Apple Opens iOS to Third-Party App Stores in Brazil But Keeps the Keys

Apple announced today that iPhone users in Brazil can install apps from third-party stores and pay for digital goods through alternative payment systems, making Brazil the first major market outside Europe to receive these changes. The new options arrive under a formal settlement with Brazil's competition regulator CADE and take effect immediately as part of iOS 26.5, Apple announced. Whether they produce meaningfully lower prices or genuine choice for Brazilian iPhone users is a different question.

Apple says developers selling digital goods in Brazil will pay the same or less than before. Competition economists who studied the structurally similar EU framework reached a different conclusion. The authorization requirements, notarization rules, and fee architecture Apple has built around these changes preserve a great deal of platform control by design.

How CADE forced Apple's hand

The settlement traces back to a 2022 antitrust complaint filed by e-commerce company Mercado Livre. CADE pursued the case under standard competition law, with no dedicated digital-platform statute required. After the regulator's Tribunal upheld an interim enforcement measure in May 2025, Apple entered negotiations the following July and signed a formal agreement on December 29, according to Truth on the Market, which analyzed the settlement four months ago. The obligations run three years from that date.

The case rested on CADE defining the relevant market as the distribution of apps on iOS devices specifically a single-brand market definition that gave regulators jurisdiction over App Store practices. CADE's own president, Gustavo Augusto, dissented from that definition, arguing it disregarded competition between iPhone and Android. The disagreement matters: it shows the legal theory is contestable, and any regulator weighing a similar action elsewhere will need to clear the same threshold.

The EU's Digital Markets Act required Apple to open iOS to third-party stores starting in early 2024, but that took years of purpose-built legislation. Brazil extracted a comparable result through a conventional antitrust case, as CEPR economists noted in their analysis of Apple's platform compliance approach. That's a more replicable model for jurisdictions that lack dedicated platform law and that's the part regulators elsewhere will be watching closely.

Apple third-party app stores Brazil: what actually changed

Three distribution and payment paths are now open to developers in Brazil that weren't before, per Apple's announcement:

• Distribute apps through an authorized alternative marketplace outside the App Store
• Add a competing payment processor directly inside an App Store app
• Link users out to a developer's website to complete a transaction

Developers can begin integrating these capabilities today. Every alternative marketplace must first receive Apple's authorization and satisfy ongoing requirements Apple defines. All apps distributed through those stores regardless of which store must also pass Apple's Notarization process, a baseline security and functionality review, Apple says.

One option that didn't survive negotiation: direct web-based app installation without going through any marketplace. The settlement does not require sideloading, Truth on the Market noted. Apple retained that boundary before agreeing to anything else.

The practical result is a system closer to the EU model than to Android's openness. New storefronts can exist, but Apple still controls who gets to open one and which apps can sit on the shelves.

The new fee structure, in plain terms

Apple restructured its commissions into three tiers depending on how a developer chooses to distribute and collect payment, according to Apple's announcement:

• App Store with Apple In-App Purchase: 21% base commission on digital goods and services, or 10% for members of the Small Business Program, Video Partner Program, Mini Apps Partner Program, and for subscriptions after the first year. Using Apple's payment system adds a 5% processing fee on top.
• App Store with external payments or web links: 15% Store Services Commission on transactions completed through a developer's linked website, reduced to 10% for qualifying smaller developers.
• Alternative marketplace distribution: 5% Core Technology Commission on digital goods sales.

The commission cuts are real and will benefit many smaller developers who were previously paying 30%. Apple claims developers selling digital goods in Brazil will pay the same or less under these terms, per its announcement.

The challenge to that framing comes from competition economists who studied Apple's EU compliance approach. CEPR researchers argued in early 2024 that because Apple's fees follow developers onto third-party stores, they impose new costs on any developer who moves, which undercuts the network effects rival stores need to attract users and grow. For large free-to-download apps that currently pay Apple nothing, moving to a third-party store would introduce the 5% commission where none existed before. That makes switching economically irrational for exactly the developers whose participation would make an alternative store viable in the first place.

What Brazilian iPhone users will and won't see

The most visible change for ordinary users involves the payment screen. When an app offers an alternative payment option, it must display that option alongside Apple's own system, Apple stated. Apple says the side-by-side presentation helps users understand who is processing their money it also keeps Apple's option permanently in view.

Staying with Apple's system keeps the familiar support layer intact: subscription management, refund requests, payment history, and fraud reporting all remain available. Users who pay through third-party processors or external websites lose access to those features, and Apple says it will have limited ability to assist with scams or payment disputes that arise outside its own system. Users may also need to share payment information with additional companies.

For users under 18, the restrictions are sharper. Apps cannot link out to external websites for transactions, and any app using alternative payment processing must include a parental gate before a purchase goes through. Kids-category apps are excluded from external payment links entirely. Apple is also building an API to let parents monitor and approve purchases made outside its own system, per Apple's announcement.

Three years to find out if it's real

The CADE obligations run until late 2028. What happens in that window will determine whether regulators in Latin America, Asia, and elsewhere treat the settlement as a template worth copying or a cautionary example of compliance without change.

The immediate test is whether any marketplace operators actually launch in Brazil. No authorized store, no practical difference. If stores do launch, the fee structure's real effect on developer behavior will become visible: do the economics of alternative distribution prove attractive enough to pull significant apps away from the App Store, or do most developers default to staying put?

CEPR economists argued that Apple's fee architecture, as applied in the EU context, was structured to block entry and stifle innovation in app stores rather than produce genuine competition. Whether CADE's oversight proves tight enough to generate a different outcome in Brazil is the question the next three years will answer.

Brazil forced Apple to open a door it had kept shut. Apple opened it and built the frame, the lock, and the welcome mat. Whether anyone walks through, and what happens to prices when they do, is what matters now.