Apple's New EU App Store Terms Land October 1. The Fee That Got Killed Never Touched a Small Developer Anyway
Apple settled its running fight with the European Commission on August 18, and the headline change is real: the Core Technology Fee, a per-install charge that only ever hit apps at extraordinary scale, is gone, replaced by a flat 5% Core Technology Commission on digital transactions in apps distributed outside the App Store. The new terms take effect October 1. Read past the headline, though, and the story for a one-person iOS shop isn't the fee that disappeared. It's who Apple decided is allowed to use the door that fee used to guard.
What's actually changing
The Core Technology Fee charged large developers per install once they crossed a scale threshold most solo apps will never approach. Under the new unified terms, that's replaced by a 5% commission on transactions for apps distributed via alternative marketplaces or the web in the EU, and Apple is also eliminating the initial acquisition fee and the store services fee entirely. For apps that stay inside the App Store, Apple adjusted commission rates too: 26% standard when using Apple's own in-app purchase, dropping to 15% for developers in the Small Business Program, the Mini Apps Partner Program, the Video Partner Program, or for subscriptions past their first year. Use alternative payment processing inside the app and the commission is 20%, or 10% for those same reduced-rate programs. Link out to a website to complete the purchase and it's 15%, or 10% at the reduced rate. Developers get to pick a payment path, Apple's own in-app purchase, alternative processing, linking out, or some combination, and once picked, they're locked into it for 12 months.
The eligibility bar nobody's talking about
Here's the part that actually matters if you were considering distributing outside the App Store to dodge Apple's cut entirely. Apple expanded who's allowed to operate an alternative app marketplace or distribute via the web in the EU, and the new qualifying criteria are: a moderate financial-stability score from Dun & Bradstreet, being publicly traded or owned by a public company, having received venture funding from an established investment firm, having completed a financial audit by a licensed accountant, or being a government entity, educational institution, or nonprofit. Read that list again as a solo developer. None of those apply to a single person shipping an app from a laptop. Apple's stated reasoning is that web distribution in the EU doesn't have a marketplace operator or ongoing oversight standing behind it the way the App Store does, so a bad actor could operate a long time before getting caught, and Apple wants some institutional backing behind anyone who gets to skip that oversight. That's a defensible safety argument. It also means the fee reduction that made headlines applies to a door that was never open to you in the first place, and the new eligibility rules make sure it stays that way.
What this actually changes for a solo App Store developer
If you're not eligible for alternative distribution, and almost no solo developer is, your practical options haven't expanded. You're picking among the in-App-Store commission tiers: 15% if you're in the Small Business Program (which requires under $1 million in annual proceeds, a threshold most solo apps clear easily by staying under it) or 10% if you additionally use alternative payment processing or link out to the web for the transaction. That 10% number for a linked-out purchase, no App Store cut on the payment itself beyond that reduced commission, is genuinely useful if you're already comfortable handling your own checkout flow and the parental-gate requirements Apple layered on for anyone under 18 using alternative payments. But it's not new leverage. Small Business Program members could already get reduced rates before this announcement; what changed is mostly cleanup and simplification of a business terms structure that had grown complicated enough that Apple and the Commission were formally disputing it.
What I'd actually do
If you're a solo iOS developer selling into the EU and you're already in the Small Business Program, the practical move is to check whether linking out to a web checkout at the 10% reduced rate beats staying fully inside Apple's in-app purchase flow at 15%, given what it costs you in payment processing and support overhead to run your own checkout. For most one-person apps, the answer is that the 15% in-app rate is still worth the convenience, and October 1 doesn't change that calculation much. Where I'd flag genuine uncertainty: Apple's press release doesn't specify exactly how the Dun & Bradstreet financial-stability threshold is scored, or whether a well-funded but not VC-backed solo studio (self-funded, profitable, no institutional investors) could clear the "moderate financial-stability bar" on revenue alone rather than needing venture backing specifically. If that bar turns out to be revenue-based rather than investor-based, a profitable one-person shop might actually qualify for alternative distribution where I've assumed here that it doesn't. I'd confirm that detail with Apple's developer support resources before ruling it out entirely.
Author
Lukas
@lukcombinator