Apple’s 5% Off-Store Fee Follows Apps Out the Door

Apple will take 5% of digital sales in EU apps distributed outside the App Store from October 1, 2026. The cut is named the Core Technology Commission. It applies to alternative app stores and to apps delivered from a developer’s website.

Apple published the changes to its business terms on August 18, 2026, after talks with the European Commission, and said the package resolves disagreements over fees and rival distribution. A Commission spokesperson welcomed the move and said the Commission will monitor how it is put into practice. That welcome is not a formal close of the Digital Markets Act case.

A 5% Bill Follows Every Off-Store Sale

The DMA required Apple to let iPhone and iPad users install apps from places other than the App Store. Apple’s first answer was a per-install charge that hit high-volume titles even when no one paid a cent. The new answer is simpler, and it still follows the money after a user leaves.

Under the Core Technology Commission, a sale of a paid app, a one-time digital item, or an auto-renewing subscription inside an alternatively distributed app is billed at 5%. The same 5% applies to the marketplace app itself, including paid access to a catalog. Apple In-App Purchase is not available on those titles, so the 5% is the Apple line on that revenue.

That is a better deal for a free, ad-supported app that used to fear a huge install count. It is still a platform cut on a game or subscription that actually sells something through Epic, Setapp-style stores, or the web. Windows and Linux do not take a matching slice when a developer hosts its own installer, which is the comparison critics keep making.

Apple says the 5% reflects tools, technologies, and services it still provides, including Notarization. Every alternatively distributed iOS and iPadOS app still goes through that baseline review for malware, crashes, and serious fraud. App Store titles still face the fuller App Review process on top of it.

The Rate Card Apple Wants Developers to Sign

Developers who stay on the App Store in EU storefronts get a new menu, written into unified terms for EU apps that take effect on October 1, 2026. They can mix Apple In-App Purchase with a rival processor or with a link out, which the prior EU rules did not allow. They pick that mix and must keep it for 12 months.

APPLE’S EU COMMISSION RATES FROM OCTOBER 1

The reduced column covers the App Store Small Business Program, the Mini Apps Partner Program, the Video Partner Program, and auto-renewing subscriptions after the first year. Apple still describes 15% as the rate for the vast majority of developers on In-App Purchase. The historic headline rate on digital goods was 30%, so the new standard In-App Purchase line is 26%.

Link-out commissions apply only to sales completed within 7 days of the tap. That window is how Apple keeps a claim on a checkout that happens in a browser. Developers must also file monthly reports on those transactions. The old initial acquisition fee and store services fee are gone, which is the part of the rewrite that actually deletes line items rather than renaming them.

Apple Charged €0.50 a Download Until This Rewrite

The Core Technology Fee was the feature developers hated most in the first DMA terms. Once an iOS or iPadOS app passed 1 million first annual installs in the EU, Apple charged €0.50 on each extra first annual install, including updates counted as a first install for that year. Membership included 1 million free installs per app. Marketplace operators paid the fee from the first install of the store app itself.

A popular free app could owe money with no checkout. A paid game with a smaller audience could owe nothing until it sold. The 5% commission flips that logic: no digital sale, no Core Technology Commission. High-install, low-revenue apps leave the worst of the old tax. High-revenue apps on a rival store pick up a permanent sales cut instead.

THE PATH TO THE OCTOBER TERMS

1. 2024: Apple opens alternative distribution and alternative payments in the EU under the DMA, with the €0.50 Core Technology Fee as the price of those options.
2. April 2025: The European Commission fines Apple €500 million for anti-steering rules that blocked developers from sending users to other checkouts.
3. August 18, 2026: Apple issues a single EU license, replaces the per-install fee with the 5% Core Technology Commission, and invites developers to sign immediately.
4. September 9, 2026: Eighteen trade and consumer groups tell the Commission the new 15% steering fee still fails the DMA.
5. October 1, 2026: The unified terms take effect, including the 5% off-store commission and the 12-month checkout lock.

By January 2026 Apple had already said it wanted one EU business model and a shift from per-install charges to a sales commission. The August rewrite is that model, arriving months later, with the Commission in the room for the rate-setting.

Who Can Open a Rival iOS Store?

Authorization from Apple is still required to run an alternative app marketplace or to ship notarized apps from a website. The bar is lower than the early DMA version that leaned on a long Developer Program history and huge EU install counts. Companies no longer need an EU legal entity. Starting October 1, 2026, a developer qualifies by meeting at least one of the listed tests.

WHO QUALIFIES TO RUN A MARKETPLACE OR WEB STORE

• Credit file: A moderate financial-stability score from Dun & Bradstreet.
• Public markets: The firm is publicly traded, or is owned by a publicly traded company.
• Venture backing: Funding from an established investment firm.
• Audited books: A financial audit by a licensed accountant.
• Public mission: A government body, educational institution, or nonprofit already approved for a fee waiver.
• Bank guarantee: A stand-by letter of credit of USD 1,000,000, or the local-currency equivalent.
• Scale: One million first annual installs worldwide.

Web distribution exists only in the EU. Apple argues that a website has no store operator watching after the download, so a bad actor can run longer before anyone notices. Notarization stays mandatory. In fall 2026 Apple also plans a cleaner install sheet, an API so a developer can start a website download from inside its own app, and a 90-day window for EU users to install alternative stores and alternatively distributed apps while traveling outside the EU.

Kids Apps Lose the Website Checkout

The new terms add child rules that Apple says it built with the Commission, matching measures it already uses in other countries. Apps in the Kids category on the App Store cannot include links to websites to finish a purchase. If they use a rival in-app processor, that flow sits behind a parental gate.

For users under 13, App Store apps cannot send anyone to a website to pay, and alternative in-app payments also sit behind a parental gate. For users 13 to 17, both the in-app rival processor and the link-out need a parent or guardian to pass the gate. Where an EU storefront sets parental consent older than 13, Apple applies the stricter age, so some countries will treat under-16 the way the default rules treat under-13.

The practical result is that a Kids-category title on the App Store is steered toward Apple In-App Purchase, where the commission is 26% or 15%. Rival checkout is not banned for every app that a teenager might open. It is fenced, gated, and in the Kids category cut off from the open web.

The Letter That Calls 15% a Breach

Epic Games, which already distributes Fortnite in the EU through its own iOS store, called the new rates junk fees on August 18, 2026, and said they do nothing to open mobile software to competition. The sharper filing arrived three weeks later. On September 9, 2026, the Coalition for App Fairness posted that it and 17 allies had written to the Commission: the DMA requires steering to be free of charge, and 15% is not zero.

The open letter from 18 organisations, including the European Games Developer Federation, also objects to the 5% Core Technology Commission as a new disincentive that replaced the old one. The groups say mandatory registration, app review, and contracts on off-store apps let Apple keep control of the rival channel. They asked the Commission to consult the businesses that actually ship software, to say whether the April 2025 findings are resolved, and to put a reasoned close on the file rather than an informal welcome.

Other platforms like Windows and Linux charge neither platform nor distribution fees at all for self-distribution, demonstrating that the levels proposed by Apple are neither technically nor operationally necessary.

Jari-Pekka Kaleva, Managing Director, European Games Developer Federation

Kaleva also said his group will watch how Apple applies parental gates, and that device-level parental controls are core platform services that should remain available to games distributed outside Apple’s own store.

Brussels Welcomed a Package It Has Not Closed

Apple’s newsroom line is that the August 18 package resolves its disagreements with the Commission over business terms and alternative distribution. The Commission’s public line is thinner. A spokesperson said the Commission welcomes the changes, that they follow a close dialogue, and that the Commission will monitor effective implementation. There is no published decision that the April 2025 anti-steering findings are cured, and no published finding that a 15% link-out fee is “free of charge.”

WHAT WE KNOW

• The start date: Developers may sign now; the commercial terms apply on October 1, 2026.
• The off-store rate: Digital sales in alternatively distributed apps are billed at 5%.
• The steering rate: Qualifying link-out sales within 7 days are billed at 15%, or 10% for listed programs and year-two subscriptions.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• Case status: Whether the DMA proceeding is closed, paused, or still live behind the monitoring pledge.
• The 15% line: Whether a formal decision will treat a steering commission as compatible with a free-of-charge duty.
• The 5% line: Whether Brussels will bless a permanent sales tax on rival iOS stores as a fair return on Apple’s software.

Tim Sweeney, Epic’s founder and CEO, wrote on August 21, 2026 that the Commission may accept a 5% fee on competing stores under EU ideas about intellectual property and fair terms, and that it will not accept 15% to 20% on competing payments if it reads the DMA’s “free of charge” language straight. He also argued that trade pressure from Washington makes a lonely European rejection less likely in the near term, which in his view pushes real relief into 2027. That is his read, not a Commission timetable.

Since journalists didn’t dig deep when covering this story, I did and here is the Apple EU junk fee situation in detail:

– EC will likely bless Apple’s 5% junk fee on competing stores given EU principles on IP and FRAND.

– EC will not accept Apple’s 15-20% junk fee on competing…

— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) August 21, 2026

The 5% figure is also not an EU one-off. Apple already put a same 5% fee in Brazil on third-party stores, after a similar design in Japan, and it told EU developers the new terms look like those commission models. The DMA was supposed to be the stricter script. The October 1, 2026 rate card looks like the export version, with a monitoring note attached.

Developers can already sign the August 18 license. The 5% Core Technology Commission starts on October 1, 2026. The Commission has said it will watch. It has not said when it will rule.