Apple's Taiwan App Store Fee Falls to 26% While Outside Payment Links Stay Banned and the FTC Probe Is Only Suspended

Apple cut its standard App Store commission in Taiwan from 30% to 26% on October 31, 2026, and Taiwan's Fair Trade Commission accepted the commitment a day earlier and suspended its investigation rather than closing it. Apps there still cannot steer buyers to another way to pay.

Apple's developer notice is dated October 29 and says the change follows discussions with the Taiwan Fair Trade Commission. It covers the Taiwan storefront on iOS and iPadOS only. Focus Taiwan, the English service of the Central News Agency, reported the commission's side on October 30.

What changed on October 31

The new rate applies to Apple In-App Purchase and paid app transactions on the Taiwan storefront. Developers do not have to sign the revised Apple Developer Program License Agreement by October 31 to receive it, Apple's notice says.

Here is the arithmetic for a developer selling at NT$100. At 30%, the developer kept NT$70 before other costs. At 26%, the developer keeps NT$74. That is the Focus Taiwan example, and the reporters flagged the NT$74 figure as their own calculation.

The cut does not reach everyone. PPC Land's analysis of Apple's contract terms says developers in the Small Business Program stay at 15%, as do subscriptions after the first year, so only sales that paid 30% get cheaper. PPC Land puts the gain at about 5.7% more proceeds per transaction for those sales.

Where 26% sits against other storefronts

The commission chose 26% by benchmarking, Focus Taiwan reported, and the figure matches Japan and Brazil. PPC Land adds a caveat: those two markets charge 21% plus a 5% fee, and they allow alternative payments, outside links and alternative marketplaces. Taiwan has none of those routes, according to PPC Land, and App Review Guideline 3.1.3 still bars steering to other purchase methods outside the US storefront.

1. Default storefronts and Taiwan before October 3130 %
2. Taiwan from October 3126 %
3. EU from October 126 %
4. China mainland from March 1525 %

Source: PPC Land table of Apple's Schedule 2 terms, accessed 2026-11-08

The EU row is the closest comparison, since PPC Land lists the same 26% there from October 1. The difference is that EU developers can offer alternative payments and Taiwanese developers cannot.

Suspended, not closed

The commission made no finding of a violation. It accepted a commitment Apple proposed under Article 28 of the Fair Trade Act, which lets an investigation be suspended in exchange for commitments, Focus Taiwan wrote. The investigation had examined whether Apple's restrictions on developers, tied to what Taiwan calls the "Apple tax", breached the Act.

The commission can resume the case in three situations, according to both Focus Taiwan and PPC Land: Apple fails to perform, the facts underlying the decision change materially, or the decision relied on incomplete or inaccurate information. It will also review other possibly anti-competitive Apple practices case by case.

Neither outlet reports when the investigation opened, how long the monitoring period runs or how often Apple must report. Apple's notice says translations of the revised agreement will be posted within one month of October 29, so the Traditional Chinese contract text is due by late November. Contract terms also decide what ships in the Siri AI preview that excludes TestFlight, and a licence change is the story in Asahi Linux 7.3 on Apple silicon. Taiwanese developers can compare it against the two-sentence English amendment PPC Land describes, which covers only paid applications on iOS and iPadOS.