Apple Cuts EU App Store Fees After Regulator Fight, While Proposing Higher Rate to US Judge

Apple picked August 18 to end one regulatory fight in Europe while an American judge decides whether to let Apple keep charging developers more for the same thing.

The company announced new EU App Store business terms that take effect Thursday, October 1, 2026. Developers can sign the updated agreement immediately, according to Apple's own newsroom post. The centerpiece: Apple is killing its Core Technology Fee, a per-install charge that applied once developers hit certain scale thresholds, and replacing it with a flat 5% Core Technology Commission on digital transactions in apps sold outside the App Store.

Apple says the deal, reached after what it called close collaboration with the European Commission, resolves its disagreements with regulators over business terms and alternative distribution. The Commission confirmed to Bloomberg that it welcomes the changes and will monitor how Apple implements them, according to reporting cited by aiweekly.co. Companies that don't comply with the EU's Digital Markets Act still face fines of up to 10% of global revenue.

What developers actually pay now

The new EU rate table, laid out consistently across Apple's own documentation and reporting from iClarified, ppc.land and TheNextWeb, sets four tiers. Standard App Store purchases through Apple's own payment system carry a 26% commission, down from the old 30% baseline. Developers in Apple's Small Business Program, Mini Apps Partner Program or Video Partner Program pay 15%, as do subscriptions after their first renewal year.

Apps that use an alternative payment processor while staying inside the App Store pay 20%, or 10% under the reduced-rate programs. Apps that link users out to the web to complete a purchase pay 15%, or 10% at the reduced tier, but ppc.land notes that rate only applies to sales completed within seven days of the link being tapped. Apps distributed entirely outside the App Store, through rival marketplaces or straight from the web, pay just the 5% Core Technology Commission.

Every app distributed outside Apple's own store, regardless of which tier it falls under, still has to pass Apple's Notarization review, a security and functionality check Apple has run since it first opened alternative distribution in the EU.

Apple is also loosening some rules that frustrated developers before. Companies can now offer Apple's In-App Purchase alongside alternative payment methods in the same app, something the EU terms didn't previously allow. And Apple broadened who can qualify to run an alternative marketplace, adding paths through Dun & Bradstreet financial-stability thresholds, public-company status, venture funding, or nonprofit and government status.

Apple is adding child-safety rules alongside the fee changes. Kids category apps can't link to outside websites for purchases at all. Users under 13 are blocked from web-based transactions entirely, and anyone under 18 has to pass through a parental gate before using alternative payment options.

The number that doesn't match

Five days before the EU announcement, Apple filed a proposal in US District Court in Oakland offering a tiered commission structure for external-link purchases: 15% for standard developers, 10% for partner program participants, and 5% for Small Business Program members, according to Tech Times. That filing came after Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers found Apple in contempt in April 2025 for designing an earlier 27% external-link commission specifically to make her injunction commercially unworkable. Per the Ninth Circuit's cost-based standard, Apple can only charge what it actually costs to coordinate those transactions, not whatever the market will bear.

Tech Times and the newsletter Spyglass both flagged the same discrepancy: Apple is telling European regulators 5% is the right number for transactions outside its store, while telling an American federal judge, days apart, that 15% is appropriate for functionally the same category of transaction. Spyglass called the timing "coordinated," arguing Apple likely knew the EU deal was close and wanted the lower European figure in hand as leverage, framing 15% as reasonable by comparison when it makes its case to Judge Gonzalez Rogers.

Apple has not said the two filings were timed together, and the EU's cost floor and the Ninth Circuit's cost-based legal test aren't identical frameworks. Despoina Mantzari of University College London, writing in the Journal of Competition Law and Economics, argues fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory fee standards should track Apple's actual coordination costs rather than the rents it can extract as the only way onto iOS. A framework like that, if applied literally, would cut against Apple's higher US number.

There's also a documentation mismatch inside Apple's own EU paperwork. ppc.land found that Apple's newsroom announcement says the company is eliminating the "initial acquisition fee and store services fee" outright, while its developer support pages, published the same day, still describe a 15%/10% "store services commission" applying to linked-out purchases. Apple hasn't publicly reconciled the two descriptions.

Epic Games has already pushed back on Apple's US proposal, arguing any negotiated rate should apply uniformly to all developers, not just the ones Apple prefers to negotiate with directly. Judge Gonzalez Rogers has not ruled on Apple's 15% proposal. Developers on both continents now have Apple's own numbers, 5% in Brussels, up to 15% in Oakland, sitting side by side in the public record.