Every iPhone 18 Pro price estimate circulating right now is a guess, and the guesses don’t agree with each other. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman puts the likely increase at around $100, which would take the base iPhone 18 Pro from the iPhone 17 Pro’s $1,099 starting price to roughly $1,199. Analyst Jeff Pu has published a very different number: $250 to $300. The Wall Street Journal has reportedly floated a starting price closer to $1,299, possibly $1,399. Three credible sources, three different phones, same launch. If you’re trying to decide whether to buy an iPhone this month or wait for the announcement, that spread is the actual problem, not just the price itself.
Why the Estimates Are So Far Apart
The underlying cause everyone agrees on is memory. DRAM and NAND flash prices have climbed sharply over the past year and a half, driven largely by AI data centers buying up the same chip supply that phone manufacturers need. Reporting on the iPhone 18 Pro’s bill of materials suggests the 256GB model could cost Apple roughly 38% more to build than last year’s equivalent, and some estimates put memory prices five to seven times higher than where they sat at the start of 2025. On top of the memory squeeze, the iPhone 18 Pro is expected to move to a 2nm manufacturing process at TSMC, which costs meaningfully more per chip than the 3nm process used in the iPhone 17 Pro.
Where the analysts diverge is how much of that cost increase Apple decides to pass on versus absorb. Gurman’s lower estimate assumes Apple eats a large share of the increase to stay close to Samsung and Google, both of which already raised their own flagship prices by roughly $100 this cycle. The higher estimates assume Apple passes more of the actual 38%+ cost increase straight through to the retail price. Both are plausible reads of the same underlying cost data; they just make different bets about Apple’s margin strategy, which nobody outside Apple actually knows yet.
What This Means If You Need a Phone Now
If your current phone is failing you today, waiting on a rumor spread this wide is a bad trade. The iPhone 17 Pro is a known price, a known phone, and by the time the iPhone 18 Pro actually ships, retailers typically drop 17 Pro pricing further as they clear inventory. Buying the current generation now, while the price is fixed and verified rather than speculative, is the lower-risk move if your phone situation is genuinely urgent.
If you’re comparing new against used or refurbished to save money regardless of which generation you land on, checking battery health as its own number separate from cosmetic condition matters more than the model year — a point worth keeping in mind whether you’re buying an iPhone 17 Pro today or an 18 Pro next year.
What This Means If You Can Wait
If your current phone still works and you’re shopping mainly because the 18 Pro looks like a real upgrade, the smart move is to wait for the announcement itself rather than pre-committing based on any single analyst’s number. Apple’s iPhone event typically lands within weeks of when these pricing leaks start circulating, which means the real number — not a $100-to-$300 range — will be public soon. Buying early based on the optimistic $100 estimate and getting hit with a $300 reality is a worse outcome than a few extra weeks of waiting.
The Financing Angle Apple Is Already Leaning On
Regardless of which estimate turns out right, reporting suggests Apple is planning to lean harder on the Apple Upgrade Program and carrier financing to soften the sticker shock of a higher launch price. That’s worth factoring into your own math: a $200 higher retail price spread over 24 monthly installments is roughly $8 a month, which reads very differently than the same $200 as a lump sum. If financing is something you’re open to anyway, the size of the headline price increase matters less than the size of the monthly payment it turns into.
Samsung and Google Already Set the Precedent
This isn’t the first flagship price increase this year. Samsung and Google have already pushed their own top-tier phones up by roughly $100 in this cycle, and neither saw a collapse in demand as a result — a signal Apple is reportedly watching closely. That precedent is part of why Gurman’s lower estimate treats a $100 increase as the more likely outcome: Apple rarely deviates far from what its two biggest Android competitors have already tested in the market without consequence. If you’re weighing whether a price jump will change what a flagship phone costs across the whole market, the answer based on this cycle so far is: a little, not dramatically.
Apple Has Done This Before, Just Not to iPhones
iPhone pricing has actually been comparatively stable for the past few years, but Apple has already run this exact playbook elsewhere in its lineup. Reporting on this cycle notes that Apple previously raised prices on Macs and iPads by around 23% as component costs climbed, well above anything currently being floated for the iPhone 18 Pro. That matters for two reasons. First, it shows Apple is willing to pass a meaningfully larger increase through when costs justify it, which is part of why the higher $250-to-$300 estimates aren’t far-fetched even though they sound aggressive next to Gurman’s $100 figure. Second, and more reassuring for iPhone buyers specifically: the iPhone lineup is Apple’s highest-volume, most competitively-scrutinized product line, and it’s the one line where Apple has historically absorbed cost increases rather than fully passing them on, precisely because Samsung and Google pricing is watched so closely. The Mac and iPad precedent sets a ceiling on what’s plausible, not a floor on what’s likely for the phone specifically.
Trade-In Value Timing Matters as Much as Sticker Price
If you’re planning to trade in your current phone toward whichever new model you eventually buy, timing that trade-in is a second lever that’s easy to ignore while focused on the headline price. Trade-in values for the outgoing generation typically hold fairly steady right up until a new model is officially announced, then drop within days as resale platforms and carriers reprice their offers around the new lineup. If you’re leaning toward buying now rather than waiting, locking in your trade-in quote before the announcement — even if you don’t complete the purchase immediately — can be worth more than any pre-announcement discount you’d find on the new phone itself. Conversely, if you’re waiting for the 18 Pro specifically, expect your current phone’s trade-in value to already reflect the new lineup’s existence by the time you’re ready to buy, which is a real cost that rarely gets factored into the “wait for the real price” calculation.
Deciding Without the Final Number
The honest version of “should I buy now or wait” comes down to two questions, not the exact dollar figure. First: does your current phone need replacing today, or is this a want-to-upgrade situation? Second: is the gap between $1,199 and $1,399 — the full range currently being reported — enough money to change your decision either way? If a $200 swing wouldn’t change whether you’d still buy the phone, the uncertainty doesn’t matter much and you can simply wait for the real number out of curiosity rather than necessity. If that swing genuinely matters to your budget, that’s the strongest reason to hold off buying anything new until Apple announces real pricing, rather than committing to a decision built on three analysts’ disagreeing guesses.
*Source: Apple iPhone 18 Pro Pricing Leak: Why A Price Hike Is Likely, Ubergizmo, August 2026. Additional analyst estimates corroborated via MacRumors’ coverage of Apple’s planned iPhone price increase.*