Apple scraps the EU per-install fee for a 5% commission on outside-App Store sales
Apple is replacing the per-install Core Technology Fee with a 5% Core Technology Commission on digital transactions in apps distributed outside the App Store, and cutting App Store rates to 26% for in-app purchase, 20% for alternative payment processing, and 15% for web-link purchases, effective October 1. Dropping the two-year and one-million-install prerequisites for running an alternative marketplace is the bigger shift — the barrier to competing with the App Store in the EU is now a financial-stability check rather than a scale record, and every EU developer moves onto one set of terms.
Source: apple.com ↗
The Core Technology Fee, a per-install fee for developers that achieve extraordinary scale, will be replaced by the Core Technology Commission, a simple 5 percent commission on digital transactions in apps distributed outside the App Store.
Why this matters
- → Eliminates scale-based gatekeeping for EU app distribution; any financially stable company can now compete.
- → Simplifies EU compliance from three separate fee structures into one unified commission model.
- → App Store economics shift: alternative distribution now cheaper (5%) than in-app purchase (26%).