-App Purchase and Pay 30% Fee for Memberships

Patreon today confirmed upcoming changes to its iOS app, which will see fees for new subscriptions go up because Apple is enforcing its App Store rules on digital purchases. Apple is requiring Patreon to adopt the in-app purchase system, a process that Patreon started at the beginning of the year.

In January 2024, Patreon started using in-app purchases and paying Apple a 30 percent fee on digital products, but beginning in November, new Patreon memberships will also need to be done through in-app purchase and will be subject to the fee as well. Right now, when you subscribe to a creator through Patreon, Patreon directs you to a purchase flow that skirts built-in ‌App Store‌ payments, and Apple does not take a 30 percent cut.

To account for the 30 percent fee that Apple will collect, Patreon will give creators the option to either increase their prices just in the iOS app, or absorb the fee themselves, keeping prices the same across platforms. The changes to Patreon payments will only affect new memberships purchased through an iPhone or iPad from November onwards, and not existing subscribers.

Patreon says that the increased subscription fee will be the default option, and that it does not recommend that creators opt to absorb the fee themselves.

That said, you deserve the chance to decide whether that’s something you want. So, while the automatic price increase is the default option, you also have the choice to keep your prices the same and pay the 30% fee from your earnings. We don’t recommend this, because it means you’d earn less per membership on in-app iOS transactions – but ultimately we believe it’s important to give you agency to make your own decisions.

Apple will collect a 30 percent ‌App Store‌ fee for all new memberships purchased via Patreon for iOS and for other digital goods purchased from a Patreon shop, and creators that use first-of-the-month billing or per-creation billing plans will need to swap to subscription billing for their iOS supporters because the in-app purchase system does not support the other flexible payment types.

Per-creation billing allows Patreon members to pay their membership amount for each paid post a creator makes, with a monthly maximum. First-of-the-month billing comes into play with subscription models where a creator allows an upfront fee to unlock a backlog of content, with future payments made on the first of the month.

Because of the limitations of in-app purchase subscriptions, Patreon is transitioning all of its creators to subscription billing, a process that it plans to complete by November 2025. Creators that already use the subscription model do not need to make changes, but creators using other methods will need to update.

Patreon says that if it does not adopt the in-app purchase system for all iOS transactions, it risks being kicked out of the ‌App Store‌. As fees are not changing on other platforms such as the web and the Android app, Patreon suggests that creators send their fans to the Patreon Help Center article to explain the iOS fees compared to the fees on other platforms, so customers can “better understand the implications of where they choose to make their purchases.”

It is worth noting that Apple’s 30 percent cut of Patreon subscriptions will be higher than the amount that Patreon keeps from creators. Patreon keeps between 8% and 12% of paid membership subscriptions, along with payment processing fees. Patreon also collects five percent from digital product sales.

Apple will cut its fees from 30 percent to 15 percent after a subscription has lasted for one year, which is standard operating procedure for the in-app purchases. Apple has been cracking down on the sale of digital goods post-pandemic, and Facebook has also been required to pay Apple’s in-app purchase fees for ad purchases on iOS devices.