What an iPhone costs

Apple's own online stores, iPhone 17 Pro 256GB, read on 16 August 2026 and converted at the European Central Bank's reference rates for 14 August.

United States $1,099. Canada CA$1,599, about $1,152. Australia A$1,999, about $1,416. UK £1,099, about $1,488. Brazil R$11,499, about $2,222. Turkey 119,999 lira, about $2,506.

Same phone, same factory, 2.3 times the price.

The first thing to say, because it explains a chunk of the gap: two of these stickers have no tax in them. Apple lists $1,099 in the US and $1,140 in Canada, and tax is added at checkout in both. The rest include it - 10% GST in Australia, 20% VAT in the UK. Add an average US sales tax and the American price is about $1,190, and Canada lands near the same place. Still the two lowest on the list.

One number worth sitting with on its own: the UK price is £1,099 and the US price is $1,099. Same digits, and the pound is worth about a third more.

The rest is tax that has nothing to do with Apple. Turkey layers a special consumption tax on phones on top of VAT, plus a registration fee for the handset's IMEI number - which is why it sits at the top of almost every version of this comparison. Brazil charges import duties and state tax on an imported handset, which is why Apple assembles some iPhones in Brazil to begin with.

Why it is worth knowing: a price gap like this usually gets read as a company charging what it can get away with. Here the company's own price is roughly the same everywhere and the gap is almost entirely governments. It is the opposite of the drug pricing chart, where the same company sells the same pen to America for ten times what it charges Europe.

Two caveats. Everything except the US figure is a conversion, so it moves with the exchange rate - these are ECB reference rates for 14 August 2026. And Apple repriced several countries during 2026, Turkey in May and Japan in July, so this is a snapshot rather than a trend.

Next week: what Apple actually keeps out of that $1,099.