Apple has overhauled its EU App Store business terms to settle its long-running dispute with the European Commission over the Digital Markets Act. From 1 October 2026, the per-install Core Technology Fee is gone, replaced by a Core Technology Commission: a flat 5% on digital transactions in apps distributed outside the App Store, whether through an alternative marketplace or the web. The Initial Acquisition Fee and Store Services Fee are eliminated too. Apps that stay inside the standard App Store with in-app purchases still pay Apple’s 26% fee; it’s the alternative-distribution route that just got a much simpler, and for most developers cheaper, fee structure.
Why the shape of the change matters more than the headline number
The old Core Technology Fee charged developers per install once they passed a free-tier threshold, regardless of whether that install ever generated revenue — a structure that punished popular free or low-monetising apps and made alternative distribution genuinely risky to try at scale in the EU. A flat percentage of actual transactions removes that risk: no revenue, no fee. That’s a meaningful shift for anyone weighing whether to distribute outside the App Store in Europe, not just a rounding change to Apple’s pricing page.
It’s also a signal of direction. Regulatory pressure — first the UK’s CMA steering rules, now this EU settlement — keeps pushing Apple toward fee structures that are simpler and tied to actual revenue rather than raw distribution volume. Developers commissioning apps with any EU user base should expect this pattern to keep extending, and app store economics to keep being a live variable in how a mobile product gets built and distributed, not a fixed cost decided once at launch.
So what
If you’re planning or maintaining an app with meaningful EU users, this is worth a specific conversation with whoever builds or maintains it: does alternative distribution or web-based payment now make more sense under the new 5% commission than it did under the old per-install model, and does your app’s architecture support that route if you want it later even if you don’t take it now. At BuildApps we build mobile apps with these distribution and commercial questions considered up front — see our services across iOS and Android, or get in touch to talk through what it means for your product specifically.