Google Raises the Pixel 10a to $599, a $100 Increase That Takes It Out of the Under-$500 Class

The price changed on Google's store on October 2 without an announcement, one day after Samsung raised its Galaxy S26 phones. The 256 GB Pixel 10a is now $699.

For most of 2026 the Pixel 10a was the easy answer to a common question: what is the best phone for $500? As of October 2 it no longer qualifies. Google has raised the price of the 128 GB model from $499 to $599, and the 256 GB version now costs $699. Bloomberg reported the change the same day and tied it to memory costs. The new prices are also showing at Amazon and Best Buy, according to reports, so this is not a quirk of Google's own store.

▶

Google Pixel 10a specs →YouTube ↗

Google did not announce it. Android Headlines, which noticed the change on the Google Store, wrote that the company "has not announced the price hike and it hasn't put out official statements about it either." The UK price moved by the same amount, from £499 to £599, according to Stuff. The phone itself is unchanged: the same hardware that went on sale in March now costs 20% more.

The cause is the same one behind every phone price increase this autumn. Memory chips, both the RAM a phone works with and the flash storage it keeps your files on, have become sharply more expensive as chipmakers divert production to the high-margin memory used in AI data centers. Stuff describes it as an "AI-enforced" rise in the price of RAM and storage. A budget phone tends to have less room to absorb that than a flagship does, because its margins are thinner to begin with.

The timing makes the pattern hard to miss. Samsung raised US prices on the Galaxy S26, S26+ and S26 Ultra by $100 on October 1, one day earlier. Google's own Pixel 11 series launched in August at higher prices than the generation before it, Android Headlines notes. What is new this week is that the increases have reached phones that were already on sale. A buyer who waited for a seven-month-old phone to get cheaper has instead watched it get more expensive, twice in two days, from two different companies.

The increase changes the Pixel 10a's position more than a $100 rise would change a flagship's. At $499 it was $50 cheaper than Samsung's Galaxy A57, which was listed at $549.99 when we compared the two on October 1, and in that comparison the lower price was part of the case for the Pixel. At $599 it is the more expensive of the pair. It is also now only $100 below the Galaxy S26 FE, a larger phone with a telephoto camera, which Samsung left at $699.

What the Pixel 10a still has is the longest support in its class and the software most people buy a Pixel for. Google promises seven years of operating-system and security updates, and Stuff's summary of the phone credits it with a competitive camera and improved wired and wireless charging. Those were strong arguments at $499. At $599 they have to compete with phones that offer more hardware for the money.

If you were about to buy one, check retailers before paying the new price. Price changes of this kind reach every store, but not always on the same day, and trade-in and carrier offers are calculated separately from the list price. If you are not in a hurry, the fairer comparison now is with the phones at $600 to $700 rather than with the ones at $500. And if $500 is a firm limit, the Pixel 10a is no longer on the list. That also affects our guide to the best phones under $500, which listed it at the old price.

Original coverage: Google raises Pixel 10a price by $100 to $599