AppStoreConnect API - How to set pricing

From the documentation,

Overview Use appPrices to retrieve the price tier that corresponds to your app’s App Store price and the date the price went into effect. This resource is read-only.  To set a price for your app using App Store Connect API, create a relationship between the apps resource and appPrices. For more information, see Set a price for your app.

Set a Price links to the use of AppStoreConnect page. I understand that API is just the AppstoreConnect interface, not a way to set the price programmatically.

I understand how to use the web interface, but I need to be able to do this programmatically.

According to: https://developer.apple.com/app-store-connect/api/ this should be possible.

Under Pricing and Availability it clearly states:

Set your app’s pricing and territory availability. Access reference information, such as a list of available App Store territories, app price tiers, and proceeds for currencies that the App Store supports.

So Is it possible to set a price using the API, and if so what endpoint should I be sending to?

I still feel like this is an important question as the documentation is not clear and it does not match the capabilities of the API.

More importantly the ability to adjust pricing on an app via the AppStoreConnect API would help small developers to manage their products. The web interface for AppStoreConnect is horribly slow, poorly architected and non-intuitive. An API interface would be a much more reasonable approach for dealing with pricing.

As a followup to my last reply about the AppStoreConnect web interface being poorly architected. I think it's important to point out that the Pricing and Availability portion of the site does not state the Current Price of the app. Kinda seems like a good place for it though.

It also seems that the API for fetching the price of an app has changed and it is now returning a 409 for what was a reliable request. Maybe that's related?

While trying to debug the above 409 response (which is an undocumented response) I discovered this:

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/appstoreconnectapi/add_a_scheduled_price_change_to_an_app

On this page it describes a way to add a price change to an app as a scheduled event. The documentation is incomplete however because it does not show a sample of the POST payload. Instead it links to the 'object' that is to be sent but that documentation is a rabbit hole of objects that are documented very poorly as well. An example payload would be a much better way to document this call.

However, on that page there is a large red box with a warning that says, "If you use this endpoint to add a scheduled price change to your app, you can’t use AppPriceInlineCreate to change your app’s price."

So YES there is a way to change your app's price in the API. You do so by using the poorly documented AppPriceInlineCreate object.

But the question remains, what is the endpoint for making this request, and what exactly is Value: appPrices which is a required part of AppPriceInlineCreate

You aren’t the first to post here about this API being over-complicated and poorly documented - though most have been asking about IAP pricing, rather than apps. (See the “App Store Connect API” forum tag for more posts.)

Personally, I’m hoping that there will be an easy-to-use utility on Github before I need to deal with this myself!

Still looking to hear from Apple on the documentation. I realize the changes are a month old but the documentation should have been part of the development process (DocC) so it's strange that only pieces of the public Docs have been updated. If I have missed something in the documentation, please let me know.

Can someone from Apple please let me know if this section of the API is currently in flux? It is amazing that the documentation is not keeping up and that I can't get an answer to (what I believed to be) a simple question.

I know I'm not the only one interested in an answer here, there are currently 387 people watching me shout into the void trying to find an answer.

For those watching this thread (463 of you), thank you for hanging in there. As you can see there is no clarification from Apple so far.

I would file a 'Feedback' but I've been told by a former Apple employee that unless it's filed internally it's largely ignored. That's why those of you with a rep are asked to provide the Feedback ID to the rep, so they can actually get eyes on it.

Apparently they treat the forums the same way. One ****** answer so far on this thread from Apple and then silence. Thank goodness for StackOverflow am I right?

So to recap:

• the API appears to be in flux.

• It's not clear if the API supports setting pricing for an app

• It seems that it is possible to schedule price changes for an app but that is not entirely clear either

• The AppPriceInlineCreate object appears to be the trick to setting a price, but there is no documentation on it's use that I have been able to find

• Documentation for AppPriceInlineCreate is really bad

• Apple's scheduled pricing changes happen on UTC time (in case you guys didn't know that one)

I'm 6 months into trying to solve this problem and 4 months of that is waiting for a coherent answer from Apple.

Well we just finished WWDC 2023 and there were some updates announced for the AppStore API and pricing but nothing related to setting individual prices, the documentation has not been updated and there is no additional information related to the AppPriceInlineCreate call or the AppPrices object is. There is also no information about what endpoint the AppPriceInlineCreate call should be sent to.

I know there were several session where we were told that Apple Developers actually read these threads and the Feedback forms that we submit but I have to say that I am not seeing any evidence of that.

@Claude31 I'm guessing your initial copy/paste of my question is the only answer I'm going to get on this entire 5 month long reply marathon. Or now that WWDC is over is there a chance that you might re-visit this thread, get up to speed and have a better answer?

I just discovered another feature of the API. The recently updated developer agreement blocks access to parts of the AppStoreConnect API until you accept it.

More specifically, the API continues to work as expected but for the portions affected by the agreement errors are returned. The response from the API for the affected endpoints does explain why the call was rejected, but the rejection response is not described in the documentation so you have to receive it to know what it is.

Kinda makes it hard to react when you can't anticipate the response.

Still no word from Apple on setting individual pricing. If anyone has suggestions I'm still looking for a solution.

Ok, how about this. Is there a way for me to report incomplete DocC in the online documentation or even ask questions? Sometimes the DocC content is vague and/or confusing and in other places (as noted above) it just doesn't exist.

I'm not going to file a 'Feedback Request' for a tool to report bad DocC to Apple, consider this my feedback and if this is a feature request please fill out the form for me and respond with the tracking number.

I'd also like to assist Apple's developers in improving their documentation by providing links to some helpful videos concerning DocC:

https://developer.apple.com/wwdc22/110369

https://developer.apple.com/wwdc23/10244

There is also a guy named Ethan that works at Apple that could help your developers to augment their documentation so I and the other 670+ developers looking for the answer to this question can find results without writing books of responses in hope of getting someone at Apple to respond.

Still no word from Apple on setting individual pricing. If anyone has suggestions I'm still looking for a solution.

I wrote up how I set IAP pricing here:

https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/732527

You want to set the app's price, right? That's not the same, but maybe my notes will give you some clues.

Is there a way for me to report incomplete DocC in the online documentation

File a bug, ha ha.

or even ask questions?

You can ask here. Or Stack Overflow.

I really appreciate you sharing that link, I will take a look for sure.

I get that Stack Overflow is WAY better than here. (Obviously if you read this far) The point is that I can't find the solution on SO, and I can't find the solution in the docs even though there are hints of it.

To be honest it's just sad. And that's putting it nicely.

Thanks again for the link, I'll check it out. Like you said, that is IAP not store pricing but there might be a clue there.

Yeah, that's not quite the same. I wish it was though.

The request sent from the AppStoreConnect website to set store prices is a PATCH request and it sends the full schedule every time you add a single scheduled price change. (Instead of just sending the one change you create). That's why they've limited how far out you can schedule price changes, it takes too long for their servers to process the request if you go over a certain number of price changes in a single request.

It would be so much nicer if I could just schedule the changes on my end and send single requests saying "change the current price to X right now". It would be one change, it would be a single call and some date math on my end.

1.1k watchers on this question and still no response from Apple other than the copypasta of my original question. Really disappointing to be honest, do better Apple!

I'm still looking for a way to do this if anyone has any new suggestions.

I will say that this thread right here is THE reason why Stack Overflow is a much better resource. Given how responsive Apple has been here (and on other threads) I can't imagine they do any better at reading the feedback forms that they always ask to be filled out. It's probably the equivalent of dev>null

Ok, now it's getting ridiculous. If we check the existing AppStoreConnect Documentation that I've referenced many times already (here) the entire thing has been deprecated.

BUT following the link to (Set a price) takes you to new information on setting a price that includes a link titled "Learn how to set a price for your app with the App Store Connect API" and that link takes you back to ...

The first link that has everything deprecated and nothing about setting a price. 🤯

The UI for setting prices manually in the web interface has been updated and it is probably the worst it's ever been.

• It will show you scheduled prices changes but won't tell you what the price is for that change unless you click on it.
• The calendar is still "stupid", meaning it doesn't default to the next available day after the last scheduled change so you can easily goof up your schedule if you have to set a bunch of changes.
• You can only schedule one change at a time. So if I want all of my Saturdays to be free I have to do that 52 times for a year then go back and do another 52 changes to set the price back to paid. (Then you start getting 500 errors from the server because it can't handle that "large" of a request)
• The web interface now uses a POST to send the pricing updates, but every time you send a scheduled price change it sends the entire list of scheduled price changes to the server, not just the one you are setting. So every time you add a price change the request gets bigger. (The JSON format is pretty bad, you could cut the payload by half by simply cleaning up the payload)

Here's the thing, all I'm asking for is an API call where I can set the current price of my app effective immediately and with a simple "price=tierX" payload.

I don't want to deal with the horrible web interface and I don't think it's too much to ask because the API call is already in place for the web UI, it just needs to be made available through the ASC API.

@Claude31 Maybe you can clarify this for me.

Looking at this documentation https://developer.apple.com/documentation/appstoreconnectapi/add_a_scheduled_price_change_to_an_app

It clearly specifies that this call is a POST yet sending a POST results in a 405 Method Not Allowed. It also specifies in the url that this is an API v1 request, but it is flagged as API 2.3+

The documentation on this page has been updated since I last referenced it but now it is very unclear, can you clarify which method should be used on this call and if the URL is correct?

Also, are there any auth changes between v1 and v2.3 of the API?

I also noticed that the response from the API that returns a list of apps for an account changed yesterday afternoon. It was a breaking change in the JSON response for codables and I'm surprised this was done within the same version (API v1) and not for a newer version and a different endpoint.

Is there a separate URL set for versions of the API or can we expect that current endpoints will randomly return responses from newer versions of the API as those roll out?

As a follow up to the post above linking to the documentation for the appPriceSchedules API, a request that follows the documentation as written results in the following response:

{
	"errors": [{
		"status": "405",
		"code": "METHOD_NOT_ALLOWED",
		"title": "The request method is not valid for the resource path.",
		"detail": "The request method used for this request is not valid for the resource path. Please consult the documentation."
	}]
}

In an email thread with Apple about pricing I was told that a "paid download" is determined by "the price of the app at the time the payment goes through". I dismissed it as oddly worded because obviously when I purchase the app in order to download it the payment should go through at that point in time.

But now I'm curious, if I download an app when it is NOT free, but my payment doesn't go through until a time when the app IS free, does that count as a paid or free download and what is the user charged for the app?

When someone checks again on this thread could they please clarify this along with the above questions?

I realize it's a tough series of questions so while you're thinking about it (@Apple) can you also let me know why I am encountering so many 500 errors on calls that have worked fine for years? The errors seem to clear up after a while, but I'm not sure what the suggested delay should be for retrying a call that receives a 500. Currently I'm using 30m, does that sound reasonable to you guys?

Ok, I'm now noticing 404's coming back from an API call that has worked for years now. Specifically this is the error:

"errors" : [ { "id" : "90b84655-8c76-4647-b59c-e3bf357793ef", "status" : "404", "code" : "PATH_ERROR", "title" : "The URL path is not valid", "detail" : "The resource 'v1/appPriceSchedules' does not exist" } ]

Now I know this error has to be false because in the documentation here if you view the sample response and look at "manualPrices" it has the exact URL that I am calling (with a different appID of course)

"manualPrices" : { "links" : { "self" : "https://api.appstoreconnect.apple.com/v1/appPriceSchedules/6447402192/relationships/manualPrices", "related" : "https://api.appstoreconnect.apple.com/v1/appPriceSchedules/6447402192/manualPrices" } },

So can you explain why I'm now getting a 404 for this? Did something break on your end?

Also, why are all of the deprecated endpoints in the API (that are specifically "v1") being replaced with endpoints that also contain "v1" in the URL? Best practice would be to make a "v2" for the new endpoint, then deprecate, then remove the "v1". I really hope you guys aren't just actively "upgrading" the v1 API in place because that's beginner level server development and it's a HUGE pain for your API users.

Well I've been posting questions on this thread for over a year now with no input from Apple. @Apple, you do know that the ability to change pricing on our apps is part of our developer agreement right? And you do realize that with each iteration on your web portal you reduce that ability?

I can show that by not allowing me to set my pricing in the same way I did two years ago my monthly income on my apps has been reduced by $250. We are only 4 months into the year and I suspect that by the end of the year the financial impact will be greater. The reason I am trying to resolve the issue with the API is so I don't have to use the web interface which has degraded over the past year

Now that all the cards are on the table here, how about we discuss this API issue as I have described in the above 2 pages of posts.