The cheapest countries to buy the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra

The Samsung Galaxy S25 series looks set to maintain the brand’s stellar reputation in the Android phone market, and the Galaxy S25 Ultra is the jewel in that crown. The biggest and most powerful of the Samsung siblings will be high on many wish lists, but the $1,299.99 retail price plus tax is no small outlay. That’s the price in the US, but what if we told you that the flagship device was cheaper in other countries? With each nation having a different asking price for it, we decided to look into the cheapest place in the world to buy the Galaxy S25 Ultra.

We could have run this comparison on all three devices in the Galaxy S25 series, but it’s not necessary to give you the picture. Samsung always prices the three handsets in similar proportions relative to each other in each country. In other words, if the Galaxy S25 Ultra is very cheap in a particular nation, the Galaxy S25 Plus will be similarly cheap compared to other regions.

What’s the cheapest place to buy the Galaxy S25 Ultra?

We looked up the local price of the Galaxy S25 Ultra on the official online store for all of the countries in which we could find it available. To compare them, we converted each price into the equivalent amount of USD at the exchange rate on the day of publication. The results are in the table below, running from cheapest to most expensive.

You might immediately notice that the price listed for the United States isn’t the retail price you see on the site, as we’ve added an approximate 10% sales tax. We want to conduct a practical comparison based on how much a US resident would pay for the device, either at home or abroad. The upside to this from an American perspective is that every other price on the table is the most you would pay in that country, as you don’t need to pay sales tax if you’re a visitor. In some cases, the price shown might include the sales tax, meaning you could be eligible to claim a bit more back at the airport when you leave.

The cheapest place to buy the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra is South Korea — fitting as Samsung’s home country. The price of the phone there is equivalent to $1,184, which is $150 cheaper than Canada in second place. The device is only a few bucks more in Australia and Singapore.

Even with the sales tax added, the US is still among the cheaper countries to buy the Galaxy S25 Ultra, with Americans paying around $250 more than their South Korean counterparts. For non-US residents, buying in the States and claiming back the sales tax would make America the second cheapest place to get the phone.

Turkey is the most expensive place to buy the Galaxy S25 Ultra by some distance. We’ve conducted several of these comparisons in the past, and Turkey is almost always the worst place to buy high-end phones, at least in US dollar terms. Brazil and Uruguay are the next most expensive countries, although it’s worth noting that you can currently only buy the 512GB phone configuration in those nations.

More than the position of each country in the table, you might be curious to know why there can be such a huge difference across the globe. It’s the same phone, but people in Turkey are paying almost twice as much as the residents of South Korea. We’ll explain some reasons for this at the end of the article.

If you see the Galaxy S25 Ultra being offered well below these prices, this should raise a red flag for you. The premium phone has just been unveiled and isn’t even available to buy yet, so it will be a few weeks or months before you’ll likely see any significant cash discounts.

That isn’t to say you can’t find deals on the latest Galaxy lineup. Samsung offers promotional launch offers, including a free storage upgrade, which is effectively a cash discount on the larger capacity variants of the devices. There are also trade-in offers from the manufacturer and carrier deals that might even land you the Galaxy S25 for free, but these are all based on meeting certain criteria. Any option like this might suit you if you’re happy with the terms and conditions.

The time that you should be suspicious is if you see a large and no-strings-attached discount on the Galaxy S25 Ultra from a third-party seller, especially in an unfamiliar country to you. It’s possible that you haven’t understood the deal, but some vendors in the world will attempt to con or mislead you. The device could be reconditioned, stolen, or even a fake model, which looks just like the Samsung phone but is made of cheaper materials and has far inferior components and software. The best way to avoid such situations is to only buy from Samsung or reputable outlets.

Should I buy the Galaxy S25 Ultra from another country?

The prices in some countries may look tempting at first, and you’re free to act on them as you see fit. Our view is always that buying abroad purely from a savings perspective is rarely worth doing. You might be passing through South Korea and decide to pick up the phone, but you mya then be faced with an unfamiliar software configuration compared to the US. More than that, any warranty that comes with the device is going to be difficult to use once you’re back on American soil. Besides, it’s common in the US to see $100 or $200 price drops on the Galaxy S line within a month or two, so a bit of patience at home can save you as much as international arbitrage buying.

One thing you’ll certainly have realized is that it isn’t worth traveling from the US to most of these countries purely to save money on the phone. You’ll have spent ten times the potential savings by the time you’ve booked your flight tickets.

When you think about it, it would be strange if the Galaxy S25 Ultra were the same price in every country. The asking price is largely based on the cost to Samsung of getting the phone onto the shelves. There will be some common global expenses, like the price of the research and development stages, but many other costs will be specific to each nation. These include things like import taxes and duties, local labor and logistics costs, and so on.

This is one of the reasons why the phone is so expensive in Turkey, as the country has high import taxes, a hefty value-added tax (VAT), and other fees imposed on electronics.

Samsung will take all of these costs into account when it sets the price for each region, and the calculation won’t stop there.  The manufacturer is in this game for profit, which is more complicated than just sticking 20% on top of the expenditure. Economic whizkids will be looking at the spending power and disposal income of residents in each place to determine how Samsung can maximize the bottom line. Put all of this together, and the final price to be charged for the device will be completely different in each country.

We also have to acknowledge the shortcomings in our comparison. Converting all of the local prices to USD allows us to measure them against each other, but it also leaves us at the mercy of the foreign exchange currency markets. These exchange rates fluctuate against each other quite significantly, meaning two prices that might have been similar in USD a few months ago could be quite far apart today. We’ll update the table in the coming months, and you can be sure that the running order will have changed for this reason alone.