Purchasing power parity pricing for iOS apps

The idea

A dollar buys more in some countries than in others. PPP pricing adjusts your price so that the local cost, relative to local incomes and local prices for comparable things, stays roughly constant. In practice that means a ladder of discounts — and occasionally premiums — by country. The Big Mac index is the classic illustration: the same burger costs very different amounts in US dollars around the world.

What is different on the App Store

• You cannot geo-price by IP or ask for a coupon. The price is the storefront's price, set in App Store Connect, and the storefront is determined by the customer's Apple Account country.
• Prices are quantised to price points, so '63 % of the US price' becomes the nearest allowed local value.
• Apple already equalizes for exchange rate and tax. PPP is a layer on top of that: a percentage per region applied before snapping.
• Because the storefront follows the account country, the classic web worry — VPN users buying at the cheapest price — is much smaller. Switching Apple Account countries is deliberately cumbersome.

When it helps

PPP pricing tends to pay off for products with low marginal cost and broad appeal — utilities, education, productivity, casual games — where the alternative to a cheaper local price is not a full-price sale but no sale. It also helps subscriptions retain in markets where the US price is a meaningful monthly expense.

When it hurts

• Products whose buyers are mostly businesses or high earners regardless of country. A professional tool priced for the median income of a country may simply leave money on the table.
• Products with real per-user cost (AI inference, hosted storage). A 30 % price can be below cost; cap the ladder at a floor you can support.
• Thin markets where you have no users anyway. A discount there changes nothing; start with the regions where you already have downloads but weak conversion.

A simple way to run it

1. Group the 175 storefronts into four or five tiers and pick a percentage for each. Start from a public ladder — Big Mac, Netflix, Spotify — rather than a blank sheet.
2. Apply the same ladder to the app, its in-app purchases and its subscriptions so relative prices stay consistent.
3. Let prices snap to Apple's price points; do not fight the rounding.
4. Measure by tier, not by country: conversion and revenue per download before and after. Adjust the tier's percentage, not individual storefronts, unless you know a market well.
5. Revisit twice a year. Exchange rates drift, Apple updates its price-point tables, and your own mix of users changes.

This is precisely the workflow RepriceCat is built around: tiers with presets, one base price, a per-storefront review with snapped prices, one confirmation, and an exportable record so you can compare before and after. Start for free and reprice your first app in an afternoon.