Practitioner pattern · David Barnard (RevenueCat employee; RevenueCat publishes the report and sells paywall, web-purchase and Customer Center tools)
Require payment or a trial up front instead of offering a free tier
Median 10% of downloads pay by day 35 vs 2% freemium; retention no worse
Workedpaywall
What they did
RevenueCat data across 115K apps: hard-paywall apps vs freemium apps. David's caveats: freemium can still be right when a free base builds habit, word of mouth and later conversion (Duolingo, Mojo), but costly-to-serve apps (AI, data-heavy) struggle with freemium.
What happened
D35 download -> paid: P90 38% hard vs 8.2% freemium; median 10% vs 2%. Hard-paywall apps did not retain worse.
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