Most teams default to “free trial” or “freemium” without considering the full range of pricing models available to them. That’s a mistake. The model you choose shapes who signs up, how they experience your product, and whether they ever pay.
This guide covers five pricing models, from the familiar to the underused — and how to pick the right one.
Table of contents
Open Table of contents
1. Freemium
Freemium gives users permanent access to a limited version of your product for free. Revenue comes from the small percentage who upgrade to a paid plan for more features, usage, or support.
How it works: Users sign up, get a free plan with core functionality, and can upgrade whenever they want. There is no time limit.
Conversion rates: Typically 1-5%. Jason Cohen, founder of WP Engine, puts the average even lower — around 1-2%, with exceptional outliers like Dropbox hitting 4%.
Examples: Slack, Dropbox, HubSpot, Notion
Pros
- Lowest possible friction at signup
- Massive top-of-funnel — great for brand awareness and word-of-mouth
- Non-paying users can still drive network effects and virality
- Free users become advocates who refer paying customers
Cons
- 99% of users never pay
- Free users consume support, infrastructure, and engineering resources
- Product feedback gets distorted — free user requests drown out paying customer needs
- Can attract the wrong audience: people who will never pay, regardless of features
The key insight
Cohen argues you should treat freemium as a marketing expense, not a revenue model. Calculate the total cost of serving free users (infrastructure, support, engineering) and compare that against what you’d spend on other acquisition channels like paid ads or content marketing. If freemium delivers better ROI per acquired customer than your alternatives, keep it. If not, it’s an expensive vanity metric.
2. Free trial (opt-in)
A free trial gives users time-limited access to your full product (or a premium tier) without requiring a credit card upfront.
How it works: Users sign up with just an email. They get full access for a fixed period — typically 7, 14, or 30 days. When the trial ends, access stops unless they enter payment details.
Conversion rates: 15-25% on average.
Examples: Basecamp, Asana, most B2B SaaS
Pros
- Users experience the full product, not a limited version
- Creates natural urgency — the clock is ticking
- No credit card means low friction at signup
- Clear “moment of truth” when the trial ends
Cons
- Users who don’t convert are lost entirely — there’s no free plan to fall back to
- Short trials may not give complex products enough time to demonstrate value
- Enterprise buyers often need longer evaluation periods than a standard trial allows
Credit card required variant
Some companies require a credit card upfront and auto-charge when the trial ends. This is sometimes called an opt-out trial. It dramatically increases conversion rates (around 48-50%) but reduces the number of people who start a trial in the first place. You get higher conversion from a smaller pool.
3. Reverse trial
The reverse trial combines the best of freemium and free trials. Users start with full premium access for a limited time, and when the trial expires, the product downgrades them to a free plan rather than cutting access entirely.
Elena Verna, who coined the term, describes it as placing customers in a freemium experience with a timed trial of paid capabilities, which then reverts to a traditional freemium product after the trial ends.
How it works: New users get full premium features for a set period (typically 7-30 days). When the trial ends, the account downgrades to a permanent free tier. Users who experienced premium features now know exactly what they’re missing.
Conversion rates: 10-40% uplift over standard freemium conversion rates. Verna cites conversion rates of around 15% for reverse trials — sitting between the 5% of pure freemium and the higher rates of credit-card-required trials.
Examples: Toggl (30 days), Calendly (14 days), Canva (30 days), Grammarly (7 days)
Pros
- Users build habits with premium features before being asked to pay
- Loss aversion kicks in — losing features you’ve already used feels worse than never having them
- Non-converters stay on the free plan, so you don’t lose them entirely
- You can continue nurturing free users toward a future upgrade
- Gives you data on which premium features drive the most engagement
Cons
- More complex to implement — you need both a trial system and a free tier
- Support costs are higher during the premium trial phase
- Can confuse users if the transition isn’t communicated clearly
- Not ideal for products where the core value requires a paid plan
Why it works psychologically
Behavioural economics tells us that people feel the pain of losing something roughly twice as strongly as the pleasure of gaining it. By giving users the full experience first and then pulling back, the reverse trial creates a tangible, felt motivation to upgrade. It’s far more persuasive than describing features on a pricing page.
4. Paid trial
A paid trial charges a small fee for trial access. It’s less common than free trials but effective in specific contexts.
How it works: Users pay a nominal fee (often £1 or a heavily discounted first month) to access the product for a limited period. If they continue, they move to the standard pricing.
Conversion rates: Typically higher than free trials because paying — even a small amount — signals genuine intent. Exact benchmarks vary widely depending on the price point and product.
Examples: Some enterprise tools, premium content platforms, high-touch B2B products. Ahrefs is a notable example, charging $7 for a 7-day trial.
Pros
- Filters out tyre-kickers — anyone who pays is a more serious prospect
- Even a small payment triggers a psychological commitment (the “sunk cost” effect)
- Revenue from day one, even if modest
- Support and onboarding effort is directed at higher-quality leads
Cons
- Smaller top-of-funnel — many users won’t pay anything without trying first
- Can feel aggressive if the product hasn’t built enough trust or brand recognition
- Harder to compete against products offering free trials
- May not work well for products targeting price-sensitive markets
When it makes sense
Paid trials work best when your product has strong brand recognition or clear differentiation, or when your per-user costs (support, infrastructure, onboarding) are high enough that you can’t afford to serve large numbers of free users. If your product targets a niche where users are already educated on the problem and actively looking for a solution, asking for a small commitment upfront can be a signal of quality rather than a barrier.
5. Give-to-get
Give-to-get is the most creative and underused pricing model. Instead of charging money, you ask users to contribute something valuable — data, content, or network participation — in exchange for free access.
Kieran Flanagan, formerly SVP Marketing at HubSpot, described the model simply: a user gives you something of value, in return the user gets something of value, and that transaction makes your product more valuable and attracts more users.
Here’s what this looks like in practice:
- ZoomInfo provides a free version of their software, but asks free users to install an Outlook plugin that shares business contacts with ZoomInfo — enriching their database
- SimilarWeb lets anyone install their Chrome extension and get data on websites they visit, but in exchange users give SimilarWeb their browsing data, making the product more valuable for everyone
- Dune Analytics is free for everyone, but all reports are public and browsable by other users, helping attract more people to the platform. You pay to keep your reports private
Pros
- Creates a data flywheel — more users means a better product, which attracts more users
- Users feel they’re getting a fair exchange, not just “paying with their data”
- Can build network effects that become a competitive moat that’s hard to copy
- Free users are actively contributing to the value of the product, not just consuming resources
Cons
- Only works if there’s something valuable users can contribute
- Requires transparency about the exchange — users need to understand and accept the trade-off
- Regulatory considerations around data collection (GDPR, privacy laws)
- Can be complex to design — the exchange needs to feel balanced and fair
Why it’s underused
Most teams never consider give-to-get because it requires creative thinking about what “value” means beyond money. But if your product benefits from network effects, data contributions, or community content, this model can change the economics entirely. The key question is: what can free users give you that makes the product better for everyone?
Comparison table
| Model | Conversion rate | Top-of-funnel size | Friction | Non-converters retained? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Freemium | 1-5% | Very large | Very low | Yes (free plan) |
| Free trial (opt-in) | 15-25% | Large | Low | No (access ends) |
| Free trial (opt-out) | 48-50% | Moderate | Medium | No (access ends) |
| Reverse trial | 15%+ (with uplift) | Large | Low | Yes (free plan) |
| Paid trial | Varies (high quality) | Small | High | No (access ends) |
| Give-to-get | Varies | Large | Low | Yes (contribution continues) |
How to choose the right model
The right model depends on your product type and what you’re optimising for.
If your product benefits from network effects — choose freemium or give-to-get. The more users on your platform, the more valuable it becomes. Optimise for the largest possible user base, even if most don’t pay. Slack, Figma, and Notion all grew this way.
If your product has high per-user value and a clear “aha moment” — choose a reverse trial. Let users experience the full product, build habits with premium features, and then decide. The loss aversion effect does the selling for you. This works well for products where the value is obvious once you use it but hard to explain on a marketing page.
If you sell to enterprise or high-ACV buyers — consider opt-out trials or paid trials. Enterprise buyers expect to invest time evaluating tools. A credit card requirement filters for serious intent, and the higher conversion rate justifies the smaller funnel.
If you have a data flywheel or community component — explore give-to-get. If free users can contribute something (data, content, usage patterns) that makes the product better for everyone, you have a rare opportunity to build a moat that compounds over time.
If your per-user costs are high — avoid pure freemium unless you can offset it with advertising revenue or another monetisation method. Treat it as Jason Cohen suggests: a marketing expense. If the cost per free user exceeds what you’d pay to acquire a lead through other channels, the economics don’t work.
If you’re early-stage and still finding product-market fit — start with a simple free trial. It’s the easiest to implement, gives you clean conversion data, and doesn’t require the infrastructure of a freemium tier or the creative design of a give-to-get model. You can always evolve later.
A real-world example: thinking through pricing for Growth Method
To make this concrete, here’s how I thought through pricing model selection for Growth Method, a work management platform for growth marketers.
Freemium was tempting but risky. With a 1-5% conversion rate and real infrastructure costs per user, pure freemium would mean serving a large base of non-paying users while hoping a tiny fraction upgraded. For a niche B2B product, the volume needed to make freemium economics work just wasn’t realistic.
A standard free trial felt too binary. Users who didn’t convert within 14 days would vanish. Growth marketers are busy people — they might not run their first experiment within two weeks, and losing them entirely felt wasteful.
A reverse trial made more sense. Start users with full access, let them experience the complete platform, and then downgrade to a limited free plan. Non-converters stay in the ecosystem and can upgrade later when the timing is right.
But the give-to-get model was the most interesting option. Growth Method is a platform where teams run and document marketing experiments. What if free users could only publish public experiments — visible to the entire community — and had to pay to keep their work private? This mirrors the Dune Analytics model: free access in exchange for community contribution.
Taking it further: what if free users had to publish at least one experiment to the community area each month to retain their free account? Every free user would be actively contributing content that makes the platform more valuable, attracts more visitors via search, and creates a library of real-world marketing experiments that benefits everyone.
The “payment” isn’t money — it’s knowledge. And for a platform built around shared learning, that’s more valuable than a monthly subscription fee from a handful of users.
Final thoughts
The pricing model you choose is a growth lever, not just a revenue decision. It shapes your funnel, your user behaviour, your product roadmap, and your competitive moat.
Most teams only consider two options: free trial or freemium. But the reverse trial, paid trial, and give-to-get models each solve specific problems that the defaults don’t. Before defaulting to what everyone else does, ask yourself: what behaviour do I want to drive, and which model creates the right incentives?
As Kyle Poyar has documented, the pricing landscape is shifting fast — with over 1,800 pricing changes among the top 500 SaaS companies in 2025 alone. The companies that win treat pricing as a living strategy, not a set-and-forget decision.
About Growth Method
Growth Method is the only work management platform built for growth marketers. We help companies implement a systematic approach to grow leads and revenue.
“We are on-track to deliver a 43% increase in inbound leads this year. There is no doubt the adoption of Growth Method is the primary driver behind these results.” Laura Perrott, Colt Technology Services
To date our customers have recorded over 1000 marketing experiments in Growth Method. Learn more about us on our homepage or book a call with us here. We’re here to help you grow.