Apple's EU App Store Gets One Rate Card

If you've tried to follow Apple's EU rules since the Digital Markets Act arrived, you know the feeling. Every year brought a new addendum, a new fee with a capitalized name, and a new calculator someone built to work out what you'd actually owe.

On Monday Apple announced it's collapsing all of that into one set of business terms for apps in the EU, effective October 1. The numbers below come from Apple's own apps-in-the-EU page, because early coverage didn't all agree on them.

What happened

Apple's developer news post says the change follows "close collaboration with the European Commission" and moves every developer distributing in the EU onto a single set of terms. The headline changes:

• The Core Technology Fee, Apple's per-install fee for apps at large scale, is gone. It's replaced by the Core Technology Commission: "a simple 5% commission on digital transactions in apps distributed outside the App Store."
• The Initial Acquisition Fee and the Store Services Fee are eliminated.
• Apps in EU storefronts can offer alternative payment methods alongside Apple In-App Purchase, in the same app.
• New child safety rules apply to alternative payments.
• It's easier to qualify to run an alternative marketplace or distribute from your website. You no longer need a legal entity in the EU.

The updated Developer Program License Agreement is available to accept now. The new terms kick in October 1, when they replace the old EU addenda.

A Commission spokesperson welcomed the changes, according to press reports, and said the Commission will monitor how Apple implements them.

The rate card

Here's the full set, from Apple's support page. "Programs" means the App Store Small Business Program, Mini Apps Partner Program or Video Partner Program.

How the sale happens	Standard	Programs, or subscriptions after year one
App Store, Apple In-App Purchase	26%	15%
App Store, alternative payment processor in the app	20%	10%
App Store, link out to an offer elsewhere	15%	10%
Outside the App Store (alt marketplace or web distribution)	5%	5%

A few details that matter more than they look:

• Link-outs have a 7-day window. The 15% (or 10%) applies only to sales made within 7 days of the user tapping the link.
• Rates apply to the price the customer pays.
• Payment choices are sticky. Once you offer a set of payment options, you have to keep them for 12 months.
• You become the tax collector. For sales through an alternative processor, collecting and remitting tax is your job, and you send Apple a report of those transactions every month, within 15 days of month end.
• Kids get a parental gate. Under 13, alternative payment purchases must sit behind a parental gate and link-out offers aren't allowed. For 13 to 17, both need a parental gate.

Press coverage framed the 26% as a cut from the standard 30%. The structure is easier to read than the old one, which is a real improvement on its own.

Why it matters if you build software

I build apps solo from Toronto, so for me these rules only touch EU storefronts. Even so, the rate card turns into some practical engineering questions.

The gap is smaller than it looks. For a Small Business Program developer, In-App Purchase is 15% and alternative processing is 10%. That 5-point difference has to pay for a payment processor's fees, tax collection and remittance, refunds, and the monthly reporting. For a small app, it's worth doing that math honestly before assuming the lower rate is cheaper.

Link-outs are a measurable funnel now. With a 7-day attribution window, you need to know which web sales came from an in-app tap and when. That's an analytics and reporting job, not just a button.

Your code needs storefront-aware paths. Different offers, different payment flows and different age rules by storefront means the purchase flow is no longer one path. That's the kind of branching I'd want behind one clean interface and a feature flag, not scattered through the UI.

The 12-month commitment is an architecture decision. You can't try alternative payments for a month and quietly roll back. Model it before you ship it.

Quick hits

• OpenAI pauses RL training for two weeks (Aug 18). OpenAI says it paused reinforcement learning on its latest models intended for deployment while it hardened and red-teamed its research environments, and its largest planned frontier RL run is still on hold. It's also aiming to raise an alert within 30 minutes of its monitoring flagging concerning activity. This follows its warning about Astra's cyber capability, which I covered in The Decode #005.
• CodeQL 2.26.3 sharpens its GitHub Actions queries (Aug 19). Better cache-poisoning and untrusted-checkout alerts, and fewer false positives. If you haven't turned on code scanning for your workflow files, the Actions supply-chain incidents this summer are a good reason.
• iOS 27 beta 6 is out (Aug 17). Build 24A5418b, with matching betas for iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, tvOS and visionOS. Mostly stability; keep testing your apps against it ahead of the September release.

What I'm watching

How developers and the Commission react once the new terms take effect on October 1.

Sources

Apple's EU terms

• Apple Developer, news post on changes for apps in the EU (Aug 18, 2026)
• Apple Developer, apps in the EU support page, with the full rate tables (terms updated Aug 18, 2026)
• 9to5Mac, coverage of the new EU terms (Aug 18, 2026)

Quick hits

• OpenAI, pacing model development in an era of cyber-critical capabilities (Aug 18, 2026)
• The Decoder, coverage of OpenAI's training pause (Aug 18, 2026)
• GitHub, CodeQL 2.26.3 changelog (Aug 19, 2026)
• Apple Developer, iOS 27.0 beta 6 release (Aug 17, 2026)