Apple's New EU App Store Fees: What Founders Should Do Now

On August 18, Apple announced a new set of business terms for apps in the European Union, and they went live on October 1. If you ship an iOS app to EU users, you are now on one set of terms, and the old per-install fee is gone.

Here is what Apple published. The Core Technology Fee, which charged very large apps per install, is replaced by a Core Technology Commission of 5% on digital transactions in apps distributed outside the App Store. The initial acquisition fee and the store services fee are eliminated. And the commission on the App Store itself now depends on how you take payment.

The figures below come from Apple's announcement. Press coverage in the first weeks differed on some details, so before you change anything in production, read the terms in your developer account and confirm the rates that apply to you.

This applies to the EU only. Apple's commission in the United States, the UK and everywhere else did not change with this announcement. If most of your revenue comes from outside Europe, this is a footnote. If you sell to European consumers or run a subscription business with a large EU base, it is worth an afternoon of math.

We covered the original Digital Markets Act rules in our guide to DMA and alternative app stores. That article describes how the rules arrived. This one is about the fee schedule that exists today and how to choose between its options.

There are four ways to get paid on iOS in the EU now, and each carries a different commission. Apple's published schedule looks like this.

• App Store with Apple In-App Purchase: 26%. This drops to 15% for most developers, including those in the Small Business Program, the Mini Apps Partner Program and the Video Partner Program. Auto-renewing subscriptions also fall to 15% after the first year.
• App Store with alternative payment processing: 20%. Developers in the programs above pay 10%.
• App Store with a link out to complete the purchase on your website: 15%. Programs above pay 10%.
• Alternative marketplace or web distribution: 5% Core Technology Commission on digital transactions.

Two things are different from what founders were used to. First, you can now offer Apple In-App Purchase alongside an alternative payment option in the same app. Apple says this was not allowed in the EU before. Second, once you pick your combination of payment options, you keep it for 12 months. That commitment is the part to read twice.

Why the Tier Names Mislead

The commission tiers are not a menu where lower is always better. The 5% rate only applies when your app is distributed outside the App Store, which means you give up App Store discovery, Apple's review-time trust signals with consumers, and the frictionless one-tap purchase. The 15% link-out rate keeps you in the App Store but sends users to a browser to pay, and every extra step in a checkout costs conversion.

The right way to compare options is net revenue per 1,000 users who see your paywall, not commission rate. A 10-point commission saving is worth nothing if your conversion rate falls by a third.

Take a subscription app with 1,000 EU paywall views per month and a $12 monthly plan. At a 4% in-app conversion, that is 40 subscribers and $480 of gross revenue. At 15% commission you net $408. Suppose the link-out flow converts at 2.5% because of the browser hop, which is a plausible figure for a cold flow without saved cards. That is 25 subscribers and $300 gross. At the 15% link-out rate you net $255, well below the in-app number. Link-out only wins if you can get conversion close to parity, usually through Apple Pay on the web or a saved payment method.

Apple's lower rates depend on being in one of its named programs. The Small Business Program is the one most startups will hit, and it applies to developers under a revenue threshold (check Apple's current threshold in your account, since it has been adjusted before). If you qualify, your headline rates are meaningfully lower than the 26% in the first row.

That has a practical consequence. For a seed-stage app earning under the Small Business threshold, the difference between Apple In-App Purchase at 15% and a web checkout at 10% or 15% is small. The engineering cost of building and maintaining a second payment path can easily exceed the savings for the first year or two.

For a larger app, the numbers change. An app with $5M a year in EU revenue paying 26% on in-app purchases hands Apple $1.3M. Moving a portion of that to a lower tier is a real line item, and it is worth a dedicated project.

The Alternative Marketplace Eligibility Bar

If you were thinking of distributing outside the App Store entirely, Apple now sets conditions on who can do it. A company qualifies if it meets one of these:

• A financial-stability score from Dun and Bradstreet at a moderate bar or better
• Public company status, or ownership by a public company
• Venture funding from an established investment firm
• A financial audit by a licensed accountant
• Government, educational or nonprofit status

All apps distributed this way still go through Notarization, which Apple describes as a baseline review for basic functionality and protection from serious threats. So this is not a path around review. It is a path around the App Store storefront and Apple's payment system.

For most funded startups the eligibility bar is clearable. A bootstrapped team with no audit and no institutional investor will need to check the options carefully.

Apple requires developers to choose their payment options and keep them for 12 months. The options are In-App Purchase, alternative payment processing, linking to the web, or a combination. That means this is not a test you can flip back after a week.

Treat the decision the way you would a pricing change. Model it, pilot it where you can, and make the commitment with eyes open. A few things to settle before you sign:

• Your refund and chargeback process. With Apple In-App Purchase, Apple handles refunds and disputes. With your own processor, that work is yours, along with fraud exposure.
• Tax. Apple acts as merchant of record on its payment system and handles VAT across member states. If you take payments yourself, you own VAT registration and remittance, or you use a merchant-of-record provider such as Paddle or Lemon Squeezy, whose fees come out of your savings.
• Subscription management. Users manage Apple subscriptions in iOS settings. Your own billing needs its own cancellation flow, receipts and dunning for failed cards.
• Entitlement sync. If a user can buy through two channels, your backend has to reconcile them so someone who bought on the web has access in the app, and nobody pays twice.

Processor fees matter too. A card processor like Stripe typically charges around 2.9% plus 30 cents in the US, and European card rates run lower under interchange caps, though the exact figure depends on your plan and card mix. Add a merchant-of-record fee if you use one, which commonly lands between 5% and 10% all in. The real saving from moving off Apple is the commission gap minus your processing and compliance costs, not the commission gap alone.

Apple added rules for younger users alongside the new fees, and they affect checkout design directly. Kids category apps cannot link to websites to complete transactions. For users under 18, apps that use alternative payments or link out must include a parental gate. For users under 13, apps cannot link out to websites for transactions at all. In member states that require parental consent past age 13, the protections scale up accordingly.

If your audience skews young, such as a study app, a game or a social product with teenage users, these rules can erase the value of the link-out option. You would need a parental gate in the flow, age signals from the OS, and a fallback to Apple In-App Purchase for users under the relevant thresholds. That is a lot of branching for a modest commission saving.

Even for adult-focused apps, plan for the parental gate edge case. A teenager using a parent's device is a normal event, and an app review team will test how you handle it.

What Review Will Look At

Expect the review team to look at how you present payment options. Apple says presentation requirements apply when you show In-App Purchase next to an alternative. Screens that steer users with misleading buttons or hide Apple's option will draw rejections. Our guide to App Store rejections covers how to read the feedback and resubmit quickly, and the same discipline applies here.

Here is where I come down on each type of product we see founders building. This is opinion, not a rule, and it assumes you have checked your own numbers.

Early-Stage Subscription App, Under the Small Business Threshold

Stay on Apple In-App Purchase. Your commission is already at the lower rate, your conversion is at its best inside the native sheet, and your engineering time is better spent on activation and retention. Revisit when you cross the threshold or when EU revenue passes a few hundred thousand dollars a year.

Established Consumer Subscription App With Large EU Revenue

Run a controlled test with a link-out or a web checkout for a slice of users, but only on a path that keeps conversion near the in-app rate. Use Apple Pay on the web and saved cards. Measure net revenue per paywall view, not just commission. If you sign the terms, remember the 12-month commitment applies, so scope the test with Apple's rules in mind.

Marketplace or Services App With Physical Goods

Mostly unaffected. Apple's commission applies to digital goods and services. If your app sells rides, food or physical products, you were never paying it, and these changes do not alter that.

B2B SaaS With a Mobile Companion

Also mostly unaffected. Most B2B apps do not sell subscriptions in the app at all and rely on a web checkout and a sign-in. If that is you, do nothing and keep the account creation path clean for review.

Games and Heavy In-App Purchase Apps

This is where the largest dollars are, and where the child safety rules bite hardest. If you have a significant EU base, model the alternative marketplace option at 5%, but account for lost storefront discovery and the Notarization process. Our piece on mobile app monetization strategies goes deeper on pricing and paywall design, which usually move revenue more than a commission change does.

If the math says to use a second payment path, the work is mostly backend and paywall logic, not new screens. A realistic scope for a small team is 3 to 6 weeks of engineering, depending on how tidy your current billing is.

1. A single entitlement service. Every purchase, from any channel, writes to one table that says what the user owns and until when. The app reads from that table only. This is the foundation, and it is also what protects you from double charges.
2. A payment provider integration. Stripe Billing or Paddle for web checkout, with webhooks that update the entitlement table. Handle failed payments with retries and clear emails.
3. Region gating. Show the new options only to users whose App Store storefront is in the EU. Keep everyone else on the standard flow.
4. A parental gate and age handling. Needed wherever your audience includes minors.
5. Analytics by channel. Track conversion, refund rate, churn and net revenue for each payment path separately so that the 12-month decision is backed by data.
6. Customer support runbooks. Support needs to know which channel a customer bought through, because refunds and cancellations work differently in each.

Teams that already run web billing for a desktop or web version of their product can move faster, because the entitlement service and tax handling exist. Teams starting from pure in-app billing should budget for the tax and support work, not just the checkout screen.

Apple's new EU terms are real money for apps with large European revenue and a footnote for everyone else. The 5% commission headline is the number that gets repeated, but it only applies if you leave the App Store, and most apps should not.

Start with three numbers: your EU gross revenue per year, your qualifying program status, and your conversion rate in the native purchase sheet. Compute net revenue under each tier after processor and tax costs. If a different tier beats your current setup by more than the cost of the engineering and the risk of the 12-month lock, move. If it does not, stay where you are and spend the time on your paywall.

If you want a second opinion on the numbers, or a team to build the entitlement layer and web checkout without breaking your current subscribers, book a free strategy call and we will walk through your app's specifics.