To develop apps and sell them on one of Apple’s stores, you have to pay a developer subscription billed at $ 99 per year. Without a subscription, you will have access to all of the firm’s development tools, but you will not be able to submit your app on the App Store or Mac App Store. Since the beginning of 2018, this subscription could be free in certain cases to respond in particular to a controversy over the ban apps created from a template. This is not the case everywhere, but it is now in France.
To obtain a free subscription with access to the App Store, you must comply with conditions gathered on this page. The most important thing is to be able to prove that you work in one of these three categories of organization:
- Non-profit organization ;
- an accredited educational institution;
- a government entity.
Individual accounts do not fall into any of these categories and therefore cannot benefit from them. The same goes for developers who also belong to a developer program within the framework of a company.
Apple will ask for proof each time to justify your status. And if you get free access to the App Store, there will be another important restriction: you will not be able to earn money through the shops. You will only be able to distribute free apps without in-app purchases or subscriptions. Please note, you can always add a paid app or in-app purchases to the App Store, but you will then automatically switch to the paid subscription.
If you don’t already have an Apple developer account, you can get one for free by requesting an exception during your registration. If you already had a paid subscription, you can request to switch to the special scheme by filling this form. Apple says it will not reimburse past years or even the current one, only the coming years will be free.
This exception is currently available in these thirteen countries: France, Germany, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, South Korea, United States, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico and the United Kingdom.
Update 04/02/2020 08:49 : details on the launch date of the program.
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