Free Trial Impact Calculator

A free trial does two things at once. It raises the share of interested people who ever pay, because trying costs them nothing. It also delays every payment by the length of the trial, and hands free usage to people who were going to subscribe anyway.

The number worth looking at is the break-even conversion rate: how well the trial has to convert before it beats charging immediately. If your trial converts above that, offer it. If it converts below, the trial is buying you signups you were already going to get, at a discount you did not need to give.

Note that the calculation compares per interested user, not per trial starter. Comparing trial-to-paid conversion against no-trial conversion directly is the usual mistake — those rates are measured over different populations.

Check unit economics or compare pricing models.