What is Purchasing Power Parity?
Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) is an economic concept that measures the relative value of money across countries. A €23.99 app feels very different to someone in Germany versus someone in the Philippines or India — not because of currency, but because of how much that amount represents in terms of local income and cost of living. In Germany, €23.99 is roughly the cost of a nice dinner. In the Philippines, it's closer to two full days of average wages.
Most software companies ignore this.
The majority of software companies — including large, profitable ones — charge the same price globally, or close to it. They know that developers in the US or Western Europe are their primary buyers, and they optimize for that audience. Everyone else either pays a disproportionate amount relative to their income, finds a pirated version, or simply goes without. This isn't a moral accusation — it's just how the industry typically works. But it doesn't have to.
Why we decided to do it differently.
We're an indie studio. We build software we'd want to use ourselves — tools that are private, lifetime-licensed, and built with care. That same philosophy extends to how we price things. We don't have investors to satisfy. We don't have quarterly targets to hit. We're not trying to extract maximum revenue from every corner of the globe. We want people to be able to use what we build — regardless of where they were born. A student in Vietnam, a developer in Nigeria, a designer in Argentina — if our software is useful to them, they should be able to afford it.
How it works.
When you visit any of our product pages, we automatically detect your country and apply the appropriate discount — no coupon needed, no form to fill out, no questions asked. The discount is applied transparently, with a message explaining exactly how much you save and why. If you're in a country not on our list, you pay the standard price. If you have a promo code on top, it stacks. It's that simple.
A word on the bigger picture.
There's a pattern in the tech industry that bothers us. Large platforms and software companies — many of them extraordinarily profitable — use their market position to charge what the market will bear, everywhere. They talk about 'accessibility' and 'democratizing technology' in press releases, then charge the same $99/month to a startup in San Francisco and a freelancer in Nairobi. We're not naive — we're a small business and we need revenue to keep building. But there's a difference between sustainable pricing and deliberate extraction. We'd rather have more people using our software at a fair price than fewer people paying a price that doesn't reflect their reality. The goal is to build tools people love — not to maximize what we can take from each transaction.
Try our software — at a price that makes sense for you.
All three of our products support PPP pricing automatically. No code needed. Just visit the page.
Browse our software →BackDrop_ · ReelNox Studio · TimePeekAbout
Sublimearts.io is an indie studio building Windows software and websites. All products are lifetime-licensed, one-time payment, no subscription.
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