What's the Right Way to Price My App at Launch?

Getting your app pricing wrong at launch can cost you tens of thousands in lost revenue, and here's what makes it worse... you might not even realise it's happening until months down the line when you're trying to work out why your download numbers look decent but your bank balance doesn't match up. The decision between charging £2.99 upfront, going completely free with ads, or building a subscription model at £4.99 a month isn't just about picking a number that feels right, it's about understanding how people actually behave when they're scrolling through the App Store on a Tuesday evening looking for something new to download.

Thing is, I've watched brilliant apps with genuinely useful features struggle to get traction because they launched at £4.99 when their target audience (students, mostly) would have happily paid 99p, and I've seen the opposite too where apps practically gave away features that users would have been more than willing to pay for. What's interesting is that your pricing strategy affects everything from how the app store algorithms treat you to whether tech journalists will write about you to how users perceive the quality of what you've built, and getting it sorted before you press that submit button matters more than most founders realise.

The price you set at launch isn't just about money coming in, it's a signal to users about who your app is for and what problem it solves for them.

Look, there's no magic formula that works for every app (learned that the hard way after our third project kind of bombed), but there are patterns and principles that can guide you towards a pricing structure that actually makes sense for your specific situation, which is what we're going to walk through together.

Understanding Your App's Value Proposition

The starting point for pricing your app correctly sits in knowing exactly what problem you're solving for your users, and more importantly, how much that solution means to them in their daily lives. I worked with a meditation app team who thought their value was "helping people relax" but after speaking with their users we discovered the real value was "giving busy parents 10 minutes of peace before their kids woke up"... and that specific, tangible benefit completely changed how we positioned and priced the app.

Your value proposition needs to connect directly to a user's willingness to pay, which means you need to understand not just what your app does but what it replaces or improves in someone's life. A recipe app that saves someone £30 a week on takeaways has a completely different value proposition (and pricing power) than one that just displays nice food photos. The financial calculator app we built for freelancers didn't compete with free calculator apps, it competed with accountants charging £50 per hour for basic tax advice, which meant we could price at £8.99 monthly and still feel like incredible value.

You should be able to write down in one sentence what your app does, who it's for, and what measurable outcome they get from using it. If you can't do that exercise in under 30 seconds, your pricing strategy will struggle because you haven't yet defined what you're actually selling to people.

Free vs Paid vs Freemium Models

The pricing model you choose at launch sets expectations that can be difficult to change later, and from what I've seen working with hundreds of app launches, this decision matters more than most founders realise. A fitness tracking app I worked on initially launched as a paid download at £2.99, which seemed reasonable given the features we'd built, but downloads were sluggish and we struggled to get any meaningful traction in the first three months (the app store algorithms basically ignored us because we weren't generating enough activity). When we switched to a freemium model with the core tracking free and premium features like custom workout plans behind a £4.99 monthly subscription, downloads increased by 1,200% within six weeks and we started seeing consistent revenue that actually exceeded what we'd projected with the paid model.

Here's what each model really means in practice. A paid app charges upfront before download, which works best when you've got a strong brand already or you're solving a very specific professional need (like a medical reference tool for doctors or a specialised business calculator). Free apps make money through advertising or by collecting user data, though privacy rules have made the data approach much less viable than it used to be. Freemium gives users the basic app for free but charges for extra features, more storage, or removing limitations, and this is now the dominant model for most consumer apps because it solves the biggest problem in app marketing... getting people to try something they've never heard of before.

Choosing Your Model Based on User Behaviour

The model that works depends heavily on how users need to experience your app before they understand its value. I've probably built twenty apps across different categories now, and the pattern I see is that apps solving immediate, obvious problems (like a tip calculator or a unit converter) can charge upfront because users already know they need them. Apps that create ongoing value or that users need to experience to understand (like meditation apps, photo editors, or productivity tools) almost always perform better with freemium models because people need time to build a habit before they're willing to pay.

The Freemium Sweet Spot

What makes freemium tricky is deciding where to draw the line between free and paid features, which is something I've gotten wrong plenty of times before getting it right. The free version needs to be genuinely useful on its own (not just a demo or trial) because users can smell a bait-and-switch from miles away and they'll hammer you in reviews for it. Thing is, the free version also needs clear limitations that encourage upgrades without making users feel manipulated. A recipe app I helped launch gave away unlimited recipe viewing and basic cooking timers for free, but charged £3.99 monthly for meal planning, grocery list generation, and the ability to save your own recipes... this worked because users got real value immediately but could see obvious benefits to upgrading once they were using the app regularly.

Don't switch between paid and free models within your first six months unless your app is genuinely failing... changing your pricing model confuses existing users, hurts your app store ranking because of the disruption to your download patterns, and makes it harder to analyse what's actually working in your marketing.

Pricing Psychology for Mobile Apps

The fact is that users make split-second judgements about whether your app is worth their money, and most of those decisions happen before they even read your feature list. I worked with a fitness tracking app that launched at £4.99 and watched their conversion rate jump by forty per cent when they dropped the price to £3.99... even though the actual difference was only a quid, something about that number being under five pounds made people far more willing to click the purchase button.

What's interesting is how differently users perceive the same price depending on what you're offering. A £9.99 meditation app seems expensive compared to free alternatives, but a £9.99 business productivity tool feels reasonable because people associate work-related apps with higher value. The context matters more than the number itself, and you need to understand how your app category influences what users think is fair or overpriced.

Price Points That Actually Work

Look, there are certain price points that consistently perform better than others, and this isn't just random (learned this from watching hundreds of apps launch over the years). Here's what tends to work across different app categories:

• 99p works for simple utility apps and casual games where users need minimal convincing
• £2.99 to £3.99 is the sweet spot for apps with clear value but facing competition from free alternatives
• £6.99 to £9.99 suits apps that solve specific problems for professional or serious hobbyist users
• £14.99 and above requires rock-solid proof of value, typically through free trials or feature demonstrations

The Subscription Pricing Sweet Spot

Thing is, monthly subscription pricing follows completely different psychological rules than one-time purchases. Users compare your monthly fee to other subscriptions they already pay for, which means a £7.99 monthly subscription gets mentally compared to Netflix or Spotify rather than to other apps. I've watched apps struggle at £12.99 per month because users see that as "nearly fifteen quid" and start questioning whether they really need it, but drop it to £9.99 and suddenly it feels more reasonable. And here's the deal... annual subscriptions need to show at least a thirty per cent saving over monthly pricing to get people to commit, anything less and users figure they'll just stick with monthly and cancel if they stop using it.

Different Revenue Streams You Can Use

The fact is that most successful apps use multiple revenue streams rather than relying on a single source of income, which gives you much more stability when one channel underperforms (and trust me, they will fluctuate from month to month in ways you can't always predict). I worked with a fitness app that started with just a premium subscription model and was bringing in about £3,000 monthly, but when we added in-app purchases for personalised workout plans and a small advertising component for free users... the total revenue jumped to around £12,500 within three months because different users preferred different ways to pay.

In-app purchases work particularly well when you're selling consumable items like extra lives in games or credits in productivity apps, whilst subscriptions make more sense for content that updates regularly or services that provide ongoing value. Advertising revenue through networks like Google AdMob typically generates between £0.50 and £3.00 per thousand impressions depending on your user demographics and the ad formats you choose, so you need a fairly large user base (think 50,000+ monthly active users) before this becomes meaningful income on its own.

The apps that generate the most revenue per user are usually the ones that give people multiple ways to support the product based on how they personally prefer to spend money

Affiliate partnerships and sponsored content can also bring in revenue if your app has a specific niche audience that brands want to reach, though this requires you to be protective of user experience because nothing kills an app faster than feeling like a constant sales pitch. Look, I've seen apps try to force every possible revenue stream into their product at once and users absolutely hate that approach... so start with one or two that align naturally with how people already use your app, then add others gradually once you understand what your audience responds to positively.

Testing Your Price Before Launch

The best time to find out if people will pay for your app is before you've spent six months building it, and I learned this the hard way when a client insisted their productivity tool was worth £12.99 monthly without any market validation. We built the entire thing. Nobody bought it. We dropped the price to £4.99 and suddenly had paying customers, but we'd already burned through most of their budget on features nobody wanted at that price point.

Run a Landing Page Test

Build a simple webpage that describes your app and includes a price, then drive some traffic to it through Facebook ads or Google ads (you can spend as little as £100 to get useful data). The trick is to have a "Pre-order now" or "Get early access" button that leads to an email signup form, and you can test different price points by sending half your traffic to one version and half to another version. If 100 people visit and 8 people try to buy at £9.99, but only 2 people try to buy at £14.99, you've got your answer without writing a single line of code.

Survey Your Target Users

Reach out to potential users in Facebook groups, Reddit communities, or LinkedIn and ask them directly what they'd pay for a solution to their problem (though people tend to say they'll pay more than they will when the moment comes, so take responses with a grain of salt). I've found that asking "What would be too expensive?" and "What would be so cheap you'd question the quality?" gives you a price range to work within, and somewhere in the middle is usually about right.

Regional Pricing and Currency Considerations

The difference between what someone in London will pay for an app subscription versus someone in Mumbai can be staggering... and pretending these differences don't exist is probably the fastest way to leave money on the table (or price yourself out of entire markets completely). When we launched a fitness tracking app across multiple regions, we discovered that our £4.99 monthly subscription was performing brilliantly in the UK and decent enough in the US at $5.99, but we were getting almost zero conversions in Brazil and India despite strong download numbers.

Apple and Google both offer tools for regional pricing, but here's the thing... their automatic currency conversions don't account for purchasing power parity, which is sort of a fancy way of saying that five quid means something very different to someone in Manchester versus someone in Manila. We started adjusting our pricing based on local market conditions rather than just straight currency conversion, and within about three months our international revenue jumped by roughly 40% without losing UK customers.

Regional Pricing Adjustments That Work

Here's what we've found works across different markets when setting up regional pricing structures:

• Tier 1 markets (UK, US, Australia, Germany) can handle premium pricing at full value
• Tier 2 markets (Spain, Poland, South Korea) typically need 20-30% reduction from Tier 1 pricing
• Tier 3 markets (India, Brazil, Mexico) often require 50-70% reduction to see decent conversion rates
• Always price in local currency rather than forcing users to mentally convert from pounds or dollars
• Monitor exchange rate fluctuations quarterly and adjust pricing if currencies swing more than 15%

Look, you might worry that users in expensive markets will find ways to purchase from cheaper regions... and yeah, some will try, but both app stores have gotten pretty good at preventing this kind of thing. The revenue you gain from properly pricing for emerging markets far outweighs the small percentage who game the system.

Set up separate app store listings for major regions and test different price points for 30 days before committing... what works in Europe might completely flop in Asia, and you won't know until you actually try it with real users spending real money.

Currency Display and Payment Processing

Thing is, even when you set regional pricing correctly, how you display prices inside your app matters more than most developers realise. We had an e-commerce app where we were showing all prices in pounds with a small note saying "prices converted at checkout"... and our analytics showed people were abandoning right at the payment screen because they couldn't figure out exactly what they'd be charged.

Both Apple and Google handle the actual currency conversion and payment processing automatically once you set your regional prices, which takes away most of the technical headache... but you need to go into App Store Connect or Google Play Console and manually set prices for each country or region you're targeting, because leaving it on automatic conversion will give you weird price points like $4.73 instead of the much cleaner $4.99 that people expect to see.

Common Pricing Mistakes to Avoid

The biggest mistake I see app developers make is setting their price based on what competitors charge without understanding their own costs and value proposition, which typically leads to either leaving money on the table or pricing themselves out of the market entirely. When I worked with a fitness tracking app that launched at 99p because their main competitor was free with ads, they struggled to generate enough revenue to cover their server costs and development updates... turns out their users would have happily paid £2.99 for an ad-free experience with better features.

Another common error is treating all markets the same way, which means charging the same price in India as you would in the UK or United States. The purchasing power varies so much between regions that a £4.99 app might be perfectly reasonable for users in London but completely unaffordable for potential customers in countries where that represents several hours of wages. Apple and Google both provide tools for regional pricing adjustments but many developers just stick with the default conversion rates without considering local market conditions or what people actually earn in those places.

Changing your pricing model too frequently confuses users and damages trust, particularly when people feel like they're being experimented on without clear communication about why prices are shifting. I've watched apps lose their entire loyal user base after switching from a one-time purchase to a subscription model without grandfathering in existing customers or explaining the business reasons behind the change.

Adjusting Your Price After Launch

The price you launch with rarely stays the same for long, and that's perfectly normal in the app business. I've worked with a fitness app that started at £4.99 as a one-time purchase, moved to free with in-app purchases six months later (which tripled their user base but initially dropped revenue by 40%), then settled into a subscription model at £2.99 per month which eventually brought in four times what they were making before. The point is that pricing isn't a decision you make once and forget about, it's something that needs to shift based on what your users are telling you through their behaviour.

When you're looking at your pricing data, focus on three numbers that tell you most of what you need to know... your conversion rate from free to paid (if you're freemium), your churn rate (how many people stop paying each month), and your lifetime value per user. If your conversion rate is below 2% after three months, that usually means your free tier is giving away too much or your paid features aren't tempting enough. Churn above 10% per month suggests your app isn't sticky enough to justify the price. And if your lifetime value is less than three times your acquisition cost, you're probably charging too little or spending too much on marketing.

Price changes need to respect your existing users while still moving your business forward

The trickiest part of adjusting prices is managing the users who already paid under your old model. When that fitness app moved to subscriptions, they gave lifetime access to anyone who'd bought the paid version, which cost them some short-term revenue but built goodwill that turned those users into their best advocates. Some apps grandfather in old users at their original price forever, others give them a discount for a year then move them to the new pricing. There's no perfect answer here, it depends on how much you value long-term reputation versus immediate revenue.

Conclusion

The fact is that pricing your app at launch isn't about picking a number and hoping for the best, it's about understanding what makes your app valuable to people and building a pricing strategy that can grow with you. I've worked with clients who changed their entire pricing model three months after launch (and doubled their revenue because of it), and I've seen apps that stuck rigidly to their original price even when all the data said they needed to change... the ones who stayed flexible always did better in the long run.

Your initial price is really just your starting point, not your final answer. You'll learn more about what people will pay in your first month of real users than you ever could from research alone (took me ages to realise this), and that's completely normal. The apps that succeed are the ones that keep watching what users do, testing different approaches, and adjusting based on what actually happens rather than what they hoped would happen.

Start with a price that feels right based on your value proposition and competitive research, make sure you've got analytics set up to track everything, and be ready to change direction if you need to. Your pricing strategy should be sort of alive, responding to feedback and market conditions as you go, because the right price today might not be the right price six months from now.