Free Trial Conversion Calculator
See what your trial funnel is really worth. Model new paying customers, MRR, and ARR from your trials, benchmark your conversion rate by trial type, and find out what a single extra point of conversion is worth.
Inputs
Use a monthly window. Rate is the share of trials that become paying customers.
No credit card required to start. Higher trial volume, lower conversion. Benchmark band: 8% to 15% trial to paid.
New trials started in a typical month
Share of trials that become paying
Your blended monthly price per paying account
Used to estimate lifetime value
The value of one more point
At your current volume and price, every extra percentage point of trial to paid conversion is worth:
This is why activation and onboarding work so often beats buying more traffic. The same revenue lift, at a fraction of the cost, and it compounds because every future cohort converts better too.
Trial conversion benchmarks by model
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Frequently asked questions
What is a good free trial conversion rate?+
It depends entirely on the model. An opt in free trial that asks for no credit card typically converts 8 to 15 percent of trials to paid. An opt out trial that requires a card up front converts much higher, often 25 to 60 percent, because the bar to becoming a customer is just not cancelling. A freemium product converts free users to paid at a much lower 2 to 5 percent because most free users never intended to pay. Compare your rate against the right model, not a single industry average.
How do I calculate trial to paid conversion rate?+
Trial to paid conversion rate equals the number of trials that became paying customers divided by the total number of trials started, over the same period. If 500 people started a trial and 60 converted, your rate is 12 percent. The subtlety is the time window: a 14 day trial should be measured on cohorts that have had a full 14 days plus a billing cycle to convert, otherwise you understate the real rate by counting trials that have not finished yet.
Should I require a credit card for my free trial?+
Requiring a card raises conversion rate dramatically but lowers the number of trials started, because many people will not hand over a card to try something. No card raises trial volume but lowers conversion rate and fills your funnel with tire kickers. The right answer depends on which number is your bottleneck. If you have plenty of traffic but weak monetisation, require a card. If you are starved for trials and need usage data, go cardless. This calculator lets you model both by changing the rate and volume.
How long should a free trial be?+
Long enough for a user to reach the moment the product becomes obviously valuable, and no longer. For most SaaS that is 7 to 14 days. Shorter trials create urgency and shorten your sales cycle, which improves cash flow and lets you iterate faster. Longer trials rarely convert better because users who do not activate in the first few days usually never do. If your product needs weeks to show value, the fix is usually a faster onboarding, not a longer trial.
Why does free trial conversion matter more than signups?+
Signups are a vanity number. Revenue comes from conversions. Doubling your trial to paid rate has the exact same effect on revenue as doubling your traffic, but it is almost always cheaper and faster because it is a product and onboarding problem you control, not an acquisition spend problem. That is why a single percentage point of conversion improvement can be worth more than a quarter of marketing budget, as the sensitivity figure in this tool shows.
What is the fastest way to improve trial conversion?+
Fix activation first. Most trials are lost in the first session because the user never reaches the core value. Shorten time to first value, remove setup friction, and use onboarding checklists and well timed in app prompts. Then add lifecycle emails that nudge inactive trials and reach out to engaged ones before the trial ends. Finally, make the upgrade path frictionless. These three moves, in that order, move conversion more than any pricing change.
How does trial conversion connect to LTV and CAC?+
Trial conversion is the hinge between acquisition and monetisation. Your blended customer acquisition cost is spread across every trial, but only converters pay it back, so a low conversion rate quietly inflates your real CAC per paying customer. Higher conversion lowers effective CAC and shortens payback. Pair this tool with the LTV and CAC calculators to see whether your funnel is actually profitable, not just busy.