Geolocation-Based Pricing & Currency Localization

Show the right price in the right currency, without asking the user.

If you sell to more than one country, a USD-only price page leaves money on the table. European buyers see “$19” and mentally add 20% VAT uncertainty. Emerging-market buyers convert in their head, hit sticker shock, and bounce. Localizing price + currency at page-load lifts conversion by 15–35% in most B2B SaaS A/B tests.

The business problem

Hard-coded pricing in one currency is a conversion tax in every other market. The cheapest fix is to:

1. Detect the visitor’s country on their first request.
2. Map that country to its currency + local pricing tier.
3. Render the price in-line, before the pricing page paints.

IP geolocation makes step 1 cost ~0,0001 EUR per visitor.

Implementation

1. Server-side (recommended — no layout shift)

// Next.js middleware (Edge runtime) or Express middleware
import { ipgeoLookup } from "./lib/ipgeo.js";

export async function middleware(req) {
  const ip = req.headers.get("x-forwarded-for")?.split(",")[0] || req.ip;
  const geo = await ipgeoLookup(ip);
  req.geo = geo; // { country_code, currency, is_eu, ... }
  return NextResponse.next({ request: { headers: req.headers } });
}

Then in your pricing page:

function PricingTable({ geo }) {
  const pricing = getPricingForCountry(geo.country_code); // your mapping
  return (
    <>
      <p>Showing prices in {pricing.currency} for {geo.country_name}</p>
      <p><a href="?currency=USD">Switch to USD →</a></p>
      {/* price cards */}
    </>
  );
}

2. Client-side (fallback for static sites)

<script>
  fetch("https://api.ipgeo.10b.app/v1/lookup/me", {
    headers: { Authorization: "Bearer pub_live_…" }
  })
  .then(r => r.json())
  .then(geo => {
    const curr = geo.currency || "USD";
    document.querySelectorAll("[data-price]").forEach(el => {
      el.textContent = formatMoney(el.dataset.price, curr, geo.country_code);
    });
  });
</script>

Note: client-side lookup exposes your API key to the browser. Use a public/restricted key with IP-lookup-only scope + referrer whitelisting. Never embed a server key.

Why IP Geo API for this use case

• Currency code included on every response (ISO 4217 — “EUR”, “USD”, “INR”, “BRL”, …). No second API call needed.
• EU membership flag (is_eu: true/false) — critical for VAT calculation and EU-only promotions.
• Language hint (languages: ["nl", "en"]) — pair with currency to also switch the marketing copy.
• Timezone — show time-sensitive offers (“Ends in 4h”) in the visitor’s local time without JS timezone-detection quirks.
• Sub-40 ms median latency (EU) — fast enough to run inside edge middleware before TTFB.

Pricing math for a pricing page

A 10K-visitor/mo SaaS pricing page → € 0. A 1M/mo high-traffic marketing site → € 29. If geo-pricing lifts conversion 15% and your ARPU is € 50, that’s € 7,500 extra MRR for € 29/mo spend (break-even at 1 extra customer).

Honest trade-offs

• VPN users see the “wrong” country. Always show a currency-switcher link (“Showing in EUR. Switch to USD →”). Users on a US VPN in Amsterdam will still convert if they can override.
• Purchasing-power parity (PPP) pricing is a policy decision, not a technical one. IP geolocation tells you where the user is — it doesn’t tell you what they should pay. If you discount emerging markets, you need abuse controls (device binding, card-country match) because a €15 Brazil-tier price is VPN bait.
• Don’t A/B test currency on the same user. Pick a rule, show the same price on reload. Price-flickering destroys trust faster than any other UX bug.

Related use cases

• Geo-personalization / content — ./geo-personalization.md
• Compliance / geoblocking — ./geoblocking-compliance.md
• Visitor analytics — ./visitor-analytics.md

Get started

• Free tier: 1 000 lookups / day → /pricing
• Add geo-pricing to your marketing site in under 20 minutes with the snippets above.

Sign up at https://ipgeo.10b.app/pricing.