Free-to-paid conversion rate is the share of free users or trial sign-ups who become paying customers within a set window, usually six months. In ChartMogul's 2026 Conversion Report of 200 B2B products, the median was 8%. For self-serve freemium, 3% to 5% is good and 8% to 12% is great. Free trials that require a credit card convert 25% to 35% (good) and 50% to 60% (great).
Key takeaways
- Free-to-paid conversion = new paying customers from a cohort ÷ free sign-ups (or trial starts) in that cohort.
- Freemium: 3% to 5% is good, 8% to 12% great (ChartMogul, 2026).
- Card-required free trials convert 25% to 35% (good) and 50% to 60% (great), but attract fewer sign-ups.
- Measure per 1,000 visitors, not just per sign-up. A higher conversion rate can still mean fewer customers.
- In Australia, subscription notices become a legal duty from 1 July 2027. A reminder before a trial ends, showing the full price, is expected; check the final regulations.
Jason Lemkin, co-founder of EchoSign, once shared some sobering math about freemium. I used it in Chapter 3 of The Subscription Playbook, and it still stops founders in their tracks.
Say you charge $10 a month. You want to reach $100 million in annual revenue. That's roughly a million paying subscribers.
When I wrote the book, the average freemium conversion rate sat at between 2% and 5%. Take the conservative 2%, and you need 50 million free users to get your million payers.
Fifty million.
Most businesses will never have a market that big. So the question isn't just "should I offer something free?" It's "how many of those free users will actually pay, and can I afford to serve the ones who won't?"
That's free-to-paid conversion. Let's work out yours.
What is free-to-paid conversion rate?
Free-to-paid conversion rate is the percentage of people who start on something free (a free plan, a free trial or a free first visit) and go on to become paying customers within a set time.
The time window matters. The big benchmark surveys use six months from sign-up.
How do you calculate free-to-paid conversion?
Always measure by cohort: a group of people who signed up in the same period.
Free-to-paid conversion % = Cohort members who became paying within the window ÷ Free sign-ups (or trial starts) in the cohort × 100
Then measure the step before it, because sign-ups don't appear from nowhere:
Visitor-to-paid % = Sign-up rate × Free-to-paid conversion rate
Worked example: a B2B tool with a 14-day trial
In March, 40,000 people visit the website. 2,000 start a free trial (a 5% sign-up rate). By the end of August, 180 of those March trialists are paying.
- Free-to-paid conversion: 180 ÷ 2,000 = 9%
- Visitor-to-paid: 5% × 9% = 0.45%, or 4.5 customers per 1,000 visitors
Next, the team tests requiring a credit card to start a trial. Sign-ups fall to 3.5%, but conversion jumps to 30%. Visitor-to-paid is now 3.5% × 30% = 1.05%, or 10.5 customers per 1,000 visitors. More than double.
Those aren't random numbers. The card-required figures match the averages in ChartMogul's 2026 Conversion Report exactly, and the no-card figures are close.
What is a good free-to-paid conversion rate?
The most current data is ChartMogul's 2026 Conversion Report, written by Kyle Poyar with ChartMogul and ProductLed. It surveyed 200 B2B software products in January 2026. The median across all of them was 8%, but very few products sat near the median. The top 20% converted 10 times better than the bottom 20%.
| Entry model | Good | Great |
|---|---|---|
| Freemium (self-serve) | 3% to 5% | 8% to 12% |
| Freemium, ungated (use before creating an account) | 7% to 9% | |
| Free trial, no card | 4% to 6% | 10% to 15% |
| Reverse trial | 4% to 6% | 8% to 12% |
| Free trial, credit card required | 25% to 35% | 50% to 60% |
| AI-native and AI-plus-SaaS products | 6% to 8% | 15% to 20% |
Source: ChartMogul, The Conversion Report (published 4 February 2026). Conversion measured within six months of sign-up.
The earlier benchmark most people still quote is the 2023 study by Lenny Rachitsky and Kyle Poyar of more than 1,000 products. It put good freemium conversion at 3% to 5% (great 6% to 8%) and good free-trial conversion at 8% to 12% (great 15% to 25%). The 2026 numbers for no-card trials are lower, so if you're benchmarking against the 2023 trial figures, you may be judging yourself too harshly.
Conversion per 1,000 visitors
This is the table I'd pin above your desk, from the same 2026 report:
| Entry model | Sign-ups per 1,000 visitors | Paying customers per 1,000 visitors |
|---|---|---|
| Freemium | 90 | 5 |
| Ungated freemium | 70 | 5.6 |
| Free trial (no card) | 45 | 3.6 |
| Free trial (card required) | 35 | 10.5 |
A free trial converts sign-ups at a slightly higher rate than freemium, but freemium gets twice the sign-ups. Once you account for both, the no-card trial actually produces the fewest customers.
Consumer apps
Mobile subscription apps follow different rules. RevenueCat's State of Subscription Apps 2026, covering more than 115,000 apps:
- Apps with a hard paywall converted a median 10.7% of downloads to paid by day 35, against 2.1% for freemium apps.
- Trials of 17 to 32 days converted at a median 42.5%, against 25.5% for trials under 4 days.
- 55% of all 3-day trial cancellations happened on the day the trial started.
What big freemium brands achieve
You can work out rough conversion for public companies from their own reports:
- Canva reported more than 31 million paying users and more than 265 million monthly active users in 2025, so about 12% of active users pay.
- Duolingo reported 12.7 million paid subscribers and 140.6 million monthly active users in Q2 2026, about 9%.
These are paying users as a share of active users, which is a different (and kinder) measure than conversion of every sign-up. But they show what a great free product can do over many years. The Canva freemium case study and the Duolingo case study show how.
Freemium, trial or paid only?
The free Pricing Model Picker helps you choose the entry offer that suits your product and your costs.
How should a gym or cafe use free-to-paid conversion?
Local businesses run free offers all the time: a free first class, a free week at the gym, a free coffee for joining the club. Treat each one as a trial and measure it.
Worked example: a gym's free week (illustrative)
A gym gives out 200 free-week passes in February. 46 people sign a membership within 30 days.
Free-to-paid conversion: 46 ÷ 200 = 23%.
If each free week costs about A$25 in staff time and consumables, that's A$5,000 of free weeks to win 46 members, or about A$109 of trial cost per member. Add that to the gym's customer acquisition cost.
Then improve it the way software companies do. Book a check-in session on day 2. Get people to their first win (the first class they enjoy, the first PB) as fast as possible. In Chapter 9, I called this getting the subscriber to their first "aha" moment, and it matters more for a free offer than anywhere else.
One Australian note. From 1 July 2027, the new subscription-trap rules require businesses to give subscribers prescribed notices, with the timing and content left to regulations that hadn't been made as at October 2026. A reminder before a free or discounted trial ends, showing the full price, is the expected and recommended minimum, but check the final regulations. This is general information, not legal advice. If you take card details at the start of a trial, build that reminder in now. The free-trial reminder templates are ready to copy, and the subscription trap laws guide covers the detail. (Converting people who forgot to cancel isn't a strategy. It's a refund request, and soon a compliance problem.)
How do you improve free-to-paid conversion?
Here's what I'd try, in order:
- Shorten the path to "aha." Wishpond cut steps so new users could publish their first campaign faster. Every removed step lifts conversion.
- Show users what they're missing. Spotify lets free users bump into Premium features and tells them so. That's an upgrade prompt at the moment of desire.
- Gate the right thing. In the land and expand chapter, I said don't give new users everything. Limit the feature that grows with value: storage, seats, projects, credits.
- Test a card requirement. It cuts sign-ups but can more than double paying customers per 1,000 visitors. It works best for serious, higher-priced products.
- Add a human for big accounts. The 2023 survey found 44% of free-trial companies had sales reach out to more than half of sign-ups.
For the bigger choice between models, read freemium vs free trial and the reverse trial guide.
What are the common mistakes?
- Measuring without a cohort. "Paid this month ÷ signed up this month" mixes different groups.
- Ignoring the sign-up rate. A 30% conversion rate on half the sign-ups may still win.
- Forgetting the cost of free users. With AI features, every free user has a real per-use cost. Model it before you scale.
- Comparing B2C with B2B. ChartMogul found B2B products convert somewhat higher.
- Copying someone else's free model. As Kyle Poyar puts it, understand what it's optimizing for first.
What should you do next?
Pull your last three monthly cohorts and calculate free-to-paid conversion at 30 days and at six months. Then calculate paying customers per 1,000 visitors.
Compare both with the tables above. If you're below "good," start with onboarding, not price. And if you're above "great," you may be giving away too little. Ask yourself whether a more generous free offer would bring in enough extra sign-ups to win even more customers.
Frequently asked questions
What window should I use to measure free-to-paid conversion?
Use a fixed window and stick to it. The major surveys, including Lenny Rachitsky and Kyle Poyar's 2023 study and ChartMogul's 2026 report, measure conversion within six months of sign-up. For a 14-day trial, also track conversion at day 15 and day 30. Freemium products keep converting for months, so short windows make freemium look worse than it is.
Should I count users who never activated?
Yes, in your headline rate, because they're part of what your sign-up flow produced. But also track an activated conversion rate, using only users who reached your first 'aha' moment. If activated users convert at 20% and total users at 4%, your problem is onboarding, not your price or your paid plan.
Is a reverse trial better than freemium?
It can be. A reverse trial gives new users the full paid product for a limited time, then drops them to a free plan instead of locking them out. ChartMogul's 2026 report found reverse trials converted between free trials and freemium (good 4% to 6%, great 8% to 12%), but only 7% of products used one and the difference wasn't statistically significant.
Do AI products convert better or worse?
Slightly better, in ChartMogul's 2026 data. AI-native and AI-plus-SaaS products had good conversion of 6% to 8% and great of 15% to 20%, a little above traditional SaaS. The catch is cost: every free AI user burns model tokens. RevenueCat's 2026 data also found AI apps on monthly plans retained 36% worse over 12 months, so watch what happens after conversion.
How does conversion affect LTV:CAC?
Directly. If your free plan costs money to run, every free user who never converts adds to the acquisition cost of those who do. Doubling conversion from 3% to 6% roughly halves the free-user cost behind each paying customer. That's why lifting conversion is one of the cheapest ways to improve your LTV:CAC ratio.
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Robert Coorey, MBA
Robert is the author of The Subscription Playbook and Feed a Starving Crowd and a Director at BPAG Accountants in Sydney. More about Robert.
Sources
- ChartMogul (Kyle Poyar), The Conversion Report: benchmarks for trials, freemium and conversion in 2026 (4 Feb 2026)
- Lenny Rachitsky and Kyle Poyar, What is good free-to-paid conversion (2023)
- RevenueCat, The State of Subscription Apps 2026 in 10 minutes
- TechCrunch, Canva gets to $4B in revenue (18 Feb 2026)
- Duolingo, Q2 2026 shareholder letter (Aug 2026)
- The Subscription Playbook, Robert Coorey (2022), Chapter 3
Facts and prices checked 27 October 2026. Spotted something out of date? Tell us.