Starting today, Microsoft Store developer can take home 95% of app revenue

Last year at Build 2018 Microsoft announced a change to the fee structure for developers to encourage adoption of the Microsoft app Store by increasing their share of app revenue to 95%, up from 70%.

The most popular category, games, are however excluded from the deal, and the share will be 85%/15% for apps purchased via affiliate and promotional links.  Developers can read more about the new fee structure here.

The change was expected at the end of 2018, but seemingly took 2-3 months longer to finally become available.

The change should encourage smaller developers to upload applications to the Store for hosting purposes, and only pay 5% of revenue if they drive the sale from their own website. The cost would be justified by not needing to be involved with other hosting and payment processing services, which usually charge much higher fees. Microsoft will, however, take 15% of revenue if buyers found the app by searching the Store or via other promotion, which is of course again justified by being an additional sale which a developer would not necessarily have seen earlier.

With the Store available to more than 700 million desktop users, this should be a bonanza for developers, if Microsoft was only able to convince desktop users to get their apps from the Store…

Developers can see the full terms here.

Thanks, Yair for the tip.