Apple's new iOS terms in the EU are live: What alternative app stores now mean for game studios

• On October 1st, Apple's new EU business terms came into force.
• Apple has replaced the Core Technology Fee (CTF) with a 5% Core Technology Commission on digital sales through alternative app stores.
• This aligns Apple’s economics with commercial activity, rather than charging for reach, installs and experimentation.
• That gives publishers a clearer basis to assess whether alternative distribution can work for their business.

Alexander Baksheev, the co-founder & CEO of Onside.io, explains the impact of Apple's newly enforced business terms across the EU and the implications for developers when it comes to alternative app stores. 

On the October 1st, Apple's new EU business terms, set out in Attachment 14 to the Apple Developer Program License Agreement, came into force. For developers, the main change is the fee. Apple has replaced the Core Technology Fee (CTF) with a 5% Core Technology Commission (CTC) on digital sales made through alternative app stores and web distribution. The switch comes more than a year after the European Commission fined Apple €500 million and raised concerns that the CTF was discouraging alternative distribution.

This is a meaningful change. Under the previous model, publishers and developers effectively faced a tax for even testing an alternative distribution channel: €0.50 for every first annual install above one million. For larger publishers, that created an open-ended cost and made it difficult to seriously consider an alternative store.

A 5% commission on covered digital sales is a far more workable model. It aligns Apple’s economics with commercial activity, rather than charging for reach, installs and experimentation. That gives publishers a clearer basis to assess whether alternative distribution can work for their business and it removes one of the biggest economic barriers to trying an alternative app store.

How alternative app stores work and who is in the market

The Digital Markets Act, an EU regulation designed to increase competition in the app market, came into force in November 2022. Apple and the other first designated gatekeepers had until March 2024 to comply, and that is when iPhone users in the EU could first download apps from outside the App Store. Japan followed on December 18th, 2025 and Brazil opened its market on June 18th, 2026.

Users download an alternative app store from the operator’s website. After that, it works much like Apple’s App Store: they browse and install apps inside it. For developers, the difference is in who does the distribution work. On Apple’s App Store, Apple does it; outside it, that work moves to the alternative store. Either way, every app still has to pass notarisation, which Apple describes as a baseline review that applies regardless of the distribution channel.

Two years in, the market is still small: alternative stores account for well under 1% of iOS app distribution. Each store has picked its own audience. Epic Games Store focuses on Epic's titles and partner games. AltStore PAL serves technical users with self-hosted apps such as emulators. Aptoide brought its Android catalogue to iOS, and Skich built game discovery around a swipe interface. Onside is a general-purpose store where games sit next to other categories. One operator has already left: MacPaw closed Setapp Mobile in February 2026, citing Apple’s still-evolving and complex business terms.

Why game studios should care

Alternative distribution offers game studios two levers that are worth testing alongside the App Store: a potentially cheaper route to user acquisition and a lower commission.

The first lever is user acquisition. Thanks to the DMA, studios can now convert cheaper web traffic into iOS installs through an alternative store, while still tracking attribution. Onside, for example, has built its own attribution platform, which sends conversion data to major ad networks.

That means studios can optimise their web campaigns for installs and in-app purchases. According to Onside’s internal data, acquiring a user for the store costs around €2. For select games that already perform well on the App Store, Onside will also fund and run user acquisition itself in exchange for a revenue share.

The second lever is the commission. Apple charges a 26% commission on App Store in-app purchases in the EU, while alternative app stores typically charge less. Onside charges developers 12% on paid apps, in-app purchases and subscriptions, and handles payments by card and Apple Pay. As a result, studios keep more of what players spend. Onside’s developer documentation explains how publishing and payments work on its store.

Together, these two levers can improve a game’s unit economics. For established titles, that could mean unlocking new channels and audiences. Meanwhile, they could help launch games that struggle on the App Store because acquiring users there might cost more than those users bring in.

The new question

Apple's new EU business terms still impose significant operational requirements, but this removes one of the most important economic barriers. We expect more publishers to start exploring alternative distribution in Europe as a result. It is a meaningful win for the DMA as it moves the market closer to a model where developers have a genuine commercial choice.

The new terms also raise a question: will lower fees be enough to move alternative stores past their sub-1% share of iOS app distribution? At Onside, we’re putting a lot of work into making that happen with our partners across the games industry, and we believe it can be done. The studios that try alternative distribution in the coming months will show how close we are.