How to publish an app to the App Store in 2026
The App Store is stricter than Google Play and fails in different places. The walkthrough is short; what causes delay is always the same list of things that are not code.
Four decisions before anything else
- Individual or organisation account. As an organisation, the developer name on the listing is the company's, and you can have a team. It needs a D-U-N-S number, free, which takes a few days to issue. As an individual, your own name appears and nobody else can be added.
- US$ 99 a year. A subscription. The app leaves the store if you stop paying.
- What the app sells. Digital content or a subscription consumed inside the app must be charged by Apple, with their commission. Physical goods and in-person services fall outside and may use your own gateway.
- The privacy policy. A public URL, mandatory, and the listing's privacy form has to match what the app actually does.
The walkthrough
- Join the Apple Developer Program and wait for the account to activate.
- Create the app in App Store Connect, with a name, subtitle, category and primary language.
- Fill in the listing: icon, screenshots at each required size, description, keywords and a support URL.
- Answer the privacy form, item by item.
- Upload the signed binary.
- Write the review notes, with a test account if the app has sign-in.
- Submit for review and wait.
The rejections that happen most
A test account that does not work. The reviewer needs to get in. Without valid credentials, or with ones that expired between submission and review, the app comes back without being opened.
An inconsistent privacy form. Declaring that you collect nothing while having a sign-in is a contradiction, and they check.
Payment outside the store. A card button inside the app to sell a digital subscription violates section 3 of the guidelines.
An app that is only a website. Apple rejects what it calls a wrapper with no function of its own. An app with your own data, sign-in, notifications and offline use is not that, but the line exists and is worth knowing.
Out-of-date screenshots. If the image shows a screen the app no longer has, that is a rejection.
What changes when you publish through a platform
Compiling, signing and submitting happen in the cloud with your key, on your account. What stays yours: the developer account, the credentials, the listing and the form answers. A platform cannot answer the privacy form for you, because whoever answers owns the declaration.
The short version
- US$ 99 a year, a subscription, against Google's US$ 25 once;
- an organisation account needs a D-U-N-S, free, taking a few days;
- a test account is mandatory when the app has sign-in, and is the commonest avoidable rejection;
- the privacy form has to match what the app actually does;
- a Mac is only needed to compile by hand.
The Google side is in publishing an app to Google Play, and the sums for both in what it costs to publish to the stores.