TL;DR
- Google Play just raised its pricing limit to just under $5,000.
- The last big increase was this time last year, going from $400 to $1,000.
- Only established developers earning $1M a year can qualify for this pricing level.
We’d say that a great app is worth its weight in gold, but apps don’t technically weigh anything, and developers are far more interested in being paid with hard currency. The point remains, though: Software development is no small task, and we are more than happy to compensate the talented coders who work so hard to produce the huge library of apps our phones have access to. While it’s easy to justify paying $5 or $10 for a solid app, is there some upper limit? On the Play Store there absolutely is, but Google just sent that ceiling up into the stratosphere.
Google started out by slowly raising its limit for the maximum value for app pricing. We saw it rise from $200 to $400 back in 2015, and only just last year did Google bump the figure again, this time all the way to $1,000.
Apparently even that huge increase was insufficient, because Google is once again revisiting Play Store pricing, and has set a new limit of just under $5,000.
In many markets around the world, the same limit applies, just converted to your local currency. The big exception there is South Korea, which has been sticking with the old $400 maximum.
Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
Before you start getting worried about a bunch of garbage apps trying to trick you into shelling out a stupid amount of cash, Google seems well aware of the potential for abuse here, and is locking this new limit behind some important safeguards.
Only established developers in good standing with Google are eligible, and even then only when they’re bringing in at least a million dollars a year in app sales. Google’s not automatically raising the limit for them, either, and developers will need to reach out to Google with a formal request, including spelling out exactly why this kind of pricing is justified.
The limit applies not just to apps themselves, but also in-app purchases (IAPs) and subscriptions. With Google itself recently introducing an eye-watering $3,000 per year subscription for AI Ultra, we can certainly appreciate why the company has big numbers like these on its mind.
