App Store prices by country: a purchasing power parity guide

Short answer. Apple sets your price in the other 174 storefronts from your base price, exchange rates and taxes, and never adjusts auto-renewable subscriptions after that. Purchasing power parity pricing scales each storefront by what money buys there instead: a $9.99 subscription becomes about INR 198 in India rather than about INR 954. Use a dated reference such as the World Bank's private consumption PPP, snap each result to Apple's price points, plan for subscriber consent on increases, and revisit every quarter.

How does Apple set prices in other countries?

You choose a price in a base country, and App Store Connect generates prices for the other 174 storefronts and 43 currencies from that price, exchange rates and certain taxes, with each country's usual price endings.

For apps and one-time in-app purchases, Apple periodically updates those generated prices when taxes or exchange rates change, and tells you in advance. It never changes your base country's price, and it stops adjusting any storefront you price yourself (App Store Connect Help: Set a price).

Auto-renewable subscriptions work differently. When you create one, App Store Connect suggests comparable prices for all 175 storefronts. After that, Apple's tax and exchange-rate updates exclude subscriptions: a currency that loses a third of its value against the dollar leaves your subscription's local price exactly where it was (Manage pricing for auto-renewable subscriptions).

Within each currency there are up to 800 price points for apps and in-app purchases, plus 100 higher ones on request, and 800 per currency for subscriptions. Every price you set has to be one of them, which is why any calculation ends with a snap to the nearest available point.

Why is the exchange rate the wrong yardstick?

An exchange rate says what a dollar trades for, not what it buys. The same $9.99 is a small purchase in Zurich and a large one in Jakarta, so exchange-rate prices are expensive where incomes are low and cheap where they are high.

RevenueCat's State of Subscription Apps 2026, which covers more than 115,000 apps, shows how far apart regions sit even after developers have already discounted:

• Median download to paid by day 35: 2.8% in North America, 0.7% in India and Southeast Asia.
• Median trial to paid: 34.2% in North America, 15.2% in India and Southeast Asia.
• Prices in India and Southeast Asia already run at 46 to 54% of the top markets.

These are market-wide medians, not the effect of any one price change, so read them as the size of the gap, not as a promise. Source: RevenueCat, State of Subscription Apps 2026.

What is purchasing power parity pricing?

Purchasing power parity (PPP) pricing sets each storefront's price in proportion to its price level: what a basket of goods costs there relative to the United States. A country where the basket costs a fifth as much gets roughly a fifth of your US price.

The price level ratio is the PPP conversion factor (local currency per international dollar) divided by the market exchange rate (local currency per US dollar). The United States is 1 by definition. In the World Bank's private consumption series, India sits at about 0.21, Brazil at 0.50 and Switzerland at 1.31.

The arithmetic for one storefront is short:

1. Multiply your US price by the storefront's ratio: $9.99 × 0.208 = $2.07 for India.
2. Convert at the exchange rate: $2.07 × 95.52 = about INR 198.
3. Snap to the nearest price point Apple offers your product in INR, for example INR 199.

Parity cuts both ways. Storefronts with higher price levels than the United States, such as Switzerland and Norway, come out above the exchange-rate price.

Which purchasing power reference should you use?

For most apps, the World Bank's private consumption PPP: it measures what households actually pay, covers 169 of 175 storefronts with observed values, and is free to use under CC BY 4.0. The other references suit narrower cases.

• Income parity (World Bank private consumption PPP): the default. It describes household spending, which is what a consumer subscription competes with.
• Subscription parity (a leading streaming service's prices): useful for consumer subscriptions, because it reflects what people already pay each month for a digital subscription there.
• Big Mac parity (The Economist): a famous, easy-to-explain everyday price, but observed in only 76 storefronts, so most values are estimates.
• Economy parity (GDP per capita PPP, square-rooted and clamped between 0.1 and 1.6): a softer, income-based curve that never scales prices one to one with income.

Whichever you choose, keep the date. PPP series are revised as new International Comparison Program rounds are published, and a price set from a three-year-old exchange rate is already off.

A worked example: $9.99 a month in 12 storefronts

At Income parity, a $9.99 monthly subscription comes down sharply across South and Southeast Asia, Africa and much of Latin America, less in Japan and Mexico, and goes up in Switzerland.

Three things to notice:

• The biggest cuts land where exchange-rate prices are furthest from local incomes, the same regions where RevenueCat's medians show the lowest conversion.
• Rich storefronts move up. If you'd rather not raise any price, keep the increases out of the change or cap them at the current price.
• Every figure here is approximate: before tax, and before the snap to your product's own price points. The calculator shows all 175 storefronts for any price.

How do you change App Store prices by country?

Either edit each storefront in App Store Connect, write the changes through the App Store Connect API, or use a tool that does the API calls for you after a review. For subscriptions, each storefront can hold one future price change per plan type at a time.

By hand in App Store Connect

1. Open the product, then its price schedule (Subscription Prices for a subscription).
2. Add a price change, choose the storefronts, and pick a price point for each from Apple's list.
3. Choose a start date, and for subscription increases, whether existing subscribers keep their current price.

It works, but 175 storefronts means 175 choices per product, and a second scheduled change for the same subscription storefront replaces the first (Apple).

With the App Store Connect API

• Subscriptions: POST /v1/subscriptionPrices, one request per storefront, with a startDate, preserveCurrentPrice and the price point (reference).
• Apps: POST /v1/appPriceSchedules with a base territory and manual prices (reference).
• In-app purchases: POST /v1/inAppPurchasePriceSchedules, which now requires a base territory (reference).

Writing your own script means handling the price point lookup per storefront, the rate limit of your key, retries that must not duplicate a change, and reading the schedule back to confirm what Apple accepted.

With StoreParity

StoreParity, a Mac app made by the author of this guide, does those API calls from your Mac with your own key: pick a reference, read why each storefront's price is what it is, review the exact change, then Schedule N changes and watch each storefront reach verified. The key stays in your Keychain, and there's no server. See how it works.

What happens to existing subscribers?

Decreases reach existing subscribers automatically. For increases you choose: keep their current price, or move them to the new one, in which case Apple asks some of them for consent first.

Apple requires consent when any of these is true (thresholds by storefront):

• The subscriber's country or region requires consent for any price change. Austria, Germany, Poland and the Republic of Korea always do.
• The increase is more than 50% and more than about US$5 per period, or US$50 per year for annual plans, with equivalent thresholds in each currency.
• The subscriber already had a price increase on that subscription in the past 12 months.

Otherwise Apple notifies subscribers by email and push notification before the renewal. Subscribers who are asked and don't agree expire at the end of their period. And an increase can't be reversed once it has taken effect, only followed by another change.

When does a new price take effect?

At the start of the chosen day in each storefront's own time zone, so the same date starts at different UTC times around the world. If that moment has already passed somewhere, the change applies there immediately and can take up to 24 hours to show for everyone.

Apple publishes the start time per storefront (start times by country or region). For subscriptions, the earliest date you can pick is usually one to two days out for that reason.

How often should you revisit prices?

Once a quarter is a sensible rhythm, and whenever a currency moves sharply, a new PPP release comes out, or you add a product.

• Exchange rates. Subscriptions are never adjusted for them, so a currency that weakens quietly cuts what each local subscriber pays you in dollars.
• New data. PPP and price series are revised; keep the release date beside every price you set.
• Your own numbers. Compare conversion by storefront in App Store Connect or your subscription analytics before and after a change, one region at a time.
• The 12-month rule. A second increase within a year needs every affected subscriber's consent, so batch increases rather than nudging prices up often.

Questions

Sources

• Apple, App Store Connect Help: Set a price, Manage pricing for auto-renewable subscriptions, Auto-renewable subscription price increase thresholds, Pricing and availability start times. Read 12 October 2026.
• Apple Developer News, 27 August 2026 and 29 January 2026 tax and price updates.
• World Bank, International Comparison Program: PA.NUS.PRVT.PP, CC BY 4.0. The Economist, Big Mac index, CC BY 4.0. tompec/netflix-prices by thomas.io, CC BY 4.0. Exchange rates from Frankfurter, 14 September 2026.
• RevenueCat, State of Subscription Apps 2026.