This page documents the method behind the regional pricing calculators on this site, starting with the Steam regional pricing calculator. It is written so the same rules can be reused for App Store and Google Play pages later: one formula, one data source per side, one rounding rule per platform, and a list of the places where the numbers should not be trusted.

The calculators are free. There is no signup and no premium tier.

The formula

Every calculator does the same thing. You give it a US price. For each country it computes a Big Mac price:

Big Mac price = your US price × (local Big Mac price in dollars ÷ US Big Mac price in dollars) × exchange rate of the currency the platform charges in

When the platform charges the local currency, the exchange rate cancels out, and the formula becomes:

Big Mac price = your US price × local Big Mac price ÷ US Big Mac price in dollars

So if a Big Mac costs 500 yen in Japan and $6.22 in the US, a $19.99 game becomes 19.99 × 500 ÷ 6.22 ≈ 1,607 yen. No exchange rate is involved. This matters because the two sides of the comparison were measured on different dates (see below): when the currency is the same on both sides, a currency move between those dates can’t distort the comparison.

An exchange rate is only used when the platform charges a currency that isn’t the local one — for example, Steam charges Argentina in US dollars and Sweden in euros. In those cases we use the exchange rate recorded in the same Big Mac survey, so the burger price and the rate come from the same week.

The comparison number on each page is:

ratio = platform price ÷ Big Mac price

Above 1, the platform asks more than local burger prices suggest. Below 1, it asks less. Sorting, the “biggest gaps” lists and the map colours all use the unrounded Big Mac price, so the rounding below never changes a country’s rank.

This is the same ratio as our App Store pricing advisor uses (local Big Mac in dollars ÷ US Big Mac in dollars). The platforms differ only in what we compare against and how we round.

Data sources and dates

Big Mac prices. The Economist’s Big Mac index, published twice a year. The calculators use the latest edition on this site, July 2026, which covers 54 economies (the euro area counts as one). Countries outside those 54 are shown in grey. We don’t fill the gaps with GDP-based estimates, because then it would no longer be a Big Mac comparison.

Steam. Valve’s public pricing explorer contains its recommended price for 41 US price tiers ($0.99 to $199.99) in 37 currencies and 4 US-dollar region groups. Steamworks has three optional conversion methods: exchange rate only, purchasing power only, and a multi-variable method. We use the explorer’s default table. Its numbers sit between the other two, so it’s almost certainly the multi-variable method, but the page itself doesn’t label it. The table currently in use is effective 8 October 2026 and was fetched on 15 October 2026. Both dates are printed on the calculator, and we fetch again when Valve publishes a new table. Valve doesn’t publish an update schedule that we could find.

For a US price that isn’t one of Valve’s tiers, we do what Valve’s explorer does: take the nearest tier and scale its price in proportion. A $24.50 game uses the $24.99 tier × 24.50 ÷ 24.99, rounded up to the smallest unit of the currency.

Which currency Steam charges. This comes from Valve’s supported currencies page. Countries with a supported local currency are charged in it. European countries without one (in our data: Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Romania, Sweden) are charged in euros. Several others are in a US-dollar region group with one reduced price for the whole group: Argentina, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Venezuela in LATAM USD; Turkey, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Oman in MENA USD; Pakistan in South Asia USD; Azerbaijan and Moldova in CIS USD. Argentina and Turkey moved to US dollars on 20 November 2023.

A developer can’t set one price for Argentina and another for Venezuela. They share one LATAM price. The same goes for the five euro-charged countries, which share the euro area’s price. So the “biggest gaps” lists only include countries where Steam lets you set the price on its own. The shared ones are still in the full table and on the map.

Rounding

The raw Big Mac price is rounded for display only:

  • Whole-unit currencies (yen, won, rupiah, rupee, dong, Chilean and Colombian pesos, and the others Valve requires in whole units): 3 significant figures, then aligned to Valve’s minimum step for that currency (10 won, 500 dong, 5 colón). 1,607 yen becomes 1,610.
  • Other currencies from 1 to 100: snapped to the nearest .49 or .99 ending, which is how Valve’s own table ends (€19.49, $19.99). Below 1 (a low price in a high-value currency such as the Kuwaiti dinar) we keep two decimals.
  • Other currencies at 100 or more: 3 significant figures, as a whole number.
  • Floor: Steam’s minimum base price in each currency is Valve’s own price for the $0.99 tier (Minimum Pricing Thresholds). If the Big Mac price is lower than that, we show the minimum and mark it “min”. These countries are left out of the “Valve price too high” list, because the price can’t go any lower.

When an App Store or Google Play page uses this method, only this section changes: Apple has fixed price points to snap to, and Google Play has a minimum and maximum price per currency.

What “worth changing” means

Pages highlight a country when the ratio is at least 1.2× or at most 1/1.2× (about 0.83×). That threshold is our rule of thumb, not anything Valve publishes. Below it, the Big Mac comparison isn’t precise enough to justify a change. The Steam page lists the platform rules that matter more in practice: no price changes in the first 30 days after release, a 30-day block on discounts after any price increase, and review of proposed prices.

Known limits

  • Coverage. 54 economies. Steam sells in many more countries, and App Store and Google Play in about 175 storefronts each. Grey on the map means “no Big Mac data, keep the platform price”, not “cheap” or “expensive”.
  • A burger is not a game. A Big Mac reflects local wages, rent and beef prices. What people will pay for entertainment can differ from that. That’s the gap Valve’s multi-variable method tries to close with “the expected cost of comparable entertainment goods”. Japan is the clearest example: its Big Mac is one of the cheapest in dollar terms, but that doesn’t mean Japanese players expect half-price games.
  • Distorted years. Argentina is the warning case. From July 2011 to July 2014 the recorded Big Mac price stayed between 19 and 21 pesos (20, 20, 19, 19, 21, 21, 21) while the official exchange rate went from 4.13 to 8.17 pesos per dollar. We treat that stretch of Argentina’s history as unreliable. It doesn’t affect the current calculator, but it’s a reminder that one menu price can be held still for reasons that have nothing to do with purchasing power.
  • Two dates. The Big Mac survey (July 2026) and Valve’s table (October 2026) are three months apart. Where the currency is the same on both sides, the formula needs no exchange rate, so this gap mostly doesn’t matter. For countries charged in dollars or euros, currency moves since July go straight into the ratio.
  • Valve’s inputs aren’t public. We can compare against Valve’s recommendation, but we can’t see how it was built. If the explorer changes its format, our fetch script stops with an error and keeps the last table we had, rather than writing an empty one.

Using the numbers

Treat the Big Mac price as a second opinion. Where Valve and the Big Mac roughly agree (within about 20%), keep Valve’s price. Where they’re far apart, look at that market yourself before you change anything: what similar games sell for there, and what your sales data says. The calculator’s CSV export includes both dates and the currency in separate columns, so the file still says where its numbers came from after it’s forwarded.