The ultimate guide to price localization

Before you enter an airport, a bottle of water might cost $4. But once you walk through those scanners and shamefully get told off for the pair of nail scissors you forgot to remove, the same bottle of water will suddenly cost $12 and your first-born child. What gives? This, in its simplest form, is price localization (and capitalism) but I don’t have the energy to go into that today. Instead, we’re going to settle for discussing price localization for apps, a much more fairer approach you would expect.

Now price localization seems simple enough. Apple and Google automatically localize pricing for you—amazing, right? Just let them do the heavy lifting while you sit back and relax. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is, and nowhere is that more true than with pricing. There are plenty of seemingly simple solutions:

1. Trust Apple and Google
2. Use the Netflix index (or the Big Mac Index or Spotify Index)
3. Base it on competitor prices
4. Base it on costs

I’ve already explained why options three and four don’t tend to work when determining your overall price. But what about the first two? And if pricing isn’t easy, is it even worth the effort?

Well, that is an easy answer: yes, it is so worth the effort. I’m not saying it makes sense for apps to localize, but every global app should take the time to consider if it’s worth improving price localization. 

This is such a major opportunity for you to maximize your revenue and get more out of your app without having to build a single additional feature. Does it sound too good to be true? Well, just this once, it’s that good and that true.

And if you need more convincing, consider this: certain markets are seeing substantial growth right now. According to data.ai’s insights on global app spend, Brazil was up 31%, Mexico 26%, and South Korea 21% in non-gaming app spend. There’s a huge opportunity to grow in these secondary markets.

We’ve put together a complete guide to help you navigate this. It’s a big topic, so I’ve called in the big guns. First up: Jacob Rushfinn, author of retention.blog and founder of Rushfinn Consulting. His excellent webinar on the subject, co-hosted with David Barnard, inspired much of this content, along with insights from his blog. 

We’ll start with the big question: Should you localize your prices? Then we’ll look at why traditional pricing methodologies often fall short when it comes to localization. From there, we’ll walk through how to localize your pricing, covering approaches for both larger companies and startups. Finally, we’ll explore some alternatives to localization and a few edge cases worth considering.

To localize or not?

I believe it was William Shakespeare who once wrote: “To localize or not to localize, that is the question.” I basically just told you that localizing is better than an Aperol Spritz on the first day of summer, so why am I now slamming on the brakes?

As powerful as localized pricing can be, it’s not the right move for every app. Here are a few key factors to consider:

1. Do you have international traction?

Let’s get the obvious out of the way: do you have international users? If you’re reading about price localization, I’ll assume you have some or are considering expanding. There is time and effort needed to localize so you need to ensure it’s worth the effort. People are quick to focus on expanding their audience to new markets versus getting the most out of their existing. 

If it is the right time to focus on those secondary markets, and you have some initial traction, the next question to ask is: are you converting in those regions? Are you retaining in those markets?

You may find your conversion rates are lower internationally. That’s okay, but it’s important to have at least some indication of product-market fit, even if you haven’t yet achieved pricing-market fit.

2. Are you a mass-market app?

For high-end or premium apps, audiences tend to be less price sensitive. In fact, lowering prices in certain regions could even harm your brand perception. Mass-market apps, on the other hand, often benefit more from significant price adjustments across markets. So your positioning impacts whether it makes sense to localize.

3. Are there signals of a price mismatch?

Jacob Rushfinn shares a smart method in his webinar for identifying pricing mismatches and opportunities for growth through localization:

“[Look at] how many free users are coming in. If your conversion rate in India is five times lower than in Canada, Australia, or US, well, there’s some mismatch, right?

I think that can be an easy signal… If it’s the same as your best converting market, it’s unlikely you’re going to get a meaningfully higher conversion rate by lowering prices.”

A good starting point is to look at your top 10–20 markets by downloads. Compare download-to-purchase conversion rates and ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) across both Android and iOS.

Keep in mind again: lower conversion might not always be a pricing issue. It could also mean you don’t yet have product-market fit in that region. To dig deeper, check engagement and retention rates—if they’re healthy, but conversions are low, pricing could be the culprit.

4. Can you afford the implementation overhead?

Localized pricing does come with some operational complexity. The biggest lift is upfront: researching, defining your pricing logic, and implementing it. If you’re supporting web-to-app flows, you’ll also need to manage payments and tax obligations across different markets, which can add another layer of complexity. People always see focusing on a new international market as a ‘quick hack’ and then are disappointed that it took more time and effort than they expected.

Traditional methods are letting you down

Let’s start with the default approach: letting Apple and Google handle localized pricing for you. At first glance, automatic localization sounds amazing; they do the heavy lifting, right?

But once you dig into how they set prices, the cracks start to show.

Here’s how Google explains their pricing methodology:

“We use the price that you enter as the base for calculating market-specific prices. We’ll convert your price to the local currency, add tax in selected countries, and apply locally relevant pricing patterns and valid exchange rates for the date on which you set the price for your app. You can manually refresh the price to ensure that the local price reflects the latest exchange rate.” – Source: Google Support

Apple takes a similar approach. Their suggested price points aren’t based on local spending power or perceived value, but are influenced by factors like taxes, exchange rates, and other market mechanics. For example, since taxes vary from country to country, the app stores adjust pricing to account for that. 

Jacob gives a great example of the flaw in this logic in a podcast episode for Business of Apps, where he talks about Duolingo. Duolingo charges more in Spain and France than in the U.S. Why? Because users in those countries get more value from the app. In the U.S., people often use Duolingo casually, to pick up a second language for travel. In Spain and France, it’s frequently used to improve English, which has a higher perceived value due to its importance in professional and academic contexts. The same terrifying green owl, but for a different price and a different level of dependency.

So while these automatic adjustments might look good on paper—they aim to normalize take-home revenue per subscriber—they ignore a crucial factor: value to the customer. If your pricing is too high for a specific region, you’ll likely see lower retention and a drop in overall lifetime value.

Jacob dives into this in the webinar, noting that these default price points often aren’t optimal for conversion either. That means fewer subscribers, and ultimately, missed opportunities. A system that’s focused entirely on business mechanics, with no regard for customer value, was never going to succeed long-term.

And yet, during the webinar, a poll showed that around 40% of brands still rely on this ‘set it and forget it’ approach. But how far off are these defaults, really? Surely Apple and Google, with all the data they have, can’t be that wrong…right?

Well, this is where Jacob’s data gets really interesting. He analyzed pricing across 10 apps, per country, focusing on apps with decent volume that appear optimized for localized pricing.

Now, keep in mind these are general rules of thumb, especially if you don’t have much data to start with. Your category and audience matter—a lot. Some audiences are more price elastic than others. That said, when Jacob compared actual price points to Apple’s standard recommended pricing, the differences weren’t subtle; they were dramatic:

A few honorary mentions: India. Apple recommends pricing about 21% lower than the U.S., but most apps actually go 50–80% lower. That’s no small difference. For the UK, Apple suggests a 26% price increase (thanks a lot, Apple), while Jacob found most apps actually price about 10% lower.

Hopefully, by now, you’re convinced that the default is… defaulty bad. So what about indexes? Well, in Jacob’s experience, those don’t hold up too well either.

The three indexes

There are three major indexes often used for pricing: Netflix, the Big Mac Index, and Spotify. Let’s start with the odd one out—the non-subscription product: a Big Mac. Warning: the author cannot be held accountable for your inexplicable craving for a burger by the end of this section.

The Big Mac Index started out somewhat as a joke. And while I’m not a Big Mac fan (sorry, McDonald’s lovers), it’s been a useful tool for brands in general. That said, it doesn’t translate well to digital products. The costs involved are totally different, and regional variation in ingredient prices, like the cost of beef, heavily impacts a Big Mac’s price. As far as we know, there’s no meaningful correlation between the price of beef and the price of an app.

Next up: Netflix. Probably the most famous example, but their pricing isn’t purely based on purchasing power. Anyone who’s experienced the mild panic of seeing their favorite show disappear while on holiday will understand why. (I’m literally writing this on a plane, terrified the season finale of my current show won’t be available in Crete.) Because content availability varies by country due to licensing restrictions, Netflix adjusts pricing based on the value they’re actually able to deliver in each region, and that’s fair enough.

That leaves one last hope: Spotify. At first glance, they seem like the best of the three, since their music library is available globally. But as Jacob fairly points out, Spotify is heavily focused on monthly subscriptions. They can get away with this because their retention is extremely strong, and they optimize around monthly pricing. This makes them less useful as a pricing benchmark for apps that rely on weekly or annual subscriptions, where pricing structures are quite different. Alas.

Now that leaves us with competitor and cost-based pricing as the last of the “quick fix” options. Again I’ve been pretty vocal about my issues with these. Competitor-based pricing assumes your competitors know what they’re doing (spoiler: they might not), and what they offer is often very different from your product anyway. As for cost-based pricing—well, your customers don’t care about your costs. They care about the value you deliver. I’ll stop myself there before I go into a complete rant, as I think you get the gist.

For overall pricing strategy, I generally recommend pricing research. However, I’ll admit that localization presents a challenge here. In many markets, your audience may be too small to conduct effective research, and doing individual studies for 10–20 countries is a heavy lift.

So for this use case I will hold up my hands and admit competitor pricing will help guide you in the right direction, but it’s not enough to define your pricing strategy on its own.

Let’s take a look at a better approach.

Optimising your localized prices

We’ve learned a lot from AI in the last year, including an inherent fear of em dashes and its skillset as a therapist. We also discovered that if you put garbage in, you’ll get garbage out. The same principle applies to pricing apps: if your initial price isn’t right or you look at the wrong competitor,s you’ll just create what are essentially more ‘bad’ prices.

The starting point is having confidence in your initial pricing and making sure you’re working from the right foundation to build everything else on. That’s not to say your prices will perfectly match each market from the start, but stronger initial inputs mean better outcomes down the line. This is especially important if you’re a smaller company without enough users to run meaningful A/B tests in each market.

1. Optimize your biggest market’s price first

Start by deeply understanding price elasticity in your main market and optimizing there before moving on to localization. For this, Jacob strongly recommends big swing tests. Don’t test $39 versus $43—go bold and try something like $39 versus $69.

Now I’m very on board with this for multiple reasons:

1. Pricing tests take a long time: You need to evaluate long-term monetization, not just short-term revenue bumps. It usually takes 3–6 months to understand the full impact on retention and LTV.
2. You can’t endlessly test different price points: Constantly changing your price creates confusion and can damage your brand. Don’t pingpong your pricing, ensure each test should be deliberate.
3. It reduces the risk of a non-significant result: There’s nothing worse than running a lengthy A/B test and ending up with no significant difference. Honestly, I’d rather see a drop in performance, as it at least gives you a clear signal. Often, no result means there wasn’t enough data to make the test worthwhile in the first place.

I won’t get too deep into the statistics (we’ve got enough math already), but do make sure you calculate the Minimum Detectable Effect before running a pricing A/B test.

However, the reality is you may benefit from localized prices but not have enough users to properly A/B test different price points. In this case, I would politely ask you (read: beg) to please at least invest some time into pricing research for that initial market. Yes, it takes effort and no, it’s not perfect—but the quality of your initial price will shape every localized decision you make. Garbage in, garbage out.

2. Creating your own pricing index

Once you’ve nailed down your base market pricing, the next step is to build your own pricing index using around ten relevant apps as benchmarks. Be thoughtful about which apps you include. Here’s what to look for:

1. Apps with proven global success
2. Apps that use a similar business model (e.g., if you focus on annual subscriptions, choose others that prioritize annual plans)
3. Apps within or adjacent to your category, since pricing dynamics vary by category
4. App with a similar target audience

I also highly recommend checking out the State of Subscription Apps 2025 Report. It includes multiple graphs that break down regional and category specific pricing. Keep in mind the data is at a regional level rather than per country, so it’s a great starting point, but not the whole picture.

To go deeper, you can create a relative pricing table like the one Jacob showcased. According to Jacob, the most accurate method for checking prices across markets is to use a VPN to access local app stores directly. This ensures you’re seeing current rates rather than relying on price-spying tools, which may not always be up to date. Jacob has also reviewed many major apps and markets on his blog, which can save you time depending on your category.

While it might be tempting to only look at big global competitors, make an effort to include local competitors too, even if that means your index looks a bit messier. Local apps may not have the same level of data as Netflix or Spotify, but they’re often much closer to the ground when it comes to understanding local spending power and willingness to pay in your space.

This might mean reviewing a few more apps per market, but the additional insight will be well worth it, especially if you’re planning to expand into multiple countries.

App	Your Main Market	Market 2	Market 3	Market 4
App 1	$79	11% cheaper	X	X
App 2	$89	5% cheaper	Same price	72% cheaper
App 3	$62	X	12% more expensive	64% cheaper
…	…	…	…	…
Average	$84.32	6.80% cheaper	11.33% more expensive	54 % cheaper

Comparison table per app. 

Feel free to also use Jacob’s guidance as another reference point:

I would also advise having up to three tables: iOS, Android, and Web-to-app, as each will have its own prices. I would also recommend creating a secondary table for the local competitors, where you have an overview of the subscription options they offer. 

App	Your Main Market	Market 2	Market 3	Market 4
App 1	Monthly, Annual	Monthly, Annual	X	X
App 2	Annual	Annual	Annual	Weekly, Annua
App 3	Annual, Lifetime	X	Annual, Lifetime	Annual
…	…	…	…	…

You may notice that for certain markets apps offer different options to reflect the purchasing power and behaviour there. I found this in my weekly subscriptions analysis too, in certain regions of the world weekly subscriptions may be more popular than in others.

You may need to adjust your offering based on your findings. For example, Jacob noticed that Impulse, the brain training app, generally offers weekly, annual, and lifetime subscriptions, but in Brazil, they’ve removed annual. With lower purchasing power, you may want cheaper options. For example, weekly subscriptions can provide almost a trial experience (if weekly is popular in your category and right for your brand).

3. Consider your costs 

I work with both apps and e-commerce brands, and one of the things I love most about apps is that, generally speaking, the costs are much lower. This is a huge advantage as it means you can often offer a lower price in a specific market and still maintain a healthy profit margin.

Before you run off to start any old app, I have to issue a slight disclaimer—talk about a spoilsport, right? Of course, this doesn’t apply to every app, which is why it’s important to take a closer look at your cost structure to understand how much flexibility you actually have. Don’t just consider your app development and platform fees—also factor in local taxes and, crucially, marketing costs in each market.

A great example of this comes from Flo, the period tracking app. They ran pricing experiments in Brazil, lowering their prices significantly. As co-founder Dmitri shared on the Sub Club podcast, Brazil eventually became their third-largest market. Despite the lower prices, it was still highly profitable, partly because ad inventory in Brazil was also much cheaper for them at the time.

This kind of context is key. Even if you’re charging less, your lower operating and acquisition costs in that market might still make it a worthwhile — and profitable — move.

4. Consider value for the market

As we’ve seen with companies like Netflix and Duolingo, perceived value plays a big role in pricing, and the same applies to your app. Will users in every market you’re targeting get the same value from your product? If not, you may need to adjust your pricing up or down to reflect that.

If you’re unsure, the Van Westendorp Pricing Model is a great tool to help determine what price makes sense for each market. It works by asking your target audience four key questions to identify a range of acceptable price points:

1. At what price would you consider the product so cheap that you’d question its quality?
2. At what price would you consider the product a bargain — a great buy for the money?
3. At what price would you consider the product starting to get expensive, but still worth it?
4. At what price would you consider the product too expensive to consider?

This gives you a clearer picture of what your users are actually willing to pay and helps ensure your prices align with perceived value, market by market.

5. Experiment with adjusting the price

From there, you’ll want to run tests on setting and adjusting the price in your new markets (assuming you have a large enough sample size). This can be incredibly impactful: Flo has focused a lot on optimizing their prices recently. The result? In the past year, they saw 45% overall growth, which came from 35% in English-speaking markets, and 80% in non-English-speaking markets.

We’re not going to dive deep into the technical setup of these tests here, but Jacob shares a few important considerations to keep in mind:

1. Be mindful of Apple’s pricing rules. If your price increase exceeds their set thresholds, existing users will need to opt in again, which can lead to higher churn during tests.
2. Don’t stress too much about user backlash. Most users don’t notice pricing tests as much as you might think. If you’re getting internal resistance, start with a low-risk country to prove the waters are calm before expanding tests to larger markets.
3. What about legacy prices? Jacob recommends keeping them in place for simplicity. In many cases, moving users to a new price point can trigger more churn than it’s worth. If you do decide to migrate users, and it’s a significant price change, invest time in clear, thoughtful communication to ease the transition.

When it comes to measuring the success of pricing experiments, take the long view. Make sure you’re evaluating the lifetime value (LTV) impact of changes, not just conversion to paid. You’ll also want to track active, churned, and refunded subscribers. Tools like RevenueCat Experiments can help make this possible.

Start experimenting with localized prices

There you have it: the ultimate guide to price localization. A huge thanks to Jacob Rushfinn for his incredible webinar that inspired this article in the first place. If you’re ready to start optimizing your prices by market (whether you’re just starting to expand or improving your current setup), here’s your checklist:

• Identify your top potential international market
• If you have the data, check where the conversion rate is lagging compared to your main market
• Ensure your main market’s price is optimized, as it’ll serve as your benchmark
• Research both international and local competitors to see how they’re pricing in those markets
• Explore package options per market to see if adjustments are needed (e.g., adding a weekly or monthly option for lower purchasing-power regions)
• Review costs per market, including marketing, to understand how much flexibility you have
• Assess perceived value in each market, and if needed, conduct pricing research to validate assumptions
• Test adjusting your prices and review the long-term impact, not just the immediate conversion lifts

Price is such an impactful growth lever that it shouldn’t be underestimated. While it takes some upfront work to get it right, the payoff in scaling your app internationally can be significant, especially as certain markets continue to grow rapidly.

Now, when you get charged those $12 for a bottle of water in the airport, you’ll at least know this technique works in apps too!