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How long should the free trial be?

Default to 7-day trials on yearly and 3-day on weekly; 14 days occasionally wins, and longer trials look best when offered as an exit offer rather than the default.

Updated 2026-10-23·4 sources·monetizationfree-trialpricing

How long should the free trial be?

TL;DR

  • Yearly: 7 days usually best; 14 days sometimes slightly better for apps that need time to show value.
  • Weekly: 3 days.
  • Don’t jump to 30-day trials because RevenueCat data says longer trials convert better — usually that won’t work.
  • Steve’s hypothesis: longer trials look good in aggregate because apps show them as exit offers (14-day bonus trial after the user closes the paywall).
  • Apple prevents repeat trials within a subscription group, so trial abuse isn’t a real worry.

Details

RevenueCat has been publishing that longer trials convert better net-net. Steve warns against reading that as “use 30-day trials”: in his experience 7 days works best on yearly, sometimes 14, and 3 days on weekly; monthly LTV is poor anyway.1 Flow (period tracker) uses a 14-day trial — Steve calls that rare; most of the time 7 beats 14.2

Why the data might say “longer wins”. Rest of Me and Resemble show a normal paywall (after the three-screen sequence), and when users hit X they offer a 14-day bonus trial. Steve thinks the industry trend is driven by these exit-intent placements.13 He personally prefers a discount on exit, but clients have reported a longer trial beats a discount for them (anecdotal).3

Trial-to-paid reference: a 7-day trial in Steve’s niche health app converts over 60% to paid; average is 30–40%.4 The two-paywall test used a 3-day trial on weekly.5

Abuse question (from a live audience): users who cancel and try again don’t get another free trial — Apple handles eligibility.6

Disagreements / caveats

  • RevenueCat aggregate data vs Steve’s practice disagree on the default; Steve’s reconciliation (placement drives the effect) is a hypothesis.

See also

Footnotes

  1. The Paywall Strategy That Increased Conversions by 56% @ 10:58 — Steve P. Young ↩ ↩2

  2. App Monetization Tactics No One Is Talking About @ 01:57 — Steve P. Young ↩

  3. The Paywall Strategy That Increased Conversions by 56% @ 11:44 — Steve P. Young ↩ ↩2

  4. Are You Ignoring These RevenueCat Features? (Stop Losing Money) @ 04:01 — Steve P. Young ↩

  5. What Happens When You Show 2 Paywalls? (Result) @ 02:58 — Steve P. Young ↩

  6. The Paywall Strategy That Increased Conversions by 56% @ 14:42 — Steve P. Young ↩