"Why am I being charged $18.99 for Premium? I see others pay $13.99. Do I pay less on YouTube vs iOS?" That's a real question a user posted to Google's YouTube help community — and it isn't a billing glitch. In July 2023, YouTube Premium's web and Android price rose to $13.99/month while the same plan bought as an iOS in-app purchase rose to $18.99/month: a $5 gap for identical access to the same service.
Quick answer
The same subscription often costs more inside an iPhone app because Apple takes a commission on in-app purchases — up to 30% on new subscribers, dropping to 15% after a subscriber's first year or for smaller developers under Apple's Small Business Program — and some companies pass that cut straight to the customer. To pay less: check whether the service offers billing through its own website, cancel the iOS subscription from your device settings, then add a payment method on the web version using the same account email a few days before renewal, so the two billing systems don't overlap and charge you twice.
Where the extra money actually goes
Apple's standard cut on digital subscriptions and in-app purchases is 30%. Under the App Store Small Business Program, launched in 2021, developers under $1,000,000 in prior-year proceeds pay 15% instead — and separately, Apple has long dropped the rate to 15% for any subscriber once they've paid continuously for more than a year, regardless of the developer's size. Google Play ran the same 30% before cutting to 15% on the first $1,000,000 of annual revenue in mid-2021, then to as low as 10% on subscriptions for some app categories later that year. In March 2026, Google announced another cut — to 20% on purchases and 10% on subscriptions — rolling out to the US, UK, and EU by the end of June 2026.
Not every app pays this at all. Apple has said roughly 79% of total App Store transaction volume comes from services like Uber and Airbnb, which sell something consumed outside the app and therefore owe no commission — versus about 10% from the digital goods and subscriptions where the fee actually applies. So the tax isn't spread evenly; it lands on subscription apps that bill you through Apple's or Google's own checkout instead of routing you elsewhere.
What the gap looks like in practice
Spotify removed in-app purchase for new Premium subscribers back in 2016 specifically to avoid Apple's cut, sending iOS users to sign up on Spotify.com instead — for years, the web price sat around $9.99/month against a roughly $12.99/month in-app price, a gap of almost exactly what Apple's commission would cost. Netflix went further: it stopped allowing new iOS in-app subscriptions in 2018, then in February 2024 cut off in-app billing for its remaining legacy Apple-billed customers entirely, requiring them to add a web payment method — explicitly to stop paying Apple's 15% cut on those accounts.
Amazon's Kindle app is the extreme version of the same story. Until May 2025, Apple's guidelines barred any purchase button inside the iOS Kindle or Amazon apps at all — buying a book meant leaving the app, opening a browser, and completing the purchase manually, because Apple wouldn't allow a checkout flow it didn't get a cut of. The May 2025 update, which followed a court ruling described below, finally let Amazon add a "Get Book" button that deep-links straight to the browser purchase page.
Not every company marks the iOS price up to fully offset the commission — ChatGPT Plus lists at $19.99/month through Apple's in-app purchase against a $20/month base price on the web, near parity, with OpenAI apparently absorbing rather than passing on the fee. That near-parity says more than any of the gaps above — a company doesn't eat a 30% commission out of generosity, so either OpenAI's margin absorbs it, or the web price already had the room built in. OpenAI's own help documentation says upgrading to ChatGPT Pro has to happen on the web, not the iOS app. If you're trying to work out where every Apple-billed subscription on your account actually lives before you start switching anything, that's worth doing first — you can't fix a charge you can't find.
Why this is suddenly easier to fix
For years, Apple didn't just charge a commission — it restricted developers from even telling you a cheaper option existed, banning in-app links to external checkout pages. That changed after Epic Games sued Apple; a 2021 injunction barred Apple from blocking developers' external links and calls to action, and on April 30, 2025, a federal judge found Apple in willful contempt of that injunction for still charging a 27% fee on external purchases and burying the option behind a "scare screen" and deliberately unclickable links. "Apple's continued attempts to interfere with competition will not be tolerated," the judge wrote in that ruling (MacRumors coverage); the Ninth Circuit unanimously upheld the contempt finding in December 2025. Calling something a "scare screen" in a federal ruling is blunt language — and the tactic behind it, dressing a competitive nudge up as a warning label, isn't a trick only Apple has tried. Separately, EU regulators fined Apple €500 million in April 2025 — the first fine ever issued to a gatekeeper under the Digital Markets Act — for restricting developers from steering users toward cheaper purchase options outside the App Store (European Commission announcement).
Practically, that means the "go to the website instead" links companies like Netflix and Spotify used to hide or omit are becoming normal, not exceptional. Before you switch, a short checklist:
- Confirm the service offers web billing — some do it openly (Netflix, Spotify), some only via a support-ticket workaround, and some (like ChatGPT Plus) barely differ in price at all.
- Cancel the iOS or Google Play subscription from your device settings, not from inside the app — this stops the App Store charge without touching your login.
- Sign up for web billing using the same account email, so your history, saved data, and login stay put.
- Time the switch a few days before your renewal date to avoid a short overlap where both platforms bill you.
- Check your card statement once after the switch to confirm the old platform stopped charging.
None of this requires deleting the app or losing years of watch history, playlists, or chat threads — only the payment method changes, and that's usually the part people dread most before they try it. It's the same category of confusion as figuring out who is actually billing a subscription on a streaming box — the app you use and the account that charges your card aren't always the same company. If you're already using a tracker like Subnesio to catch renewal dates across accounts, add the moved subscription as its own line item once billing switches — the new checkout can shift both the renewal date and the descriptor on your statement.
The next time an app's price looks different depending on which screen you bought it on, it usually isn't a mistake — it's a commission, and increasingly, one you're allowed to opt out of.
