If you sell paid apps or in-app purchases on the App Store and your developer account earned under a million dollars last calendar year, the Small Business Program is probably the single largest lever on your take-home. It moves Apple's commission from 30% to 15% on qualifying proceeds. There's no ongoing negotiation and no separate invoicing: once you're enrolled, the reduced rate is applied automatically to eligible transactions.
At Olnesta Ltd we treat it as part of the standard setup checklist for any new account, alongside tax and banking. The application lives in App Store Connect under the agreements area, and it's a one-time submission rather than something you re-file each year. That last part is the piece that trips people up, because "one-time application" and "permanent status" are not the same thing.
How the threshold actually behaves
Eligibility is evaluated against your proceeds in the prior calendar year, across the whole developer account. Proceeds here means Apple's post-commission share paid to you, not gross customer spend. The line is one million US dollars, and it's assessed at the account level, not per app. If you have six small apps under a single Apple Developer account, their earnings are added together for the purposes of this program. Splitting a portfolio across apps does not split the threshold; the account is the unit.
Crossing the line during a year has consequences within that same year. Our understanding, and the way we plan around it, is that once your account passes a million in proceeds mid-year, the standard 30% rate resumes for the remainder of the year on further qualifying transactions. You do not get to coast at 15% until December just because January started well. To go back to 15% for the following year, the account has to meet the eligibility criteria again based on that new year's numbers. In practice this means a studio hovering near the threshold should be watching its running total, not just its monthly report.
There are also situations that can disqualify or delay enrollment, such as transferring apps between accounts or certain corporate restructurings. If any of that is on your roadmap, it's worth reading Apple's own program page carefully before you make the move, because the timing can matter more than the mechanics.
What this means for a small portfolio
Because the accounting is at the account level, the program quietly shapes how you think about structuring a studio. A single account holding several apps is treated as one business for the purposes of the commission rate. Two accounts, each holding a subset of those apps, would be assessed separately, but Apple is clear that structuring accounts specifically to game the threshold is not permitted, and the enrollment process asks you to confirm related entities. We don't recommend trying to be clever here. The rules are written to be read at face value.
For most small studios the practical picture is simple. You enroll once. You keep the 15% rate as long as your account's prior-year proceeds stayed under the threshold. If you have a breakout year, you plan for the standard rate to come back into effect once you cross the line, and you plan for the following year on the same terms as any other developer above the threshold. If the year after that comes in under a million again, you're back in the program.
The reason we mention all of this rather than just "apply, save 15%" is that the reduced rate quietly changes what's viable to ship. Features that only break even at 15% net don't break even at 30%. If your pricing, your subscription tiers, or your decision to keep a marginal app alive depend on being in the program, it's worth knowing exactly what would knock you out of it and for how long, rather than discovering the answer from a payout report.
Before your next release, it's worth confirming three things in App Store Connect: that your account is actually enrolled and shows the reduced rate on recent transactions, that your prior-year proceeds are where you think they are, and that any account changes you're planning, transfers, mergers, new entities, aren't going to interact badly with your enrollment. None of this is difficult, but it's the kind of thing that's easier to check on a calm Tuesday than the week you're trying to ship.