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Local pricing with PPP adjustment

How to use Purchasing Power Parity to charge fair, market-appropriate prices for every country — with a real example using CurrencyCore.

CurrencyCore Team November 15, 2024

Setting a single global price for your SaaS is leaving money on the table — and it’s also unfair to users in emerging markets.

A developer in Brazil earns, on average, about 20% of what a developer in the US earns. Charging them the same $49/month doesn’t just hurt conversions — it excludes them entirely.

Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) gives you a principled, data-driven way to localize prices.

What is PPP?

PPP is an economic measure that compares the relative purchasing power of different currencies. A PPP factor of 0.3 for a country means that $1 USD has the buying power of roughly $0.30 locally.

The World Bank publishes annual PPP factors for 180+ countries. CurrencyCore exposes these via the /ppp endpoint and applies them automatically via /convert.

The formula

localPrice = (basePrice / fromRate) * toRate * (fromPPP / toPPP)

Example: $29 USD → INR with PPP

  • basePrice = 29
  • fromRate (USD) = 1 (USD is the base)
  • toRate (INR) = 83.45
  • fromPPP (US) = 1.0
  • toPPP (IN) = 0.32
localPrice = (29 / 1) * 83.45 * (1.0 / 0.32) = 7563 INR ≈ $7.57 USD purchasing-power-equivalent

Instead of charging ₹2,420 (naive USD→INR conversion), you charge ₹7,563 — a price that feels the same to an Indian developer as $29 feels to an American one.

Implementing it with CurrencyCore

const res = await fetch(
  "https://api.currency-core.com/v1/convert?" +
    new URLSearchParams({
      from: "USD:USA", // pair each currency with its country (alpha-3) for PPP
      to: "INR:IND",
      amount: "29",
      ppp: "true",
    }),
  { headers: { Authorization: "Bearer cc_live_your_key" } }
);

const { results } = await res.json();
const { result, ppp } = results[0];
// result: 7563 INR
// ppp.fromFactor: 1.0, ppp.toFactor: 0.32

When to use PPP pricing

PPP pricing is ideal for:

  • Developer tools and SaaS products with a global audience
  • Educational platforms where affordability drives adoption
  • Open-source sponsorships or community plans

It’s less suitable for B2B enterprise contracts, where pricing is based on org size rather than location.

Next steps