App Store prices by country: why the same app costs more or less

A paid app on Apple’s App Store is listed at a separate price in each regional storefront, in that storefront’s currency. Converted to one currency, the gaps can be large: at reference rates on 1 November 2026, Procreate’s dearest storefront of the 44 this site checks cost about 1.8 times its cheapest. But the storefront you can buy from is tied to your Apple Account’s country or region, so for most people the comparison explains prices rather than offering a cheaper checkout.

Two apps, 44 storefronts

This site follows two paid apps by their exact App Store IDs: Procreate for iPad and Things 3 for iPhone. Each storefront’s quote is read from Apple’s regional price information and stored with its check date. The live range for each app is below; quotes older than two days are flagged in the full tables.

Procreate for iPad

Things 3 for iPhone

Patterns in the listings

Looking at the local-currency quotes recorded on 1 November 2026, a few patterns stand out:

• Every euro storefront in the set lists the same price. Procreate is EUR 14.99 and Things 3 is EUR 9.99 in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Ireland, Portugal, Finland and Greece.
• Round local numbers repeat across currencies. Things 3 lists at 9.99 in US dollars, euros and pounds, which are three different amounts of money.
• Some storefronts use prices that are round in their own terms: Procreate is CHF 10 in Switzerland, JPY 1,800 in Japan and INR 999 in India.

Because the local numbers stay put while exchange rates move, the order of the converted table can change from week to week without anyone changing a price. Read the converted values as a snapshot at the dated reference rate, not as a fixed ranking; the guide to reference and card rates explains what those rates are and are not.

The tax basis is unknown

A store quote does not tell you whether tax is included. Storefronts differ, and the final amount can depend on your account and billing details. This site therefore marks every app quote as having an unverified tax basis and leaves it out of any refund or import calculation. If you want to see how much a price would change with or without a given rate, the VAT calculator runs both directions, but it cannot tell you which one the store applied.

Why you usually cannot shop the cheapest storefront

Purchases are made in the storefront of your Apple Account’s country or region. Apple’s support article on changing it sets out what has to happen first: spend any remaining account balance, cancel subscriptions that block the change and wait for them to end, let pending pre-orders, rentals and refunds finish, and possibly enter a valid payment method for the new country or region. Family Sharing membership can also prevent the change, and some past purchases may not be available in the new region. A regional quote therefore does not mean you are eligible to buy there.

There are legitimate reasons to care about another region’s price: you are moving and will change your account region anyway, you are comparing how a developer prices in different markets, or you are checking what a colleague abroad will pay.

How app prices differ from hardware prices

Most of this site deals with physical goods you might buy on a trip, where the questions are the tax inside the price, a tourist refund and import tax on the way home. None of those apply to a digital license. There is nothing to export and no allowance to use. The iPad, iPhone and Mac versions of an app may also be separate purchases, so check which one a listing covers. The full tables, with app version and minimum OS for each region, are on the Procreate and Things 3 price pages, and the per-app breakdowns are in Procreate prices by country and Things 3 prices by country.

To see what a listed price means on your own card statement, use the currency and card-fee check, which adds your card’s foreign transaction fee to the reference conversion.