How AISubDeal verifies subscription prices

What this matrix covers — and what it does not

Covered: Apple App Store regional list prices for the products listed in the catalog — currently 36 products across 20 storefronts (51 catalog entries exist; only those with an observed row are counted here). Every figure is a list price converted to USD, not a checkout quote.

Not covered: Google Play prices, in-app credit packs, web-only billing, carrier bundles and promotional trials are not included in this matrix. A storefront is only added once we can capture it repeatedly and attribute a source; an unverified country stays "not tracked" rather than being presented with an invented number. Comparisons across products are therefore not a ranking of who is "cheapest on every platform" — they are a ranking of the tracked App Store rows.

When a storefront cannot realistically be bought from (no gift card, local-payment-only, high account risk), we say so on the product page instead of promoting the headline discount. "Cheapest list price" and "what you can actually buy" are always reported as two separate facts.

Collection and normalization

Plan names are matched to the closest public vendor tier. Local storefront amounts are stored unchanged. A separate FX snapshot creates the USD comparison value; it never replaces the billing currency.

Sources and verification types

Every price row maps to one of four public evidence levels. Observed means the amount was derived or seen only as a scaled tier, without a product-specific confirmation. Source verified means an independent listing confirmed the local amount: OpenTheRank / AppPriceWatch scrapes on the VPS, Apple IAP / iTunes lookups, or the product-specific verified tier map (those local prices were cross-checked against apps.apple.com). Checkout checked means we reached a payment confirmation screen without completing the purchase. Purchase tested means we completed a real or key purchase path. Source verified is not a completed purchase.

USD equivalents use a public mid-market FX snapshot (fxUpdatedAt) and never replace the billing currency. Tax is included, excluded, or unknown — we do not invent checkout tax. Web list prices and App Store list prices are different channels. Savings vs the US App Store are never computed against a US web price.

Purchase flow testing (separate from price verification)

Completing account setup, redeeming a gift card, and buying a subscription is a different evidence layer from reading a storefront price. When the site owner records an end-to-end or partial test, product×country pages may show a Purchase flow tested badge with the test date. Those records expire (default ~120 days) and never claim a permanent guarantee. Display priority: active owner test → partial step test → official source → price observation → regional template → unknown.

Update frequency and FX

Price collection and site builds are separate. A deployment does not mark every row as newly verified. FX timestamps identify the conversion snapshot; pages use the latest real data or content change for sitemap lastmod.

Tax treatment

Tax is recorded as included, excluded or unknown. We do not infer checkout tax only from a country tax rate. Unknown means the displayed amount must be confirmed at checkout.

Risk and recommendation model

Regional risk combines payment restrictions, account-region friction and setup difficulty. Homepage recommendations weight savings at 55%, risk fit at 25% and payment feasibility at 20%. A cheap region is not recommended when the selected payment method cannot reasonably support it.

Deal Potential — market-level signal

Answers: “does this product currently have a meaningful regional pricing opportunity?”

This is a property of the product, not of you. It powers the deal feed ordering, the homepage cards and the market insight shown on product hubs. It is displayed as a band — Strong deal · Fair deal · Weak deal · No regional gap — and its underlying 0–100 number is no longer printed anywhere in the interface. Showing two different scores side by side made visitors unsure which one to trust, so exactly one number is exposed: the AISubDeal Score below.

• Price value (65%) — 40 + 1.6 × maxSaving% vs the US App Store row of the base plan, capped at 100. No regional saving scores 35. The US web list is a separate benchmark.
• Purchase ease (35%) — starts at 50, then adds or subtracts the floor country’s risk level, gift-card support, and region difficulty.
• Bands — Strong deal (≥ 75, saving ≥ 18%, purchase ease ≥ 50) · Fair deal (≥ 58 or saving ≥ 10%) · Weak deal (smaller gap) · No regional gap (no vs-US saving). A 90% discount with a hard-to-buy storefront cannot be a Strong deal.

Optional Worth / Skip votes ask only whether the current regional price is worth switching for. Your choice is stored on this device. Public totals appear only after 10 real votes on that card. Until then we show no count — empty samples stay empty.

AISubDeal Score — personalized decision score

Answers: “should I switch from my current region?”

This is the only 0–100 number shown in the product interface. It is a property of your situation: it recomputes against the storefront you say you pay in today. Four fixed weights:

• Price saving — 45%. Measured against your own effective price, not against “how cheap is this country in general”. A visitor already sitting on the cheapest storefront scores 0 for saving, by construction. The score is min(100, round(savingPct × 2.5)), so 40% cheaper scores 100.
• Payment ease — 25%. Starts at 40 and adds verified gift-card support (+35), limited (+18) or unknown (+8), plus the product-level purchase evidence (+25 verified purchase, +5 observed only, −40 no path). A storefront that needs local payment and has no gift-card catalog loses 30.
• Setup ease — 20%. Region difficulty (easy 100 / medium 60 / hard 25) minus 10 when a locally formatted billing address is expected.
• Risk — 10%. Low 100 / medium 55 / high 10.

There is no renewal stability weight. We have no independent data source for it, and adding a weight for an unmeasured field would fabricate precision. Gift-card availability is not a separate weight either — it feeds payment ease, so the same fact is never counted twice. Bands: Strong value ≥ 75, Good value ≥ 60, Fair value ≥ 45, otherwise Weak value.

Effective price is what the recommendation actually compares. It adds only costs we hold real data for — the verified gift-card premium. Tax is reflected through the price row’s tax status rather than re-applying a VAT rate, because App Store list prices are normally tax-inclusive. Card, FX and payment fees are printed as unknown and excluded, never estimated. When a storefront needs local payment and we have no gift-card catalog, its real cost is unknowable; it is shown to you but excluded from the ranking while a fully priced alternative exists.

Best practical option is not the cheapest price. Every candidate is scored, the highest scorer wins, and it is only reported as an alternative if it both costs less than what you pay and scores higher. Otherwise the answer is your current region. The verdict is then a fixed rule table over the annual saving: under $20 stay · $20–50 probably not worth switching · $50–100 consider · $100+ worth switching, de-rated one band for high regional risk or a purchase path we cannot verify. Finding an alternative never implies recommending a switch.

Quality and limitations

Schema checks reject unknown products, plans, countries, currencies, duplicate rows and invalid dates. Currency overrides without evidence are quarantined. Store eligibility, payment methods and promotions can still change without notice; AISubDeal does not guarantee checkout.

Corrections and reuse

Report a correction with the product, country, plan, source URL and observed date. Corrections are reviewed before they change indexable pages. The JSON and CSV files may be cited with attribution to AISubDeal and this methodology.