Freemium vs free trial for a SaaS app: how to choose, with data

In short: A free trial converts a far higher share of the people who start it, and freemium brings in far more of them. In FirstPageSage's client data, a free plan converts around 3 to 4% of free accounts to paid, an opt-in trial around 17%, and a card-on-file trial around 49%. For an app sold through an app store, choose a free plan when the free tier has network effects, costs almost nothing to serve, and has a usage ceiling merchants grow through. Choose a trial when the result arrives inside it. Shopify App Pricing supports both. A trial bills on the paid plan the merchant approved when it ends, so landing on a free plan is a downgrade the merchant has to choose.

What is the difference between freemium and a free trial?

Freemium is a plan that stays free for as long as the merchant wants it, with a limit on something: orders tracked, creators contacted, reviews stored. A free trial is the paid plan for a fixed number of days, after which the merchant pays or loses access.

For an app in an app store there is a third shape that matters: a trial on a paid plan that drops to a free plan when it ends. The merchant keeps the app, keeps their data, and stays on your home screen.

The question is not which one converts better. The data on that is clear. The question is which one leaves you with more paying merchants for the installs you get, and that depends on the product.

What does the conversion data say?

The one public dataset with a stated sample that covers all three models is FirstPageSage's, an agency reporting on its own SaaS clients. Its freemium conversion report, updated September 2026 and drawn from "80+ SaaS clients utilizing a freemium model between 2022 and 2026," gives these figures:

Model	Visitor to free account	Free account to paid
Traditional freemium	12.8%	3.4%
Land and expand freemium	14.1%	3.7%
Opt-in free trial (no card)	7.6%	17.3%
Opt-out free trial (card on file)	2.7%	49.1%

Its separate free trial benchmarks, from 86 companies split 71% B2B and 29% B2C, show the same shape for organic traffic: 13.3% and 2.6% for freemium, 8.5% and 18.2% for opt-in trials, 2.5% and 48.8% for opt-out. That page carries two caveats worth repeating. "A conversion is defined as even a single paid month," so every rate includes customers who paid once and left. And "a higher conversion rate to free use of the software does not mean more long term revenue." Add my own: it is one agency's client base, not a random sample, and it is not split by company size.

Multiply the columns and the picture sharpens. Per 100 visitors, traditional freemium produces about 0.4 paying customers, an opt-in trial about 1.3, and an opt-out trial about 1.3. The trials produce three times as many payers per visitor. What freemium produces instead is 12 to 14 accounts per 100 visitors that are still installed, still seeing your product, and still able to pay later, after the measurement window closed.

For an app in an app store, swap "visitor" for "listing view" and the same arithmetic holds. The trial wins on payers per view. The free plan wins on installed base per view. Which you want depends on what an installed, non-paying merchant is worth to you, and that is the real question.

When does a free plan make sense?

A free plan earns its place when a non-paying merchant creates value for you, costs you little, and has a reason to grow out of it. Three tests, and I would want at least two of them to pass.

Network effects. A free merchant brings other people into the product. An affiliate app's free tier puts a signup page in front of that merchant's customers, and every affiliate who joins has now used your product. A creator outreach tool's free tier puts messages in front of creators. Each free merchant widens the pool the paid merchants draw on, and gets a result of their own.

Low marginal cost. Serving the free merchant costs storage and a scheduled job. A review widget, a referral link generator or a tracking pixel costs almost nothing per extra store. A tool that sends messages through a paid API, runs a model over every product, or needs a human to approve anything does not, and a free plan on that product is a bill you pay for merchants who may never convert.

A clear usage ceiling. The free limit has to be something the merchant hits by succeeding, and it has to be visible. Orders tracked, affiliates active, creators contacted per month. A limit on volume works better than a limit on features, because a merchant who wants a feature does without it, while a merchant who has hit a volume limit has a result in hand and a reason to pay. Set the ceiling where the merchant has already had the result and wants more, which the guide on Shopify app pricing plans covers in more detail.

The failure mode is a free plan that passes none of these: a cut-down version of the paid app that costs you to serve, gives the merchant no result, and sits in their app list for a year.

When does a free trial make sense?

A trial is the right shape when the result the merchant wants arrives inside it. A cart recovery app on a store with daily traffic shows a recovered order within days. An upsell app shows an order with the offer in it within a week. Fourteen days is enough to prove the point, and the merchant pays for something they have already seen work.

A trial also suits products with real per-account costs, because a non-paying merchant has a deadline. And it suits products where the serious merchants self-select. A store doing a hundred orders a day will take a trial, and the ones who only wanted a free tool were never going to pay.

A trial is the wrong shape when the result takes longer than the trial. A creator outreach tool where the first creator reply takes three weeks ends most 14-day trials with nothing to show, and the merchant pays for a promise or leaves. For those products, either extend the trial to cover the real time to result, or put the first result inside a free plan and charge for scale.

What a trial has to prove, and how to measure the conversion, is covered in the guide on free trial to paid conversion. The short version: track conversion next to activation rate, and count a conversion as a merchant still paying at month three, not a first charge.

What does Shopify App Pricing support?

Everything in this section is an option Shopify offers, not a rule. Shopify App Pricing, the hosted billing option configured in the Partner Dashboard, supports "free, monthly, yearly, or monthly-with-yearly-discount plans" plus usage-based pricing, up to eight public plans and unlimited private ones. Free trials are configured per plan, so you can put a 14-day trial on the paid tier and none on the free tier. When the trial ends, billing starts on the paid plan the merchant approved. A merchant who wants the free plan instead has to downgrade, which takes effect at the end of the cycle, so if you want trials to end on free you have to prompt that downgrade yourself before day 15. Merchants "can always toggle between monthly and yearly prices" on the hosted plan page. Two limits to know: one-time purchases are not supported, and usage charges bill monthly only.

Shopify's free trial docs add a rule that bears on the decision. Trial days are tracked "over a 180-day period," so a merchant who used 12 of 15 trial days, uninstalled and reinstalled 90 days later has three days left. A reinstall is not a second trial. The same page says you can extend a trial for an individual merchant from the Partner Dashboard without them re-subscribing. If I ran a CS team again, that extension is the lever I would reach for first when a merchant is close to a result and the clock has run out.

If you bill through the API instead, appSubscriptionCreate takes a trialDays argument, which the mutation reference defines as: "The number of days of the free trial period, beginning on the day that the merchant approves the app charges." That last clause matters. The trial starts at approval, not at install, so an app that asks for plan approval on day 3 has a merchant whose trial started on day 3.

How do you decide?

Five questions, in order.

Question	If yes	If no
Does the first real result arrive within 14 days for a typical store?	Trial works	Free plan, or a longer trial
Does a free merchant bring other people into the product?	Free plan earns its cost	Trial
Does each extra store cost you close to nothing to serve?	Free plan is affordable	Trial, or a very low free ceiling
Is there a volume limit the merchant hits by succeeding?	Free plan with that ceiling	Trial
Do you want non-paying merchants to stay installed?	Trial on the paid plan, with a prompted downgrade to free	Trial that ends

If the first row says trial and the next three say free plan, use the hybrid: a trial on the paid plan, and a free plan with a ceiling that you prompt the merchant to downgrade to before the trial bills. Shopify App Pricing does not move a merchant to free on its own. The plan picker the merchant sees at the end is its own design problem, covered in the guide on plan picker design.

Whichever you choose, measure it the same way: activation within 14 days by install week, and paying at month three. A model that converts well and churns at month two proved the wrong thing.

Where to start

1. Write down the median time from install to the first real result for a typical store. If you do not know it, measure that before deciding anything.
2. Score your product against the three free-plan tests: network effects, marginal cost, usage ceiling.
3. If a free plan passes, set the ceiling at the point where a merchant has had a result and wants more of it.
4. Configure the plans in Shopify App Pricing with the trial on the paid tier only, and test the end-of-trial landing in a development store.
5. Report free-to-paid or trial-to-paid conversion next to month-three retention, by install cohort, from the first week.