Google Play Pricing Templates Are Gone. Here's What to Do Now

If you relied on Google Play pricing templates to manage in-app purchase prices across countries, you already know they're gone. Google removed pricing templates from the Play Console on October 27, 2025. No replacement feature. No migration tool. Just a notice and a deadline.

Your existing template prices were auto-applied to individual products, so nothing broke overnight. But the workflow you used to manage prices across multiple products and countries? That's gone. And if you're an indie developer with 5+ in-app purchases across 70+ countries, you now have a real problem.

I hit this wall myself. I manage 8 apps with dozens of in-app purchases. Pricing templates were how I kept everything consistent. When they disappeared, I had three options. Here's what I found.

What Google Actually Changed

On October 27, 2025, Google removed the ability to manage prices across products using pricing templates. Here's the official Google support page with the current pricing documentation.

What happened behind the scenes:

• All existing pricing templates were unlinked automatically
• Prices from your templates were applied to individual products
• The pricing templates section in Play Console now redirects to an empty page
• Going forward, all pricing changes must be made at the individual product level

This means if you had a template called "Premium Tier" that set prices for 70 countries across 10 products, those 700 price points are now 700 individual settings you need to manage one by one.

Google's reasoning was never publicly explained in detail. The Unity forum thread about the change has developers speculating it's related to upcoming billing policy changes in the EU and US. Whatever the reason, the result is the same: more manual work for developers.

Option 1: Manage Prices Manually in Play Console

The most straightforward option. Go to your app in Play Console, navigate to Monetize, and edit prices product by product.

For each in-app purchase or subscription:

1. Open the product in Play Console
2. Click "Set prices" or "Edit pricing"
3. Set a base price in your home currency
4. Google auto-generates local prices for all countries
5. Override individual country prices where needed
6. Save and publish

Google's auto-generated prices use exchange rates, not purchasing power. So a $9.99 product becomes roughly 850 INR in India, which is expensive relative to local income. That's why many developers override prices manually.

The problem with this approach: it doesn't scale. If you have 10 products, you need to do this 10 times. If exchange rates shift and you want to update prices, you're doing it all over again. For a solo developer, this can take an entire day.

I tried this for two weeks after templates were removed. With 8 apps, I gave up after updating three.

Option 2: Use the Play Developer API for Bulk Updates

Google still supports managing prices programmatically through the Google Play Developer API. Specifically, the monetization.onetimeproducts and monetization.subscriptions endpoints let you update prices in bulk.

Here's what's involved:

• Set up a Google Cloud project with the Play Developer API enabled
• Create a service account with appropriate permissions
• Write a script that reads your current prices, calculates new ones, and pushes updates via the API
• Handle rate limiting (Google enforces per-minute quotas)
• Test in a non-production track first

This is the "right" approach if you're comfortable writing code. But there's a catch: you still need to figure out what prices to set. The API lets you push numbers, but it doesn't tell you what $9.99 should be in Brazil or Turkey based on purchasing power.

Most developers who go this route end up building a spreadsheet with PPP ratios, exchange rates, and rounding rules. Then they feed that into their API script. It works, but it's a side project unto itself.

I know because I went down this path. My "quick script" turned into a 2,000-line codebase with rate limiting, retry logic, and a local database of price point mappings. That codebase eventually became PricePush.

Option 3: Use a Pricing Tool That Handles Both Stores

This is where tools built specifically for app pricing come in. Instead of building your own pipeline, you connect your store accounts and let the tool handle the calculation and push.

What to look for in a pricing tool:

• PPP-based calculations, not just exchange rate conversions. There's a big difference between "convert $9.99 to INR" and "what should a user in India pay based on local purchasing power?"
• Both App Store and Google Play support. If you're on both stores, managing them separately doubles the work.
• Actual price pushing, not just recommendations. Some tools give you a spreadsheet of suggested prices. You still have to enter them manually.
• Price tier mapping. Apple uses a fixed set of price tiers. Google allows custom prices. A good tool handles both systems.

Full disclosure: this is exactly what I built PricePush to do. It connects to both App Store Connect and Google Play, calculates PPP-based prices for 190+ countries, and pushes them in one tap. Pricing starts at $9/month with a free tier available.

But even if you don't use PricePush, the criteria above apply to any tool you evaluate. The key question is: does it actually push prices to the store, or does it just give you a spreadsheet?

Why Google's Auto-Pricing Falls Short

When you set a base price in Play Console, Google generates localized prices automatically. This sounds like it solves the problem. It doesn't.

Google's auto-pricing uses exchange rates. A $9.99 base price becomes:

• 855 INR in India (~$10.20 equivalent)
• 59.99 BRL in Brazil (~$10.50 equivalent)
• 339.99 TRY in Turkey (~$9.80 equivalent)

These prices are mathematically correct conversions. But they ignore purchasing power.

The average monthly income in India is around $200. In the US, it's around $5,600. Your $9.99 subscription is 0.18% of monthly income in the US, but 4.3% in India. That's a 24x difference in relative affordability.

Adapty’s 2026 subscription benchmarks suggest iOS monetizes far better than Android overall, while RevenueCat’s 2026 data also shows the App Store leading Google Play on conversion and early revenue per install. Pricing is not the only reason for that gap, but it is one of the few levers developers can actually control.

Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) pricing fixes this by adjusting prices based on what users in each country can actually afford. A PPP-adjusted price for India might be 299 INR (~$3.50) instead of 855 INR. Less per user, but dramatically more conversions.

What About Apple? Same Problem, Different Console

If you publish on both stores, the Google Play template removal is only half your problem. App Store Connect has its own complexity: a fixed price point ladder with 900 tiers, different reference currencies per storefront, and no bulk update feature in the UI.

The good news: Apple never had templates to begin with, so nothing changed there. The bad news: managing Apple prices manually has always been painful, and it's not getting better.

If you're updating Google Play prices anyway, this is a good time to review your App Store prices too. Having consistent PPP-based pricing across both stores means:

• Similar relative affordability in every country
• No weird price gaps between iOS and Android versions
• One pricing strategy instead of two

I wrote a detailed breakdown of how localized pricing works across both stores if you want the full picture.

What to Do Right Now

Here's my recommended action plan:

Today: Check your Google Play Console. Open Monetize and verify that your prices look correct after the template migration. Google says they preserved your prices, but verify.

This week: Decide which approach fits your situation:

• 1-3 products, one app? Manual updates are fine.
• 5+ products or multiple apps? You need automation, either via the API or a tool.
• Both stores? Use a tool that handles both to avoid maintaining two workflows.

This month: If you've been using flat exchange-rate pricing, run the numbers on PPP-adjusted prices for your top 10 markets. The difference between exchange-rate conversion and PPP pricing can be 30-60% in countries like India, Brazil, and Turkey.

If you want to see what PPP-based prices look like for your specific apps, try PricePush free. Connect your Google Play account, and you'll see calculated prices for all 190+ countries in about two minutes. No credit card required.

-- Antonio