Apple's app and in-app purchase prices are going up. Everybody panic!

(Image credit: Apple)

published 29 January 2023

If you've been thinking of buying a big-ticket app such as Logic Pro X or Final Cut Pro for your MacBook Pro or buying software via in-app purchases on your iPhone or iPad, you'd be wise to do it before 13 February. Apple is putting up the prices of apps in the App Store, and the price hikes will apply to in-app purchases too.

The news comes in a note to developers, which explains that "On February 13, 2023, prices of apps and in-app purchases (excluding auto-renewable subscriptions) on the App Store will increase in Colombia, Egypt, Hungary, Nigeria, Norway, South Africa, and the United Kingdom." Frustratingly it doesn't say by how much the UK prices will be going up, but they're definitely going up.

The price is right

On a slightly more positive note, Apple has also introduced new pricing tiers for apps that will enable developers to take advantage of hundreds more price points. They're linked from the same developer note, and in the UK the price points run from £0.99 to £49.99 rising in £1 increments. After that the price brackets go up by £5, then £10, then £50, then £100, with a maximum price of £999.99.

Older iPhone users may remember that that final £999.99 price was the price of I Am Rich, the 2008 iPhone app that did absolutely nothing other than let people know that you were rich enough, and daft enough, to drop a thousand quid on a silly app.

If you're looking for a way to beat the price increases, keep an eye out for deals on App Store gift cards: retailers sometimes do deals where you can get, say, a £50 gift card for £45. I've used that trick to get expensive app purchases for slightly less, and while the savings aren't huge they're still worth having.

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Writer, musician and broadcaster Carrie Marshall has been covering technology since 1998 and is particularly interested in how tech can help us live our best lives. Her CV is a who’s who of magazines, newspapers, websites and radio programmes ranging from T3, Techradar and MacFormat to the BBC, Sunday Post and People’s Friend. Carrie has written more than a dozen books, ghost-wrote two more and co-wrote seven more books and a Radio 2 documentary series; her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was shortlisted for the British Book Awards. When she’s not scribbling, Carrie is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind (unquietmindmusic).