How subscription apps structure free trials and pricing

Free trials are rarer than the word suggests: 10 of 47

The ten are Superhuman (30 days, card up front, "Due today $0.00") superhuman verified; Calm (14 days, on the calm.com yearly plan only; the monthly plan and the quiz paywall have no trial) calm verified; SaneBox (7 days, "No credit card required") sanebox verified; Inbox Zero (7 days, card always collected) inbox-zero verified; Hily (3-day and 7-day trials named in its App Store SKUs) hily verified; Nebula (3 days) nebula verified; Picnic (a review mentions a 3-day trial, not confirmed in the app) picnic inferred; and CHANI, Clean Email and Feeld, which say a trial exists but not how long verified.

Of the remaining 37, 15 state no trial, 3 sell a paid trial, and 19 records do not say. Of the 15 with no trial, three are one-time report sellers (123test, 16Personalities, Truity), two are free products with no paid plan (Cleanfox, Unroll.Me), four are the micro-drama apps below that sell a cheap first week instead, three offer a free tier or allowance instead (Optery, Leave Me Alone, OpenRouter), and three are dating apps where no trial appears in any SKU name or store description (Bumble, Hinge, Tinder) inferred.

Paid trials: $1 or $4.99 for 7 days, then a 28-day or monthly charge

• Hint: $1 for 7 days, then $34.99 every 28 days hint-astrology verified
• myIQ: $1.00 for 7 days, then $29.99 every 28 days. The landing page states it in full: "Your 1.00$ trial lasts 7 days. Unless you cancel before it ends, your subscription renews automatically at 29.99$ every 28 days." Its terms add that the $1 may be charged as two $0.50 charges myiq verified
• Moonly: $4.99 for 7 days, then $59.99 a month in a desktop walk and $49.99 a month in a phone walk, each shown as a "92%" or "90%" discount measured against that first-month price moonly verified

All three show one plan with no choice, and all three need a payment method for the trial charge (Moonly's card fields were seen; Hint and myIQ are inferred from the charge itself) inferred.

Micro-drama apps sell a cheap first week instead of a trial, at a guest checkout

• FlexTV: $6.99 first week, then $9.99 a week on the phone web player; paywall at episode 8 of 40 flextv verified
• NetShort: $9.99 first week, then $24.99 a week on its clone player ($29.99 a week with no intro on netshort.com); paywall at episode 6 to 9; no email asked netshort verified
• ReelShort: $14.99 (phone) or $9.99 (desktop) first week, then $19.99 a week; paywall at episode 9 or 15 reelshort verified
• Shortical: $8.49 for the first 2 weeks, then $25.00 per 2 weeks, pre-selected as "Most Popular"; paywall at episode 13 to 14 after an email sheet shortical verified

All four take the card at checkout with no account created first, and all four pre-select the shortest plan. NetShort's record notes that $24.99 x 52 is $1,299 a year if never cancelled verified arithmetic.

Card up front: 5 of the 10 free trials, with a "$0.00 today" line and a reminder promise

Calm, Feeld, Inbox Zero, Picnic and Superhuman take the card first (Feeld and Picnic through store billing) verified, Picnic's is inferred. SaneBox is the only one of the ten that states no card is needed; it takes the card in the dashboard at "Buy now" sanebox verified. CHANI, Clean Email, Hily and Nebula are unclear.

The two web checkouts with the card up front both say what is charged today and when the reminder comes. Superhuman: Stripe shows "Due today $0.00" and promises a reminder 7 days before the first charge superhuman verified. Calm: "Total due today $0.00" on its own line, fine print "14 days free, then $6.67/month, billed annually at $79.99 + applicable taxes/year. Cancel anytime.", and in the app "Calm will remind you 2 days before your trial or subscription renews" calm verified.

The pre-selected plan: annual for work tools, weekly for entertainment

Only 9 of the 47 records capture a pre-selected or highlighted plan where more than one is offered. Annual or longer: Superhuman (annual, "17% off") superhuman, Calm's own site (yearly $79.99, the plan that carries the trial; Calm's quiz paywall pre-selects quarterly at $35.98 instead) calm, Clean Email (the 5-account yearly plan is highlighted) clean-email, SaneBox (the 2-year term is pre-selected and "Lunch" is badged "Most popular") sanebox, all verified. Shorter: Optery (the monthly toggle is the default; "Ultimate" is badged "Most Popular") optery, and the four micro-drama apps above (weekly or 2 weeks) verified.

Seven companies sell one price only, so there is nothing to pre-select: 123test, 16Personalities, Truity and IDRlabs (one-time reports) and Hint, Moonly and myIQ (one paid trial into one plan). The other 31 records do not capture the default verified count.

Annual versus monthly: a median 58 percent off, but 10 to 19 percent for email and privacy tools

Where a record lists both a monthly price and an annual price for the same tier (15 companies), the annual plan costs this much less than 12 months of monthly. The arithmetic is ours; the prices are the records' verified arithmetic.

The four smallest discounts, 10 to 19 percent, all belong to email or privacy tools sold per user (Inbox Zero, Superhuman, Spark Mail, Optery); the consumer apps run 25 to 75 percent. That grouping is our reading inferred. Two struck "list" prices are exactly 12 times the monthly price: Calm's $203.88 is 12 x $16.99 and Clean Email's $119.88 is 12 x $9.99 verified arithmetic.

Countdown timers on 5 paywalls, and only one of them changes the price at zero

• Calm's quiz paywall: a 10-minute countdown shown in three places. At 00:00 the bar reads "This offer has expired", the annual plan disappears and monthly goes from $13.49 back to $14.99. The end time is held in the browser's localStorage; the same link in a new browser shows the full discount again calm verified
• Moonly: "92% discount reserved for: 10:00". When it reached 0:00 the page kept the same discount and price moonly verified
• Leave Me Alone: "here's up to 72% off! Deal expires in 11:59:55" on the first visit; it restarts in each new browser leavemealone verified
• FlexTV: a 15:00 countdown beside the $6.99 first-week offer flextv verified
• Shortical: an 8-minute countdown with "67% OFF", shown to about half of visitors; a later owner capture of the same modal had no countdown shortical verified

Six records show a struck anchor price (123test, Calm, Clean Email, Leave Me Alone, NetShort, Shortical). Shortical's struck $25.00 is the renewal price, not an old price shortical verified. Five state a money-back guarantee: Truity, "an unconditional, 60-day money back guarantee on your report purchase" truity; 16Personalities, 30 days 16personalities; Optery, 30 days on the first purchase only optery; Leave Me Alone, 14 days leavemealone; and Moonly, 30 days "if you can demonstrate that you followed the plan but didn't see any results" moonly, all verified.

Where the paywall sits: 28 of 47 records say

• After a quiz. Calm: after 36 to 43 screens and a first name, before any account calm. Moonly: directly after the quiz, before email moonly. myIQ: after the email gate, before the score myiq inferred. Nebula: after about 29 onboarding screens in the app nebula.
• On the free result. 16Personalities keeps locked sections on the page as scrambled text and asks for $9 16personalities. Truity puts the $29 report at the bottom of the result with a sticky upgrade bar truity. 123test puts a survey offerwall before the free result and the paid ask on it 123test.
• At an episode. FlexTV episode 8; NetShort 6 to 9; ReelShort 9 or 15; Shortical 13 to 14; ShortMax's web lock at episode 9 hands off to the app shortmax.
• After connecting or signing up. Superhuman: Stripe checkout right after OAuth sign-up, before the app superhuman. Inbox Zero: an upgrade page after a 13-step onboarding inbox-zero. SaneBox: a dashboard banner during the trial, no hard paywall at signup sanebox.
• On a limit inside the app. Optery: every profile found by the free scan shows "Upgrade for coverage" optery. Leave Me Alone: after 10 free unsubscribes leavemealone inferred. Hinge, Tinder and Bumble: on the "who liked you" list and when daily likes run out inferred.

Weekly plans: 10 of 47, all consumer

Boo ($10.00 a week), Hily ($14.99 a week after a 3- or 7-day trial), Mirror ($3.99 a week), Picnic ($4.99 to $7.99 a week), the four micro-drama apps, ShortMax ($9.99 or $19.99 a week in the App Store) verified, and Bumble, whose weekly Premium+ price comes from a third-party source estimate. No work tool in the set sells a weekly plan.