Should You Price Creator Offers at $19 or $20?

For most creator offers, $19 will outsell $20 because shoppers read prices from left to right and register the first digit as the price's size, making $19 feel closer to $10 than to $20. The gap matters most on lower-priced, impulse-style offers; it shrinks on offers where a buyer is already weighing value carefully.

This isn't a matter of taste, but it also isn't settled folklore. Nine-ending pricing has been tested in randomized retail field experiments since Eric Anderson and Duncan Simester published three of them in Quantitative Marketing and Economics in 2003 (Anderson & Simester 2003), and re-tested in a preregistered meta-analysis of 69 studies and 40,541 participants published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology in 2024 (Troll et al. 2024). Below is what that body of evidence supports — and where it stops — for a $19-or-$20 decision on a Paid Private Question or a Creator Service.

Does a $19 price actually outsell an identical $20 price?

Yes. In randomized field experiments, a nine-ending price raised demand over a lower round price for an identical item. Anderson and Simester manipulated price endings at women's apparel catalogs and reported that a $9 ending increased demand in all three of their experiments, with the largest gains on items shoppers had never seen priced before.

The most-quoted single result comes from a mail-order women's clothing catalog, and the authors describe the lift in their own words:

"Yet in a study the authors did involving a women's clothing catalog, they increased demand by a third just by changing the price of a dress from $34 to $39." — Eric T. Anderson and Duncan Simester, "Mind Your Pricing Cues," Harvard Business Review 81(9), September 2003

Two details keep that number honest. The $39 version was the higher of the two prices, so the gain was not a discount effect, and "a third" is the authors' own summary figure for one catalog test rather than an average lift you should expect. The primary peer-reviewed paper behind that research programme reports the pattern more conservatively: across three field experiments, "use of a $9 price ending increased demand in all three experiments" and "the increase in demand was stronger for new items than for items that the retailer had sold in previous years" (Anderson & Simester). For creators, the "new items" caveat is the useful part: a brand-new offer a fan has never seen priced is exactly where a 9-ending does the most work.

Why does the brain treat $19 as so much cheaper than $20?

Because people encode multi-digit prices from left to right, the leftmost digit anchors how large a price feels, even when the real gap is one dollar. Manoj Thomas and Vicki Morwitz named that pattern the left-digit effect and documented it across five experiments in the Journal of Consumer Research (Thomas & Morwitz 2005).

"Because we process data from left to right, the encoded magnitude of $2.99 could, at least in some situations, be significantly less than that of $3.00." — Manoj Thomas and Vicki Morwitz, summarizing their Journal of Consumer Research study on the left-digit effect, in NYU Stern Business

Economist Avner Strulov-Shlain structurally estimated the size of that distortion and found that consumers respond to a one-cent increase from a 99-ending price as if it were more than a 20-cent increase (Strulov-Shlain, "More Than a Penny's Worth: Left-Digit Bias and Firm Pricing," Review of Economic Studies 90(5), 2023). The same paper estimates that retailers underreact to left-digit bias and forgo 1% to 4% of potential gross profits as a result (Strulov-Shlain 2023). Most sellers underuse the effect rather than overusing it.

Does a round number like $20 ever outperform $19?

Sometimes, but the case for round prices is thinner than pricing folklore suggests. A round price removes the discount signal a 9-ending sends, which can help when a fan is judging credibility rather than hunting a bargain. What a round price does not reliably do is make an offer look higher quality.

The preregistered meta-analysis of just-below versus round prices — 69 studies, 362 effect sizes and 40,541 participants — found that just-below prices tend to increase purchase decisions while showing no reliable advantage for round prices on perceived quality (Troll et al.). A 2025 paper in Frontiers in Behavioral Economics puts the point bluntly:

"a recent meta-analysis suggests that this so-called 'quality image' effect might be non-existent and not different from zero" — Alfio Ventura, Eve Sarah Troll, Meikel Soliman and David D. Loschelder, "Round, just-below, or precise prices? Cultural differences in the prevalence of price endings in E-commerce," Frontiers in Behavioral Economics, 2025

Round prices are nevertheless normal, not contrarian: that same 2025 study extracted 9,200 prices from 23 countries on one international online marketplace and found 51.7% were round, 25.3% just-below and 23.0% precise (Ventura et al.). In plain terms: $20 doesn't automatically make an offer look premium — it removes the "everything's on sale" signal that $19 sends. Use $20 when you want to look settled, not because it is proven to raise perceived quality.

Does charm pricing even apply to a paid service, not a physical product?

Yes — charm pricing has been tested outside retail shelves. In a field study at a pizzeria-grill, 1,271 customers were observed ordering, and a target menu item was chosen significantly more often when its price ended in nine than when it ended in zero. A restaurant order is a service purchase, not a packaged good on a shelf.

Nicolas Guéguen and colleagues lowered one pizza's price by a single centime so that it ended in nine, and reported a significant increase in how often diners chose it. That is direct evidence the mechanism travels from goods to services, which is stronger footing than the older habit of asserting the transfer from retail data alone.

It is not, however, an unlimited licence. A restaurant menu still shows several priced items side by side, so the pizza result comes from a comparison setting. A fan reading one creator's page is usually not lining your $19 up against a competitor's price. Treat the left-digit effect as documented for retail goods and for at least one priced service menu, and as untested specifically on one-off creator offers — likely present, probably smaller.

$19 vs. $20 vs. a round $25 — which fits which offer?

No published study has tested price endings on creator offers specifically, so the table below is practical guidance derived from the cited research rather than measured results. The rule it applies is simple: use a 9-ending where the evidence is strongest — new, low-consideration, impulse purchases — and a round number where a buyer is deliberating.

None of these formats change what the offer includes — only how the number is read before a fan decides to pay, which is a different question from whether every fan should see the same number at all.

Should every offer on your page end in a 9?

No. The research supports 9-endings as a reliable lever on unfamiliar, low-consideration items, not as a rule for every price on a page. Anderson and Simester found the demand gain was weaker for items shoppers already knew, and reported evidence that 9-endings are less effective when a retailer also uses "Sale" cues, so the effect is contextual.

Their paper concludes that "$9-endings may be more effective when customers have limited information, which may in turn help to explain why retailers do not use $9 price endings on every item" (Anderson & Simester). Applying a 9-ending to a $500 brand collaboration quote is the mismatch case: a buyer evaluating a large, considered purchase has plenty of information and reads the ending as a gimmick rather than a bargain.

Where the split falls on FanBell: a Paid Private Question is usually the lowest-friction offer on a creator's page, because each offer carries its own creator-set price and turnaround and the fan pays upfront by card with no account to create (how it works) — a natural fit for a 9-ending. A larger Creator Service with a multi-day turnaround is closer to a considered purchase, where a round number can read as more confident.

How should you actually decide between $19 and $20 for your own offer?

Decide from what the fan is comparing, not from a rule of thumb. If a fan is asking "is this worth it right now," a 9-ending nudges toward yes, because the evidence is strongest on new, low-consideration purchases. If a fan is asking "do I trust this person," a round number avoids sending a discount signal.

These four anchors are practical guidance derived from the studies cited above, not separately tested findings:

• New or first-time offer: lean 9-ending — Anderson and Simester found the demand gain was stronger for new items than for items buyers already had a reference price for (Quantitative Marketing and Economics 1(1)); if the offer itself is a one-off you've never scoped before, pricing a custom request you've never done walks through setting that first number.
• Offer you plan to raise later: a round number is easier to bump ($20 → $25) without it looking like a markdown reversal — and if that bump applies to a fan who's already bought from you at the old price, how to tell a regular customer about a price increase covers how to say so.
• Multiple tiers on one page: mixing formats (for example, $19 base and $50 rush) can make each tier read distinctly instead of blurring together.
• You genuinely don't know: why creators with the same following charge different prices covers the bigger levers — niche, offer complexity, demand — that matter more than the last digit.

Any price mentioned here is illustrative only, not a guarantee of demand or income; results depend on audience, positioning, and offer quality.

Does the number you pick change what FanBell charges?

No. FanBell is free to start with no monthly fee, and a 12% platform fee applies only when a fan actually pays, so $19 and $20 are charged on identical terms. Payment-processing fees are deducted separately from creator earnings, and FanBell states that the platform fee is configurable and may change as the product evolves.

FanBell defines creator earnings as the fan payment minus the platform fee minus the processing fee, and the fan pays only the displayed price (pricing). Changing a price ending is a text edit to an existing offer, not a new setup: each offer's price and turnaround are fields the creator sets.

Frequently asked questions

Is $19 vs. $20 the biggest pricing decision a creator should worry about?

No. The digit at the end of a price is a real, measurable lever, but it is a smaller decision than what the offer includes, how it is scoped, and whether the price matches the buyer's expectation for that deliverable. Set the core price and scope first, then use a 9-ending or a round number to fine-tune.

Does charm pricing work the same way for every audience?

No. The left-digit mechanism is well documented, but its size varies by context: Anderson and Simester found 9-endings were more effective for new items and less effective alongside "Sale" cues (Quantitative Marketing and Economics 1(1)), and the 2024 meta-analysis of 69 studies reported small, highly heterogeneous effect sizes (Troll et al.). Test it on your own offer rather than assuming a fixed lift.

Should I show my prices publicly if I'm testing $19 vs. $20?

Yes — a fan can't respond to a price they can't see. Should you show your prices publicly covers why listing a clear price (of either format) tends to reduce friction compared to "DM for pricing."

Is it okay to just guess and change the number later?

Yes. A price ending is easy to change on FanBell without rebuilding the offer, because each offer's price and turnaround are creator-set fields. Treat $19 vs. $20 as a testable detail, not a permanent decision.

Does FanBell take a bigger cut if I price at $20 instead of $19?

No. The platform fee is 12% of what the fan pays and is charged only when a fan actually pays, with no monthly fee at either price.

Create your free FanBell page and test whether $19 or $20 fits your next offer.