Guidance Around PCC

If your app exceeds the 2 million first-time downloads threshold, you will be notified and must migrate to an alternative solution within 6 months.

For more information, you can check out: https://developer.apple.com/private-cloud-compute

That's great info, thanks. And clarification of the language: "Have fewer than 2 million first-time app downloads from any of their apps on the App Store."

Is this a per-app number or is it cumulative for all apps? Also, the documentation on the Trends tab in App Store Connect is out of date, I think. Is the Units reflect first time downloads or does it include re-downloads?

This is the gap everyone building on PCC needs answered. Based on what was discussed at the WWDC26 ML labs, here's the practical reality:

When you cross the free PCC threshold, Apple hasn't published a paid fallback program — which means you can't rely on PCC scaling automatically for a commercial app at volume. The safe architecture today is to build the fallback in before you ship, not after you hit the limit.

The pattern that holds up: abstract your inference behind a protocol so the model tier is swappable. Route to on-device first where the task allows it (free, no threshold), use PCC for the cases that genuinely need it, and have a third-party provider (via the Language Model protocol) configured as the overflow path for when you exceed PCC eligibility. The new Language Model protocol makes this swap close to a one-line change.

The architectural principle: don't let PCC be a single point of failure your business depends on with no defined cost ceiling. Treat it as one tier in a routing strategy, not the foundation.

I've actually been building exactly this routing layer as an open-source package — happy to share patterns if useful.

— Divya Ravi, Senior iOS Enginee

Yes, I'd appreciate that package!