Apple is rewriting its EU App Store commercial terms again, effective 1 October 2026. Developer sign-up for the new terms is already open. The core change: the per-install Core Technology Fee that developers have been criticised for years as penalising viral, free-to-download apps is being replaced with a transaction-based Core Technology Commission, alongside a consolidated rate card covering every distribution and payment path.
What the old fee actually punished
The Core Technology Fee, in its previous form, charged developers per install once an app crossed a free-install threshold, regardless of whether that install ever generated a cent of revenue. That structure specifically hurt apps that went viral without immediately monetising, and apps with large free tiers and small paying segments — exactly the shape a lot of consumer SaaS and freemium products take. A spike in free downloads could generate a real fee bill with no matching revenue to cover it.
The new rate card
Under the terms taking effect 1 October, the fee structure moves to a transaction basis rather than a per-install basis, with rates depending on how the transaction happens: 26% for standard in-app purchases processed through Apple's own payment system, 20% for purchases processed through an alternative payment provider, 15% for purchases completed via a link-out to an external website, and a 5% Core Technology Commission specifically for apps distributed entirely outside the App Store under the EU's alternative distribution rules.
The shift from per-install to per-transaction is the meaningful structural change here. An app with a large free user base and no purchases now owes nothing under the Core Technology Commission, rather than accumulating a fee bill tied to download volume alone. The tradeoff is that the 26% standard in-app-purchase rate is a real number to model against your current margins if you do sell through Apple's own payment system.
Who actually benefits and who pays more
An app with substantial free usage and limited in-app monetisation is a clear winner under this change — the download-volume-driven fee that used to accumulate regardless of revenue is gone. An app that monetises heavily through Apple's own in-app purchase system, and was previously paying the standard App Store commission rather than the per-install fee, needs to check the new 26% figure against whatever it was paying before, since this rewrite touches the whole rate card, not only the Core Technology Fee specifically.
The 15% link-out rate and 20% alternative-payment rate are the two paths worth comparing directly against the 26% standard rate if you haven't already moved any part of your EU payment flow away from Apple's own system. The gap between 26% and 15% is large enough to be worth the engineering effort of supporting a link-out flow for EU users specifically, if you don't already have one.
What to actually do before 1 October
Work out which of the four rates actually applies to your current EU revenue mix — standard in-app purchase, alternative payment processing, link-out, or fully off-store distribution — since most apps will have revenue landing in more than one bucket, and the effective blended rate depends on that mix, not on picking the single lowest number on the card.
If your app has a large free-tier user base and modest in-app purchase revenue, model what you would have owed under the old per-install Core Technology Fee versus what the new transaction-based commission actually charges you, to confirm this change is a genuine improvement for your specific numbers rather than assuming it based on the general framing.
If a meaningful share of your EU revenue currently goes through Apple's standard in-app purchase system at the 26% rate, seriously evaluate whether supporting link-out payments, at 15%, is worth the development cost given your actual EU transaction volume. For a product with substantial recurring EU revenue, the gap between those two rates compounds significantly over a year.
Sign up for the new terms through Apple's developer portal before 1 October if you intend to operate under them, since Apple's own announcement frames this as something developers opt into ahead of the effective date rather than something that applies automatically to every existing agreement.
The bottom line
Apple's EU App Store terms move from a per-install Core Technology Fee to a transaction-based Core Technology Commission on 1 October 2026, with a rate card running from 5% for off-store distribution up to 26% for standard in-app purchases. Work out which rate actually applies to your current EU revenue mix, and if a large share of it runs through Apple's standard payment system, model whether shifting some of it to a link-out flow at 15% is worth the engineering cost for your specific volume.