The cheapest countries to buy the iPhone 16

The new iPhone 16 is going to be hot property in the coming months, and the $799 price tag for the standard model is unlikely to dissuade dedicated iOS fans. That said, we all love a bargain, and that got us wondering if US buyers are getting a good deal compared to their foreign counterparts. After all, the smartphone has a different retail price in each country, so where’s the cheapest place to buy the iPhone 16?

We visited the Apple website in dozens of countries to find the answer.

We didn’t look up the price of the iPhone 16 Plus or Pro models for this rundown. It keeps things simpler, but more importantly, the prices of each model in the range are always fairly relative. If the iPhone 16 is very cheap in a particular country, the iPhone 16 Pro Max is also going to be on the more affordable side there.

Before you jump into the comments section, the reason the device is listed at $879 in the US is that we added an approximate 10% sales tax to reflect what you’d likely pay before it ships. On the flip side, you don’t have to pay sales tax if you’re a tourist in another country, so the retail prices listed are the most you’ll pay if you buy the phone abroad. Some countries even include the sales tax in the advertised price, meaning you might be able to claim up to 10% or 15% back in other countries.

The cheapest place in the world to buy the iPhone 16 is China, where the device will be available for the equivalent of $842. Japan is also a good spot for a cheap iPhone, with the $877 asking price placing it in the same ballpark as the US, depending on how much your sales tax is in the States. The top of the list is dominated by the Southeast Asian nations.

While the exact ranking is hardly important, the retail prices show that Americans are already getting a pretty sweet deal compared with the rest of the world. If you’re a visitor to the US and able to claim back the sales tax, it would actually be the cheapest place of all the countries at $799. Even with the tax, you’re paying hundreds of dollars less than many foreign nationals.

Residents of many nations face a retail price of $1,000 to $1,100 for the new phone, but it’s the Turks who really get the raw end of the deal. A retail price that’s equivalent to $1,909 makes Turkey the most expensive place to buy the iPhone 16 by a country mile — over $500 more than Brazil in second last place.

It seems odd at first glance, but there are various reasons why we see such a huge variation in retail prices from country to country. We’ll lay out some of them a bit later on.

Is there a chance that I’ll find a cheaper iPhone 16?

You’re not going to find an official iPhone 16 available at a significant discount any time soon. The handset isn’t even available to buy yet, and Apple is famously tight-fisted when it comes to any sorts of sales on unlocked versions of the device.

As we touched on above, you might be able to save on the sales tax if you’re visiting a country where it’s built into the sticker price. You’ll also see big carriers in many countries offering the iPhone 16 for free, or at least at a heavily reduced rate, but these deals will either involve a trade-in, a service contract, or both.

For these reasons, any unofficial vendor offering the smartphone for much less than the retail price should raise red flags in your mind. Stolen or second-hand models are often passed off as legitimate, as are fake versions of iPhones. These can look extremely realistic superficially, but the internals will be vastly inferior.

In short, if an offer looks too good to be true, it almost certainly is. Stick with buying from officially licensed Apple outlets.

A better way to save on the iPhone 16 might be via carrier deals, and it doesn’t involve getting off the sofa. You’re subject to the caveats we mentioned above, but that doesn’t mean you won’t find good offers. An expensive service contract is a significant monthly investment, but if you want the benefit that plan brings anyway, a free next-gen iPhone isn’t a bad incentive to sign up.

Why is the iPhone 16 cheaper in some countries than in others?

Market forces are very region-specific, so Apple has different costs to absorb in each country before it puts a shiny new iPhone in consumer hands. From local labor to import taxes and much more, these costs have to be factored in before a retail price is set.

And don’t forget Apple’s cut, which isn’t just going to be a fixed percentage on top of the expenditure. Teams of financial wizards will be analyzing each market in terms of demand and consumer spending power. The tech giant might want to bring you a top-tier product, but it will also be looking to please the shareholders by maximizing the bottom line.

Run all of the numbers mentioned above, and you come out with a much different retail price in each county.

Even if Apple had made the iPhone 16 the same price in every country, it wouldn’t stay that way for long in our little exercise. We switched all the local prices for USD to make the comparison easier to understand, but exchange rates are very dynamic in today’s financial climate. This will change the running order of the table above from week to week and month to month.

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