The Apple Podcasters Program is the paid membership that lets you sell subscriptions inside Apple Podcasts. You pay an annual fee that Apple sets by country, a Legal user completes an agreement with tax and banking details, and Apple then keeps a commission on each subscription: you receive 70% of the price, minus applicable taxes, and 85% for any subscriber who has accumulated a year of paid service. Ad revenue from your free episodes is not shared with Apple.
What you pay and what you keep
The fee is charged to the payment method on the Apple account of the Admin who enrolls, and it renews automatically a year after purchase. These are the amounts Apple's feature availability table showed on 1 October 2026 for a selection of countries.
| Country | Annual program fee | Source |
|---|---|---|
| United States | 19.99 USD | Apple availability table |
| Canada | 24.99 CAD | Apple availability table |
| United Kingdom | 17.99 GBP | Apple availability table |
| Australia | 27.99 AUD | Apple availability table |
| New Zealand | 27.99 NZD | Apple availability table |
| Ireland and Germany | 19.99 EUR | Apple availability table |
| India | 1799 INR | Apple availability table |
The revenue share is easy to misread. Apple's subscription launch checklist says the rate rises to 85% after a subscriber accumulates one year of paid service, which means it is counted per subscriber, not per creator. The field definitions for Apple's subscription reports confirm it: a renewal on a subscription active for more than a year is marked “Rate After One Year” and pays 85%, and every other renewal pays 70%. A show in its third year can still earn mostly 70% if its subscribers churn quickly.
Apple's membership management page adds three rules worth knowing before you pay. An Admin can take over the membership, in which case the original owner is refunded for the unused part of the year and the new owner pays a fresh fee. If the membership expires, subscribers can still play published subscriber audio but you cannot publish new subscriber content. And any subscriber due to renew while it is expired will have the renewal fail and be refunded.
Net-revenue worksheet
Fill in one copy per storefront you care about, because prices and taxes differ by country. Treat the result as an estimate and reconcile it each month against the proceeds Apple reports.
| Line | Input or formula for this storefront | Your figure |
|---|---|---|
| P | Monthly price in this storefront, from Pricing and Free Trial in Apple Podcasts Connect | [ ] |
| T | Tax included in that price for this storefront, if any | [ ] |
| N | Net price: P minus T | [ ] |
| S1 | Paying subscribers still inside their first year of paid service (free-trial users pay nothing yet) | [ ] |
| S2 | Paying subscribers past a year of paid service | [ ] |
| M | Monthly proceeds: N × 0.70 × S1, plus N × 0.85 × S2 | [ ] |
| F | Annual program fee for your country, from the table above | [ ] |
| Y | Rough year: M × 12 minus F, before your own production costs and income tax | [ ] |
| Check | Does M clear the minimum payment threshold for your bank currency? If not, proceeds roll over to a later month | Yes / no |
Apple's payments page says your proceeds must exceed the minimum payment threshold listed for your bank territory and currency, or US$40 for any territory not listed, and Apple makes one payment a month to one bank account. Your yearly line also ignores price changes, refunds and trials ending, so update S1 and S2 from the Subscription Snapshot report rather than from memory.
Pricing, free trials and the rules Apple reviews
Apple's show subscription setup guide requires a monthly price for every subscription and makes a yearly price optional. You pick a base territory and price point, Apple calculates the other territories, and you can override any of them. Free trials can run for three days, seven days, two weeks, or one, two, three or six months, or a year, either continuously or for a set window, and trial users are charged when the trial ends unless they cancel.
Once a subscription is live, Apple's pricing rules let you schedule one future price change per territory at a time, at least two days ahead. A price cut applies to everyone at renewal. A rise can be limited to new subscribers; if you apply it to existing ones, Apple asks for consent where local rules require it, where the rise is more than 50% and above roughly US$5 a period (US$50 a year for annual plans), or where the subscriber already had a rise in the past 12 months, and anyone who does not consent lapses at the end of the billing cycle. Where consent is needed, Apple's first email goes out 27 days before a monthly renewal and 60 days before an annual one.
Every subscription is reviewed against Apple's content and subscription guidelines, and four of them catch creators out. Benefits must be described accurately, including how often new subscriber content arrives. You cannot sell ad-free listening or early access if the same benefit is free elsewhere at the same time in that country, and you cannot sell ad-free listening at all if your free show has no ads. A subscription has to deliver ongoing value rather than a one-off item. And an annual price should not exceed 12 times the monthly price.
Delivering subscriber audio through your host
If your host supports Apple Podcasts Subscriptions, Apple's hosting provider guide has you generate an API key under Account and Keys in Apple Podcasts Connect and share it with the host, which can then publish subscriber episodes for you. Only an Admin can create keys, up to ten per account, and each key downloads once, so store a backup somewhere secure. The host gains publishing rights only; Apple says it cannot see your listening analytics, subscription reports, banking or tax details. You can authorize more than one host with separate keys, and you can revoke a key that is lost.
Without host support, Apple asks you to create the subscriber episode in Apple Podcasts Connect before the free version reaches your RSS feed. Its subscription benefits guide links the two versions in one of two ways: use the Apple Podcasts Episode ID as the episode GUID in your feed, or give both versions the same episode number, season number and episode type. Episodes link only on Apple's first crawl, so confirm in the episode details that both audio files are attached. For early access, enter the date the free version will appear in the Original Release Date field; for archive access, remove the episode from the RSS feed when it should become subscriber-only.
Agreements, tax, banking and the EU trader question
Apple's business overview requires a Legal user, someone with authority to sign for your business, to complete the agreement with legal entity, tax and banking details, and entity details cannot be edited afterwards without contacting Apple. Its tax information page says every creator completes a US tax form (a W-9 for US persons, a W-8BEN, W-8BEN-E or W-8ECI for others), and creators based in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand complete local forms as well. The banking setup page accepts one account, in the name on the agreement, and on accounts with several users a Legal user approves bank changes.
Selling into the European Union adds a privacy decision. Apple's Digital Services Act page says traders must provide an address, phone number and email that Apple publishes on the product pages of subscriber audio in the EU, and that consumers are told their consumer rights do not apply when the seller declares it is not a trader. Apple cannot decide your status and points to factors such as earning revenue from the show, promoting products and being VAT-registered. If you are a trader, consider a business address and phone line before you submit, because the details are public, and ask a lawyer if your status is unclear.
Subscription launch checklist
- Choose one benefit you can sustain for a year, such as ad-free versions, bonus episodes, early access or archive access, and write down its release rhythm.
- Make sure the show sits in your own Apple Podcasts Connect account, unless a network agreement says otherwise; claim it if a former host or network added it.
- Have an Admin join the Apple Podcasters Program and pay the fee from the right Apple account.
- Have a Legal user finish the agreement, tax forms and bank account, and the EU trader declaration if you will sell in the EU.
- Upload the subscription icon and subscription promotion artwork from Apple's templates, keeping text inside the safe areas.
- Set a monthly price for every storefront, and a yearly price no higher than 12 times monthly if you want one.
- Write the banner message: Apple's promotional message guide allows up to 50 characters and says the name, price, trial and update frequency are listed automatically.
- Add at least one episode with subscriber audio, because Apple's review process will not assess a subscription without one.
- Check that every benefit named in your promotion already exists, then submit and allow at least one full working day for review.
- Tell listeners in the free episodes what the subscription adds, in words that match the promotion exactly.
Reading your subscription reports
Apple's guide to subscription reports lists four next-day downloads covering the past 12 months. The Subscription Snapshot counts active subscribers on a report date, and Apple warns that adding totals from reports with different dates inflates the count. The Subscription Events report covers renewals and conversions, so it is where you calculate churn. The Sales Summary shows prices and proceeds, and Listening Reports compare engagement with free and subscriber episodes. Family Sharing users are left out, and Apple's privacy note on Listening Reports explains that they add a small random noise to figures and drop values below five.
Money, by contrast, follows Apple's fiscal calendar. Financial reports for the previous fiscal month appear by the first Friday of the current one, which is why they will not match the Sales Summary line for line. When you quote Apple figures to a sponsor, say which report and date range they came from; our podcast media kit template has a source checklist for exactly that.
If you would rather sell through a membership platform that also feeds other apps, compare this with our Patreon private RSS walkthrough, and see the podcast revenue route comparison for how Apple stacks up against Spotify's options.
Limitations of this guide
Fees, consent thresholds and form lists come from Apple's help pages as they read on 1 October 2026, and Apple can change them, so check Apple Podcasts Connect before you price. The worksheet simplifies tax, which Apple deducts by storefront under its agreement, and it ignores refunds and currency conversion. Nothing here tells you what your subscription will earn, because Apple publishes no figure that applies to an individual show. Tax residency, GST or VAT registration and EU trader status are questions for a registered tax agent, accountant or lawyer, not for a help article.