Apple is preparing to take its App Store fight with Epic Games back to the Supreme Court. In a new filing, the iPhone maker said it plans to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review another aspect of this long-running case over App Store fees.
In the meantime, Apple is seeking to pause the appeals court’s ruling limiting how it can charge for external payments.
As a refresher, Apple has been in a multi-year legal battle against Fortnite maker Epic Games after the game maker added external payments in its app to bypass Apple’s App Store fees in 2020. Apple largely won the case in 2021 as the court ruled that Apple was not a monopoly. However, the judge specified that Apple had to allow developers to link to external payment options.
The tech giant appealed that decision up to the Supreme Court, which declined to hear the case, allowing the Ninth Circuit Court’s original ruling to stand. As a result, Apple began allowing external payments, but it charged developers using their own payment systems a 27% commission on those purchases — only a slight discount from Apple’s usual 30% fee. (Meanwhile, Google, facing a similar case, settled with Epic Games last month, and dropped its Play Store commissions to 20%.)
Epic Games argued that such a fee was not compliant with the court order; they and other developers also weren’t saving any money, as payment processing has fees of its own.
The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California agreed with Epic, finding Apple in contempt. That decision was upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in December 2025. The appeals court said that Apple’s 27% fee on external payments effectively defeated the purpose of allowing them, but it didn’t suggest a new rate. That decision is headed back to a lower court to decide. (Apple asked for a rehearing on this decision, but its request was denied in March 2026.)
As Apple now has no more options within the Ninth Circuit, it plans to take its case to the Supreme Court.
If the Supreme Court agrees to hear the case, Apple is expected to challenge the legal standards that were used to hold it in contempt, and it would try to convince the judges that courts should not be allowed to limit the fees it can charge for its services. The company has long argued that the 27% fee is not for payment processing, but for other services, like hosting, discovery, and its software and developer tools. Essentially, it’s a fee that Apple believes reflects the value of its App Store ecosystem.
However, since the Supreme Court refused to hear Apple’s prior appeal, which focused on a different aspect of the case, it could very well reject this one as well. This issue now heads back to a lower court to decide what, if any, commission Apple can charge on purchases made outside the App Store.
When this battle finally wraps, the court’s decision could impact how much money Apple makes from its App Store, as consumers increasingly turn to AI chatbots and agents to get things done.
