Google just cut Play Store fees and opened Android to rival app stores — what it changes for commissioning
Google has replaced its flat 30% Play Store fee with a lower, market-specific billing fee (5% in the UK) and opened Android to registered third-party app stores, rolling out in the UK, US and EEA from 30 June 2026 — a real shift in the economics of shipping and monetising a mobile app.
8 July 2026
Google has overhauled how Android apps get distributed and paid for. The old flat 30% Play Store commission is gone, replaced by a lower, market-specific billing fee — 5% in the UK, US and EEA — and developers can now choose Google Play Billing, an alternative in-app payment processor, or simply link out to their own website checkout. Alongside that, a new “Registered App Stores” programme lets rival Android app stores that pass Google’s safety benchmarks offer a simplified install flow, instead of the friction-heavy sideloading process that discouraged most users from ever leaving Google Play. The changes started rolling out on 30 June 2026, with UK developers among the first covered.
This is the practical end of the Google v. Epic dispute, and it changes the commercial maths of an Android app before a single line of code is written. A subscription or in-app-purchase business that assumed a 30% cut now has room to route payments elsewhere and keep more margin — but it also means more app stores in the ecosystem, more places an app needs to appear, and more billing paths to test and support.
So what
If you’re scoping a new Android app or re-negotiating monetisation on an existing one, this is the moment to revisit your billing architecture rather than defaulting to whatever was standard eighteen months ago — the fee structure that made that decision has changed under you. It’s a conversation worth having early, at the platform and API design stage, not after launch. Talk to us about iOS & Android development that accounts for this from day one, or get in touch to scope a project.