It is easy to assume one of these two flagship phones costs clearly more than the other. By list price on their makers' own Malaysian stores, they do not. We read every storage tier of the iPhone 18 Pro Max on apple.com/my and of the Galaxy S26 Ultra on samsung.com/my on 30 October 2026, and both ladders begin at exactly the same list price: RM5,999 for 256GB. That is the undiscounted list price on both sides. On the day we read them, Apple was charging that RM5,999 while Samsung was running the Galaxy below its list at RM5,299, so their list prices match even though the price you would pay on the day did not. By list price, the two then stay within RM600 of each other at every storage tier they share.
This compares the two makers' top slab flagships, the non-folding phones at the head of each range. Each company also sells pricier folding phones, which are a separate comparison and are not included here.
Contents
The chart above shows the list price of each phone at each storage tier, read from the two stores on 30 October 2026. Every figure in it is a list price and matches the table below.
Matched tier for tier, they track within a few hundred ringgit
Here is every list price we read, side by side, at matched storage. We also show the price Samsung was actually charging on the day, which sat below its own list across the range; Apple's store showed no discount on the Pro Max at the time of reading.
| Storage | iPhone 18 Pro Max (Apple list) | Galaxy S26 Ultra (Samsung list) | Galaxy S26 Ultra (Samsung price on the day) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 256GB | RM5,999 | RM5,999 | RM5,299 |
| 512GB | RM6,999 | RM6,799 | RM6,099 |
| 1TB | RM8,999 | RM8,399 | RM7,699 |
| 2TB | RM11,999 | no tier | no tier |
At list, the 256GB entry is identical to the ringgit. Above it the Galaxy is a little cheaper at each matched step, by RM200 at 512GB and by RM600 at 1TB. At the 1TB tier the Galaxy also moves from 12GB to 16GB of memory, where the 256GB and 512GB Galaxy tiers carry 12GB; we read these memory figures from Samsung's own listing. This is a price comparison at matched storage, not a judgement of which phone is better value, and spec differences between the two beyond storage and memory are not weighed here.
The gap only opens at the very top
Across the three storage tiers both phones offer, the list prices never part by more than RM600. The wide gap comes at the ceiling. Apple offers a 2TB iPhone 18 Pro Max at RM11,999. The Galaxy S26 Ultra has no equivalent tier: its most expensive configuration is the 1TB at RM8,399 list. So Apple's top of range sits RM3,600 above the dearest Galaxy S26 Ultra you can buy. Of that RM3,600, RM600 is the price difference already present at the shared 1TB tier (RM8,999 against RM8,399); the remaining RM3,000 is Apple's step up to a 2TB tier that Samsung does not offer on this phone.
Taken at the prices each store was actually charging on the day, the Galaxy sat further below again, since every Galaxy tier was discounted by RM700 below its list while the Pro Max held list. That is the state of the two stores on one day, and we are not reading any cause into it.
For the related pattern inside Apple's own range, the cost of storage alone, we have separately read apple.com/my and found that upgrading an iPhone 18 Pro to 2TB in Malaysia costs RM6,000, more than a whole iPhone 16.
What this does and does not say
These are two stores read on a single day, 30 October 2026, each from the manufacturer's own Malaysian online shop. Prices change, so this is a snapshot, not a trend. The chart compares list price to list price on both sides, the only like-for-like way to line them up; where Samsung was selling below list, we have shown that separately in the table rather than mixing it into the comparison. The comparison is limited to the two top slab flagships at matched storage tiers, and it is about price only, not specifications, cameras, or which phone is the better buy. We do not claim why either price sits where it does.
How to reproduce this
Open the iPhone 18 Pro buy page on apple.com/my and the Galaxy S26 Ultra buy page on samsung.com/my on the same day. Both pages carry machine-readable price data: Apple lists a price for each storage and colour as a product object, and Samsung lists both a "price" (its list price) and a "promotionPrice" for each model. Read the price at each storage tier, 256GB, 512GB, 1TB and, for the iPhone, 2TB, from each store, and line the two up tier by tier. Keep list against list, and record any on-the-day discount as its own figure so the two ladders stay comparable.
