Patreon and Apple’s fee dispute is getting messier. Who is responsible for creator revenue?

For years, Patreon and Apple have been grappling for control of the revenue generated through creator fanbases, and the dispute only seems to be getting messier. The latest move comes from Apple, which has reinstated a deadline Patreon must meet if it wants to keep its app active on the App Store.

The deadline relates to Patreon’s subscription billing model, which the majority of its creator partners already use to collect membership revenue from their fans. That system has largely replaced the first-of-the-month billing model Patreon previously employed.

First-of-the-month billing caused technical issues for Patreon in the past, and only 4% of its customers still rely on that model. Apple, however, has mandated complete compliance. It pulled a power play on Patreon when it demanded a full transition to a subscription billing model that routes purchases through the App Store, allowing Apple to apply a 30% commission.

Patreon fought back by devising a “great plan” that could help creators sidestep App Store fees. By charging more, taking a smaller cut of subscription revenue, or encouraging fans to subscribe through platforms other than the Apple Store, those creators could get around Apple’s demands. An ensuing court decision

in a case involving Apple and Epic Games gave Patreon more leverage, as a judge ruled that Apple had not done enough to ensure that developers could inform users about non-App Store purchase options.

But Apple didn’t give up. It instituted a new deadline for the subscription billing shift, which must now be completed by November 2026. In a blog post, Patreon scolded Apple for its mercurial attitude. “Creators using legacy billing will now have to endure the whiplash of another policy reversal — the third such change from Apple in the past 18 months,” reads the post. “Over the years, we have proposed multiple tools and features to Apple that we could’ve built to allow creators using legacy billing to transition on their own timelines, with more support added in. Unfortunately, Apple has continually declined them.”

With so few Patreon users still using the old billing system, this dispute may seem overblown. Patreon has long claimed, however, that the customers who have resisted the change have done so due to personal preference. “We actually reversed a decision a couple of years ago to make the newest billing model mandatory, and we reversed that decision specifically because we heard from creators that this newest billing model did not yet work for them,” Patreon CEO Jack Conte said in 2024.

The question, then, is who gets to decide the means creators can use to make their money. Apple may claim that Patreon cannot afford to be delisted on the App Store, while Patreon can counter by pointing to the financial gains it brings to creators. The resolution of this dispute will be worth watching, as it will tell us where the power lies in the contemporary creator economy.