How global pricing works: tiers, stores and currencies

From App Store price tiers to vendor checkouts, a walkthrough of how a single subscription ends up with 18 different prices.

Two ways to buy the same subscription

Inside an app store (Apple App Store, Google Play). The developer chooses a price tier per storefront. The store handles tax, billing and currency.
On the vendor's website. The company sets its own regional price list, often with different tax handling.

The same plan can therefore have different prices depending on where you pay, even within one country. Subscription Price Monitor stores the platform for every price so you can compare like with like.

Why we compare in US dollars

To compare countries we convert every local price into US dollars using a recorded exchange rate. The original local price is always kept — conversion is only a lens. When rates move, the dollar figure changes even though the local price did not; our price-change tracker ignores those moves and only reports changes in the local price.

Monthly, yearly and weekly plans

Weekly and yearly plans are normalised to a monthly equivalent when we add services together (for example in the savings calculator). One-time purchases are never mixed with subscriptions.