Comment by soulchild37

If you are a non-profit organization, you can apply for a free developer account : https://developer.apple.com/support/membership-fee-waiver/

I am an iOS/macOS developer myself and have few apps in (Mac) App Store as well, I think the $99/ year serve as a motivation for me to keep on improving my app (to sell more to cover the cost), the $99/yr would probably weed out spammers as well. Try and compare how many spam apps in Play Store vs App Store.