Best country to buy Apple products

Update: Few people mentioned that each country have special version adapted to local requirements, like iPhone for US and Japan. Do your research before buying. My audience would be those digital nomad that travel often, that they’re not bound to any one country.

If you’re like me, you’ll shop around online to see which countries has the best price for a particular product. Especially for Apple where retail prices are fixed no matter which channel you buy.

For example if you’re in Malaysia, and you’re buying 9.7-inch iPad Pro. The cheapest model is RM2,699. You’re going for a meeting with client next week in Singapore, and you find out the price is SG$898, and further SG$839 after GST refund. That’s roughly RM2,437 in current exchange rate, a saving of RM262! That could cover your return flight to Singapore, and your Uber to nearest Apple retailer.

These are the scenario I could think of when building a price comparison site of Apple products last week. I’d like to highlight a summary of the data that I get from The Mac Index.

The Mac Index - Compare Apple product prices in different countries

Asia-Pacific

Generally you want to buy Apple products in Tiger countries (Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore — in that order), as they’re consistently within top three places. Japan comes close in some products, and South Korea are trailing not far behind. Overall, make Hong Kong your regular pit-stop for best value.

In South-East Asia, Thailand and Philippines are the contender, beside Singapore. In what considered as non-news, Malaysia is not the best place to buy Apple products. Funny enough, it was 2 years back where Malaysia had the cheapest prices around, when ringgit was strong.

Australia and New Zealand should be off your shopping list if you’re not earning in AUD or NZD.

EMEA

UAE by far have the best price among EMEA countries (from data that I have). UK have the best prices of all Europe. It followed by Luxembourg, and few eastern Europe countries.

Germany, Spain, France and Portugal have slightly better prices than nordic countries, which consistently on the expensive side. It might be something do to with their high purchasing power parity (PPP).

Americas

It’s almost irrelevant to put America region since there’s only four countries that have Online Store presence. And among those four, US naturally has better prices, except for Mac & iPad lineup, where Canada have slight advantage.

Whatever you’re doing, don’t buy Apple products in Brazil. It’s not worth it. You have been warned. They range from 2x to 3x more expensive than US counterpart. If you’re in Mexico however, head north only if you have valid US visa, their prices are competitive enough.

By product lines

So, by summing up all the price difference, I got an aggregate score of each product lines of each country. Here’s the result of the quick calculations:

Mac

1. Canada
2. Hong Kong
3. United States

iPhone

1. United States
2. Japan
3. Canada

iPad

1. Canada
2. United States
3. Hong Kong

Watch

1. United States
2. Hong Kong
3. Taiwan

TV

1. United States
2. Hong Kong
3. Canada

This might yet be another reason for you to grab your passport and book a flight for the weekend, if you’ve been putting off buying that iPad. Beside iPhone, most Apple products doesn’t have region-specific specification that I know of. To view full list of prices, check out The Mac Index to compare.

The Mac Index - Compare Apple product prices in different countries

I’m a product builder at ViFi. Follow me on Twitter or Instagram.

Disclaimer: Only prices in country with Apple Online Store presence at the moment. Comparison done with USD as base rate.