Apple's Core Technology Commission and the 5% math

Apple announced revised EU App Store business terms today, replacing the per-install Core Technology Fee with what it is calling a Core Technology Commission: a flat 5% cut of revenue, layered on top of tiered store services fees, for developers who move to the new terms from January 2026. The Coalition for App Fairness has already called the structure non-compliant with the Digital Markets Act. For a UA or finance team, the more useful question is not whether Apple's lawyers will win that argument. It is which developers actually come out ahead under the new math. The answer is not "everyone with high install volume," which is the assumption doing the rounds today.

What changed, briefly

Since complying with the DMA's gatekeeper obligations last year, Apple has charged developers who distribute outside the App Store or use alternative payment processing a Core Technology Fee of roughly EUR 0.50 per install once a developer passes one million annual installs. That structure punished exactly the apps the DMA was meant to help most: high-volume, low-monetising titles, where a flat per-install charge could exceed what the app earns per user. The new Core Technology Commission drops the per-install charge in favour of a 5% revenue share, plus separate tiered fees for store services depending on which optional Apple services a developer still uses. As we covered in The DMA's first app store fees: Apple and Meta explained, Apple's original compliance structure survived roughly a year before this rework. A year is short. That tells you the per-install model was not merely controversial; it was not working as a durable structure even from Apple's side.

The Apple Core Technology Commission math that actually matters

A revenue-based commission and a per-install fee produce very different outcomes depending on a game's monetisation intensity. That is the calculation every affected studio needs to run before deciding whether the new terms beat the old ones.

Take a hypothetical hybrid-casual title with high install volume and modest monetisation, doing roughly $0.40 in average revenue per install over its lifetime. Under the old per-install fee of about EUR 0.50, that title was paying more in Core Technology Fee than it earned per user in many cases. Untenable for any volume-driven UA strategy. Under a 5% revenue-based commission, the same title pays roughly $0.02 per install at that revenue level. An enormous reduction.

Now take a hypothetical premium or heavily monetised RPG title earning $8 in average revenue per install. Under the old per-install fee, that title paid a flat EUR 0.50 regardless of how much it earned. Under the new 5% commission, it pays roughly $0.40 per install. Meaningfully more than before.

So the reform helps exactly the volume-heavy, thin-margin end of the market it previously hurt most, and it raises costs for high-monetising titles that were quietly benefiting from the old flat-fee structure. Those figures are illustrative only, built to show the shape of the change rather than Apple's actual published rates, which every studio should confirm against Apple's own developer terms before modelling its own numbers.

Who benefits, who does not

Two groups move in opposite directions here, and a third barely moves at all. Studios staying on Apple's standard commission structure rather than adopting alternative distribution or payment terms see nothing change from this announcement, though they stay exposed to the broader question of whether Apple's standard terms remain competitive as the alternative terms evolve.

• Hybrid-casual and hyper-casual publishers with high install volume and thin per-user monetisation are the clearest winners, since the old per-install fee structurally punished exactly this business model.
• Premium and heavily monetised mid-core or RPG titles are more likely to see their effective platform cost rise under a revenue-based commission, particularly if they were previously running high volume with minimal alternative-payment usage.

Timing the decision against the fiscal year

Studios planning their 2026 budgets have a narrower window than the January effective date suggests. Any finance team building next year's platform cost assumptions into a budget cycle that closes before year-end needs its modelling finished well ahead of January, not as a reaction to whatever Apple's finalised published rates turn out to be. Treat this as a January problem and you risk locking in a 2026 budget built on the old per-install assumptions for titles that would clearly benefit from switching, or on rough estimates for titles where the store services tier meaningfully changes the total cost picture.

What to model before January

Any studio with meaningful EU install volume should build both scenarios against its actual historical revenue-per-install distribution rather than an average, since the commission structure change affects titles differently depending on where they sit on the monetisation curve, and an average can hide a split outcome across a portfolio. Studios running multiple titles at different monetisation levels may find some titles clearly benefit from the new terms while others clearly do not. That argues for a title-by-title adoption decision rather than a blanket portfolio move.

Store services fees add a second variable

The Core Technology Commission is not the only cost changing under today's announcement. Apple's new terms also introduce tiered store services fees, charged separately depending on which optional Apple services a developer continues to use under the alternative terms: hosting, review, discovery placements. This matters because a developer's total effective cost under the new structure is not simply 5% of revenue. It is 5% plus whatever tier of store services fees applies, and two developers with identical revenue-per-install profiles could end up with meaningfully different total costs depending on how much of Apple's optional infrastructure they rely on versus what they have built or sourced independently. Model only the headline 5% and you will understate the true cost of the new terms, potentially by a wide margin depending on a studio's specific service usage.

The compliance question sits above the math

The Coalition for App Fairness's non-compliance argument, if it gains traction with the European Commission, could reopen this structure before it takes effect in January. As we argued in The EU Digital Markets Act and App Stores, One Year On, Apple's compliance posture under the DMA has been an iterative negotiation rather than a settled outcome. This is the clearest evidence yet that the negotiation is still live. Build the analysis now. Treat the January implementation date as provisional until the Commission responds.

Related archive reading

These articles provide related context and remain subject to their stated review status.

• Apple's 5% Core Technology Commission: what the EU fee swap changes for web shop math
• The DMA for UA operators, in plain terms