I checked 57 Shipaton winners' prices. Only 6 adjusted them for local wallets.

On October 20, RevenueCat announced the Shipaton 2026 winners: 3,985 projects submitted, 58 winning places, and $740,000 in cash for 57 winning apps. Since then I've been covering every category on my social accounts, one post per award. (If you want the bigger picture of the event, I also wrote Shipaton 2026 by the numbers.)

I build a pricing tool, so I did one more thing: I checked what every winner charges in 8 countries. The US, the UK, Germany, Brazil, India, Turkey, Mexico and Indonesia, on the App Store and Google Play.

These are some of the best new apps of the year. Great onboarding, clever paywalls, polished design. And still, only 6 of them charge clearly less in all five of the lower-income countries I checked. One winner charges ₹199 in India for a plan that costs $19.99 in the US. Most of the others ask Indian users for about the same as Americans.

This post shows the localized pricing examples I found, with real prices, what the store default does to your price, and how to do it yourself in an afternoon.

How I checked the prices

For every winner I opened the public store page in 8 storefronts and wrote down each in-app purchase and its local price. Then I converted every price to dollars with one set of exchange rates (the ECB reference rates of October 20, 2026) and compared it to the US price of the same product.

A ratio of 1.00 means the same price as in the US. A ratio of 0.25 means a quarter of the US price.

One detail matters for reading the numbers: local prices include VAT or GST where the store adds it, while US prices don't. That's why the store default often looks a bit more expensive outside the US.

With the default, the numbers sit between about 0.89 and 1.33 in these 8 countries. So I counted an app as localized in a country only when at least one of its products costs less than 0.85 of the US price there. Clearly below what the store would do on its own.

The result, for the 57 winning apps:

• 6 apps charge clearly less in all five lower-income countries: Brazil, India, Turkey, Mexico and Indonesia.
• 5 more do it in some of those countries.
• Most of the others use the store's default conversion everywhere.

A few apps are free or only sold in a couple of countries, so they don't count either way.

What the store default really does to your price

When you set a price only in your base country, App Store Connect and Google Play Console fill the other countries for you. They convert your price, add local taxes and round to a local price point. What they don't do is look at what people earn.

Here is a real $9.99 yearly plan from one of the winners, on Apple's default:

The default is fair in one sense: everybody pays roughly the same amount of money. But ₹999 in India is not what $9.99 is for someone in the US. It's several times more of their monthly budget. That's how a lot of people decide your app is not for them, without ever telling you. You see it as a country with installs and no purchases.

If you want the longer version of how the stores handle this, I wrote a developer's reference on App Store pricing by country and a walkthrough for Google Play.

6 localized pricing examples from the winners

These are the six winners that charge clearly less in all five lower-income countries. They're good examples because each one did it a bit differently.

Boop (1st place, #BuildInPublic, $30,000). The deepest cuts of all the winners. Boop Pro Yearly is $19.99 in the US, ₹199 in India (about $2.10, 0.10x), ₺150 in Turkey (0.15x), Rp 90ribu in Indonesia (0.25x), R$36,99 in Brazil (0.37x) and MX$215 in Mexico (0.58x). The same factor applies to every product, so the whole price list moves together.

Nitelore (1st place, Best Game, $20,000). A game, and a good example for consumables. The biggest coin pack is $19.99 in the US, ₹499 in India (0.26x), Rp 129ribu in Indonesia (0.36x), R$59,90 in Brazil (0.60x), ₺599,99 in Turkey (0.61x) and MX$249 in Mexico (0.67x). Every coin pack is cheaper in all five countries, on both stores.

Clucky (1st place, Design, $20,000). Clucky+ Yearly is $19.99 in the US and ₹469 in India (0.25x), with Indonesia at 0.41x, Turkey at 0.61x, Mexico at 0.67x and Brazil at 0.80x. The weekly plan goes even further: $3.99 in the US and ₹19 in India.

Buck (3rd place, Design, $5,000). Buck Yearly is $39.99 in the US and ₹1,069 in India (0.28x), Rp 239ribu in Indonesia (0.33x), MX$329 in Mexico (0.44x), ₺999,99 in Turkey (0.50x) and R$129 in Brazil (0.64x). The UK and Germany stay close to the US, so Buck only moved the countries where it matters.

Let's Get Support (1st place, Replit's Idea to Income, $15,000). One purchase, on Google Play: $5.99 in the US, ₹79 in India (0.14x), Rp 31.900 in Indonesia (0.30x), R$11.90 in Brazil (0.40x), MX$72.90 in Mexico (0.66x) and TRY 199.99 in Turkey (0.67x). It's even a bit lower in the UK and Germany.

Quenched (3rd place, Most Viral, $5,000). Quenched shows a different approach: the subscriptions stay at the default, but the one-time Pro unlock is $14.99 in the US, ₹375 in India (0.26x), ₺219 in Turkey (0.29x), Rp 90ribu in Indonesia (0.33x), R$33,50 in Brazil (0.44x) and MX$200 in Mexico (0.72x). If you're not ready to touch your subscriptions, a lifetime or one-time product is a good place to start.

Five more winners lowered their prices in some of these countries, for example only in India, or only in Brazil and Mexico. That's a good first step, and it often shows where the developer saw demand.

Why I think most winners skipped it

I don't think it's because they don't care. These apps have thoughtful paywalls, rewarded ads, web funnels and personalized offers. The HAMM award (Help Apps Make Money) was literally about pricing and packaging, and I wrote before about what Shipaton judges want to see about your pricing.

I think it's because of how the stores work. Setting one price takes a minute. Setting a fair price for every country means about 175 territories on the App Store, more on Google Play, multiplied by every product. That's around 1,000 fields per app, and you have to keep them up to date when exchange rates move.

So most developers leave the default on, and it's understandable. I left it on for my own apps too, before I started testing local prices on them.

How to do it in an afternoon

If you want to do what these six apps did, this is the order I'd follow:

1. Look at your installs by country. In App Store Connect and Google Play Console, find the countries with a lot of installs and few purchases. Those are the ones where your price is probably the problem.
2. Pick a fair price per country, not a discount. Use a purchasing power reference like PPP as a starting point, then round to a price that looks local, like ₹199 or R$36,99.
3. Start with one product if you're nervous. Quenched did it on the one-time unlock only. A lifetime or a yearly plan is a safe first test.
4. Leave your strong markets alone. Buck kept the UK and Germany close to the US. Localized pricing is about the countries where your price doesn't fit, not about cutting everywhere.
5. Check again every few months. Exchange rates move, and a fair price today can drift. I wrote more about that in why set-and-forget doesn't work.

For the background on all of this, start from my guide to localized pricing for mobile apps.

The shortcut I built for this

I built PricePush because I got tired of doing these 1,000 fields by hand for my own apps. You set one base price, it suggests a fair price for every country based on purchasing power, rounded to prices that look local, and pushes them to App Store Connect and Google Play in one go.

You can try the free Price Localizer to see what your price would look like in 190+ countries, without an account. And if you want to push the prices, PricePush is free for one app, with paid plans on the pricing page when you have more.

Congrats again to all the Shipaton 2026 winners, and especially to these six, who already did the part most apps skip.

Sources: RevenueCat's Shipaton 2026 winners post (October 20, 2026); prize amounts from the Shipaton 2026 Devpost page (read October 24, 2026); prices from public App Store and Google Play pages in 8 countries (October 21, 2026), converted with ECB reference rates (October 20, 2026). Local prices include VAT/GST where the store adds it.