MacPaw is shutting Setapp Mobile, its EU alternative app store, after Apple fee shifts

Subscription marketplace giving EU iPhone users dozens of curated apps for $9.99 a month outside the App Store.

MacPaw, the Ukraine-based developer behind the Setapp subscription bundle, launched Setapp Mobile in September 2024 as one of the first alternative app stores in the EU under the Digital Markets Act: dozens of apps across productivity, finance, video, photo and creativity for a $9.99 monthly subscription, available only to Apple IDs associated with EU member states.

Apple revised its EU fee structure to avoid further DMA noncompliance penalties, but instead of simplifying the fees it made them more complex — including a controversial Core Technology Fee charging €0.50 for each first annual install over 1 million in the past 12 months. TechCrunch notes one result of these constant changes is that developers cannot properly plan how to grow and monetise their business.

Setapp announced it will remove all applications from Setapp Mobile by the sunset date of February 16, 2026; apps on Setapp Desktop are unaffected. It said the commercial conditions were not viable within its current business model, while other EU alternative stores, including the Epic Games Store and AltStore, keep operating.

Apple's EU business terms kept evolving, so the store's unit economics could not be planned or defended.

The Core Technology Fee taxes exactly the growth an alternative store exists to create — first installs beyond 1 million.

Setapp's subscription bundle works on Desktop, where Apple's terms do not apply; on iOS the same model stopped being viable.

Two years in, the DMA opening had not produced enough scale to absorb Apple's fee regime.

A regulatory opening is not a business model: when the incumbent controls the fee schedule and keeps changing it, a third-party store's economics can fail before it scales.

As of the January 2026 announcement, Setapp Mobile's apps come down by February 16, 2026, while Setapp Desktop continues and MacPaw says it is looking forward to pursuing other innovations. Epic's store and the open-source AltStore remain the most notable alternative app stores still operating in the EU.