Google will pay £260m to settle a UK class action over Play Store fees

Google has agreed to pay £260m to settle a class action brought on behalf of UK app developers, ending a case that was due to go to trial next month. The deal appeared on Thursday and is worth about $353m, Reuters reported.

Lawyers had previously valued the claim at just over £1bn. It sought compensation for developers who sold apps on the Play Store in the UK.

Barry Rodger, a competition law academic, brought the case as class representative. His lawyers alleged that Google abused its dominant position in two ways. It prevented developers from distributing apps by other routes, and it charged an unfair commission, usually 30%.

Google admits nothing

The settlement needs approval from London’s Competition Appeal Tribunal, which will consider it at a hearing in September. Google made no admission of liability or wrongdoing. The 19-page agreement states that the company “believes it has strong defences to Professor Rodger’s claim”.

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters. The company has not commented publicly on the deal since.

Bloomberg Law reported the underlying allegation in the claimant’s own words. Google, it said, imposed “excessive and unfair” commissions on transactions running through the Play Store.

Rodger called the outcome “a great outcome” for app developers. He had been due in court next month, and the settlement takes the trial off the calendar. “If approved, meaningful financial compensation will become available for businesses that could never have taken on a company like Google alone,” he said in a statement.

Where the money goes

The £260m splits in two. £160m goes to developers who sold an app on the Play Store between August 2018 and July 2026. The remaining £100m covers the costs of bringing and funding the lawsuit.

That means 38% of the settlement pays for the case rather than the claimants. Litigation funding is how these actions get built in the UK, because no individual developer could carry the cost alone, which is the point Rodger made in his statement.

Bloomberg Law reported that the claimant and his lawyers described it as the largest settlement to date under the UK regime. Alphabet’s figure converts to roughly $354m at Thursday’s rate. The Financial Times carried the same £260m number.

The settlement is about a quarter of the original claim. Rodger’s lawyers put the case at just over £1bn. Google has agreed to £260m of that, and to nothing else.

What a developer actually gets

Nobody knows yet. The £160m pot is fixed, but the number of developers claiming against it is not. A larger turnout means a smaller cheque each, and the tribunal has to approve the distribution before anything moves.

The eligibility window is wide. It runs from August 2018 to July 2026, which covers eight years of Play Store sales. Any UK business that sold an app in that period sits inside the class, whether or not it ever heard of the case.

That is the design of the UK regime. A class representative sues for everyone at once, and the people represented usually find out afterwards.

The fourth case of its kind

This is the fourth such action against a major tech company since the start of 2025, according to Reuters. Apple lost a UK lawsuit over App Store commissions in October last year. Qualcomm said in February that claimants would drop a case over smartphone chip royalties. Sony is still fighting a £2.7bn case over PlayStation Store prices.

The Competition Appeal Tribunal now prices app-economy grievances in Britain. Its regime allows a single class representative, in this case an academic, to sue on behalf of thousands of businesses that would never file individually. Litigation funders pay the bills and take their cut from the award.

The commission at the centre of the claim is the one every app economy argument turns on. Google takes up to 30% of transactions made through the Play Store. Developers have spent a decade calling that unfair, and regulators on three continents are now testing whether it is.

Google is fighting the same argument on several fronts. It lost its final appeal over the record 4.1bn euro EU Android fine in July. Rivals then began lining up for damages after Brussels issued its first Digital Markets Act penalty.

In the US, a judge told Google in August to stop making rival app stores hard to install. The Play Store has since started carrying competitors, and a Lisbon company called Aptoide walked in first.

What the UK regulator is doing separately

The settlement does not touch the commission itself. Google can keep charging what it charges, and the agreement says nothing about future rates. A payout closes the past. It does not reprice the next decade.

Britain’s competition regulator is working on that from another direction. In June it proposed letting developers steer users away from Apple and Google payment systems. That proposal, not this settlement, is what would change the 30%.

Nothing in the deal changes the rules for developers outside the UK. UK sales define the class, and the agreement binds Google only in this jurisdiction. European developers watching the number will have to look to Brussels, not London.

Two things follow. The tribunal decides in September whether to approve the deal, and only then does any money reach a developer. Every UK developer who sold an app on the Play Store between August 2018 and July 2026 is in the class, and the size of each payout depends on how many of them come forward.