---
title: Your first pricing matrix
nav: Quickstart
description: Connect Google Play, import a catalogue, and read a full regional matrix. Roughly fifteen minutes, no store writes.
group: start-here
order: 2
status: shipped
updated: 2026-09-21
---

This walks from an empty workspace to a complete regional pricing matrix. Nothing in it writes to your store.

You will need a Google Play Console account you administer, and the ability to create a service account in the linked Google Cloud project.

## 1. Create the service account

In Google Cloud, create a service account and download its JSON key. In Play Console, under **Users and permissions**, invite that service account's email and grant it access to the apps you want to analyze.

Grant the monetization permission, not only _View app information_. A read-only grant is enough to list your subscriptions but **not** enough to read Google's own converted price baselines, and the matrix will show a blank baseline column with a permission error. See [Google Play](/guidelines/google-play) for the exact symptom.

Permission changes take a few minutes to propagate. If you grant access and immediately connect, expect to re-sync once.

## 2. Connect the store

In **Connections**, add a Google Play connection and paste the service-account JSON.

The key is encrypted and handed to a separate credential vault immediately. The application database stores an opaque handle, never the key, and never the service-account email beyond the moment it is needed. See [Credential custody](/guidelines/credential-custody).

The connection is validated before it is saved. If the credentials cannot authenticate, you find out now rather than at the first sync.

## 3. Import an application

Add the package name of an app you granted access to. Paywall Parity then imports:

- subscriptions, base plans, and their billing periods;
- one-time products and purchase options;
- offers on both;
- current regional prices and availability for every market the store lists;
- Google's own converted price baseline for each plan.

This is a read. It changes nothing in Play Console.

## 4. Read the matrix

Open the application. Choose a product and a billing period once, above the matrix — that context applies to every row beneath it.

Each market row shows three numbers, and the difference between them is the entire point:

| Column             | What it is                                                                           |
| ------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| **Current**        | What your store charges there today.                                                 |
| **Store baseline** | What Google's own conversion would charge, from your US price.                       |
| **Parity target**  | What Paywall Parity recommends, from purchasing-power data and your chosen strategy. |

A blank baseline column is a reported condition, not an empty feature. The matrix says why — most often a permission gap, or a plan with no US price to convert from.

## 5. Change the strategy and watch the target move

Switch between Conservative, Balanced, and Growth. Every target recalculates, and the explanation panel on each market shows the factor that produced it.

If the three strategies disagree wildly for a market, that market's economic inputs are unreliable — which is exactly what the confidence score is telling you. See [Confidence](/guidelines/confidence).

## 6. Review recommendations

Material differences become recommendations, ordered by evidence-weighted impact. Approving one creates **no** store write; it marks the change as decided so it can be staged later.

See [Reviewing recommendations](/guidelines/review-recommendations).

## What you have not done

You have not changed a price. You have not scheduled anything. Publishing is a separate, explicitly gated path described in [Staging and publishing](/guidelines/dry-run-and-publish), and it is off by default.