Paywalls and pricing
App pricing tactics
How founders set and changed subscription prices, plans and discounts, with the results they reported. 213 tactics from 92 founder interviews.
Founders who moved from a paid download or one-time price to a free app with a subscription usually reported a large jump in revenue, and many who raised prices said conversions held or even rose. Much of the rest was about presentation, such as leading with the yearly plan. Results on free trials and discounts pointed both ways, and several teams found that early price wins faded once renewals came in.
- Fitbit to Apple Health Sync went from a $5.99 download to free with a subscription and revenue rose from about $200 to $2,000 a day; Cardstock's switch from $4.99 once to $5 a month brought its biggest revenue jump.Fitbit to Apple Health SyncCardstock
- Price rises often held up: GlamUp tripled its weekly price and said conversion rose, Coconote's move from $99 to $129 a year brought more users and revenue, and Skylight went from $39 to $79 with minimal loss.GlamUpCoconoteSkylight
- Showing the yearly plan first, with monthly behind a link, lifted Mojo's yearly uptake 15-20 points and Built With Science's annual share from about 60% to 75-80%; one app that removed its monthly plan entirely saw sales drop.MojoBuilt With ScienceA subscription app
- Dropping the trial on monthly plans split results: Natal's founder recalled monthly subscriptions up about 2,000%, while Reading.com saw more annual picks but realized LTV fall 17% and did not roll it out.NatalReading.com
- Early wins did not always last: Reading.com found higher prices' early LTV gains faded in multi-year look-backs and kept $12.49, and Mojo dropped a winning higher price after 7-day cancellations ran far above baseline.Reading.comMojo
- Exit discounts were mixed: BoldVoice's discount trial that users could not close raised trial starts but refunds rose by more, while one app found about 10% of buyers took a 90%-off annual deal without a trial.BoldVoicePractitioner pattern · Vahe Baghdasaryan (Sells paywall optimization services (Tangent); all paywalls shown are built on Superwall)
Summary written 2026-09-26 from the tactics below. Figures are as founders stated them.
What worked, with the best evidence
What didn't work, or only partly
- Reading.com: Drop the free trial on the monthly plan to push people to annualMore annual picks, but realized LTV fell 17%; not rolled out
- Drop the $1.99 monthly plan because 90% buy the $10 yearly oneSales went down; the monthly price was the anchor that made $10/year look cheap
- Built With Science: Offer 20% off to pay now, with a toggle back to the 14-day free trialQuite negative, even with a 30-day money-back guarantee
- Runify: Email your waitlist two updates, then a launch video with a half-price codeDiscount codes brought most launch-day revenue; 32% of emails hit spam, 20% opened
- Duolingo: Make paid features free when a test shows they earn littleTook a small revenue hit on purpose to grow free users
- Pushcroll: Launch with a video giving free lifetime premium to anyone who installs this week~20K downloads from ~175K views (~10%); only ~$1-2K revenue afterward
- BoldVoice: When users close the paywall, show a discount trial they can't closeTrial starts rose, but refunds rose by more; net loss
- Charge $40 a year when most rivals charge $20-25~40% year-one retention; host now thinks a lower price would have done better
- Condé Nast: Launch new premium tiers for fans willing to pay moreAdoption stuck at 1-2%; now default no unless a bigger cohort is proven
- Tinder: Price the 7-day feature pass the same as a 7-day subscription, shown side by sideLess cannibalization and more revenue, but still not good enough
- Use weekly plans for apps people need for a short time, like datingWorks well in dating and follower-tracking apps; fine for cash flow, weaker for an exit
- Tinder: Sell the travel feature on its own for 1 day, 3 days or a weekConversion jumped, but it pulled buyers away from the cheapest subscription
- Burner: Phase out one-off credits so everyone goes through a subscriptionFairly high churn from short-term users; founder now thinks credits might have fit them better
- Include credits in the subscription and let heavy users buy moreSpreading, e.g. 13% of photo/video apps; too few included credits drew angry reviews
- Calm: Show only a yearly plan on the paywallMonthly plan was back within 2-3 weeks; observed from outside
- Sunflower: Start free like Duolingo, then add a monthly paywall once AI costs pile upFree model failed: investors wanted revenue and AI costs hit hundreds of thousands
- Tinder: Add an even pricier top tier for the biggest spendersDidn't fit a mass-market brand; being scaled down
- Give costly AI features away free to grow fastFast growth, but unit economics usually catch up later
- Lower the price to keep customers who are churningFailed; maybe one extra month retained if they don't care about the product
- Burner: Try a freemium version of an app where every free user costs moneyDidn't scale without lots of capital; stayed a premium, paid-first app
- BibleBuddy: Earn money only from banner ads, skipping full-screen adsCouldn't crack monetization; founder was wary of charging for faith content
Companies in this topic
Benchmarks
- What subscription apps charge · 154 figures
- App and startup revenue founders shared · 240 figures
More tactics (180)
- ZenMaid: Advertise a free-forever plan; require a card and give 14 days of paid features~40% more trials; more mentions in Facebook groups
- Fitbit to Apple Health Sync: Turn a $5.99 paid app into a free download with a subscriptionRevenue jumped from ~$200/day to ~$2,000/day overnight
- Natal: Drop the free trial on the monthly planMonthly subs up ~2,000%, annual +21% (founder's rough recall)
- Replace the hard paywall with a free plan plus a 7-day trial of the best version+75% LTV per user (other pricing changes made at the same time)
- Built With Science: Offer 15% off each if users add a workout buddy to their plan15% of trial starts add a buddy; higher order value and better retention
- Duolingo: Sell a one-time ad-free month at $3, $5 or $10 to test demandUptake far above expectations; led to the subscription
- On the abandoned-purchase offer, give 80% off with a trial or 90% off without~10% of buyers skip the trial and pay right away
- Fleet: Sell each 36-month laptop rental contract to a bank for cash on day oneFunded ~50,000 devices with no VC; bank keeps ~10%, carries customer credit risk
- Waking Up: Charge $20 a month or $150 a year for a meditation app~25K downloads a month bring in over $1M a month (Sensor Tower estimate)
- Hiro Analytics: Sell your tool to agencies, not brands, so one sale covers 10-30 brands$1M+ ARR in 19 months, adding ~$10K MRR a month with very low churn
- Natal: Let people pay with their health savings account (HSA) at checkoutTens of thousands of dollars in two weeks, unpromoted
- GlamUp: Triple the weekly price from $3 to $9Conversion rate went up despite the 3x price
- Raise monthly and annual prices 20%, then test another 20%Conversion and revenue per download both rose; second +20% in test
- Parakeet Chat: Bill families outside $15-20 a month for the service their relative in prison usesJust over $300K revenue in 2025
- Coconote: Charge students $99/year and push the annual plan~80% chose annual
- Cut the monthly plan; offer annual plus a weekly plan with 3 free daysBig conversion jump per the slide; exact number not read out
- Rise Science: On the web, charge half price for the first month instead of a free trialTested better than free trials; ads stop finding people who cancel at once
- Lose It!: Retest higher prices you once rejected; double the yearly price if it breaks evenTest broke even for the first time; rollout matched tests and gives room for paid ads
- Mojo: Check 7-day cancellations before keeping a higher price that won on early revenueRejected a winning higher price after a yearlong model showed lost long-term revenue
- Skylight: Raise the yearly plan from $39 to $79, not the $99 tests favoredMinimal loss of subscribers or retention; ARR curve 'transformative'; no exact numbers
- Cardstock: Make the app free to download and charge $5 a month instead of $4.99 onceBiggest revenue jump ever; growth took off from the 2021 switch
- Burner: Charge $1.99 upfront and price credit packs to cover phone costsAbout $50K revenue on launch day
- Praycreen: Give non-payers a free version with an ad before each daily prayer~$0.05 per user per day; ad spend paid back in 14-15 days
- NGL: Charge power users $1-$7 a week, priced by country wealth; keep the rest freeMulti-eight-figure yearly revenue from a small share of users
- Fleet: Rent laptops to startups for ~EUR 50 a month with warranty and software includedProduct-market fit at launch; EUR 1.5M revenue in year one
- Value Study: Give existing users 3 months' notice before charging for a free app90-99% of existing users happy to pay; new users complained
- Cents: Sell your own payment hardware at a profit, with software and payments attached~$140M a month in payments; 200-250K devices installed; 99% customer retention
- Harpagia: Make the game free and sell optional extras that speed up progress~6% of downloads pay (games typically 2-5%); over $3 per active user a year
- Built With Science: Sell the app as a trainer in your pocket, not a tracker, at $189 a yearKept $189/year since launch; 35-40% organic and ~25% Meta trial-to-paid
- Angel Match: Price plans by how many investors a customer can contact each monthPlans from $59/month to a few thousand; 33% of trials convert to paid
- Practice by Numbers: Grow one tool into an all-in-one suite sold as packages~$12-13K per location a year on average; up to ~$18-19K
- Shipper: Skip the free plan and spend that money on paying users~690 paying users, zero free users
- Shipper: Sell monthly credit plans from $25, plus one-off credit top-upsTop-ups are ~10% of revenue; gross volume ~$71K vs $25.6K MRR
- Savvy Nomad: Turn one painful tax chore into a step-by-step product, then charge a subscription$140K MRR, ~$1.7M ARR, 1,400+ customers
- Sway AI: Preselect the yearly plan on the paywall to collect cash upfrontWeekly plan also tried; grew a lot slower
- Sunflower: Add a yearly plan and pre-select it on the paywallAdding annual brought some annual revenue; defaulting to it brought 'a lot more'
- Coconote: Raise the annual price from $99 to $129More users and more revenue at the same time
- Mojo: Offer a generous free tier and show free users a paywall once a weekOver 50% of revenue comes after day one, vs ~80% on day zero for most apps
- Tinder: Use a prediction model to show each user just the one plan they'll likely buyEstimated multimillion-dollar yearly revenue gain in an A/B test
- Mojo: Price below the US-equivalent in Brazil and Mexico instead of just converting currencyLower prices won; part of the 60% ARPU lift, no separate number
- Tinder: Keep dating free for most users so there are plenty of people to match85-90% never pay; the 10-15% who do fund the business
- Tinder: Sell a paid 'super like' that stands out from a normal likeSuper Likes are 3x more likely to get a match
- Pitch 'over 100 channels' instead of the 6-8 people actually watch'Over 100 channels' won every test against a small-package pitch
- Masterschool: Front your bootcamp with an AI quiz funnel offering 100% scholarshipsRevenue tripled in under a quarter from a $50M/year base
- Subway Surfers: Keep the core game free and unlimited, and never lock content behind paymentTop-5 downloaded game every year since 2012; 1M installs a day
- Subway Surfers: Let players watch an ad for a reward instead of payingAds bring in 80-85% of revenue; still the top game in tier-2 and tier-3 countries
- Life360: Give daily location sharing away free and charge for safety featuresGrew to 80M+ active users and ~$400M revenue; about 1 in 8 families pay
- attn.design: Offer a free version to get people started, then sell a $99 pro plan5 paying customers at $99
- Tinder: Raise the price of the standalone feature so it stops stealing subscriptionsFewer lost subscriptions, slightly lower conversion, higher total revenue
- Pushcroll: Test a weekly plan against a monthly oneWeekly won, but only slightly more ARPU
- Massive: Change your subscription pricing behind a hard paywallRevenue doubled; no details on what changed
- Career Hound: Charge from day one: $7 a week, $20 a month or $50 a year779 active subs, $12K MRR, ~$50 LTV; 31% churn
- Handwrytten: Lease your robots to shipping partners for ~$1,000-1,250 a month each~30 robots leased; good margin but small revenue so far
- Pushcroll: Offer about 80% off when someone closes the paywallCalled one of their two biggest tests; no result given
- Natal: Raise subscription pricesARR still grew 20% that quarter
- Visible: Sell the band at cost (~$80) and charge $20 a month for the appLowers the barrier to buy; host thought $80 looked too cheap to be good
- Quitter: Show no prices on the 3-page paywall until users tap 'Start my journey today'The biggest win on this paywall, guest says; no numbers
- BoldVoice: Charge $10 a month with a 7-day free trial from launch dayFounder says it filtered out non-buyers and freed time for the product; no numbers
- BoldVoice: Show the ~$150 annual plan first so ad spend pays back when trials endCash lands 7 days after install, so each channel's ROI is known at once; no numbers
- Savvy Navvy: Sell a two-year plan at about 30% off to get cash up frontBiggest win of the year; ad spend now paid back as soon as it's spent
- Cat on Chair: Give the app away free; sell pro features for $29.99 lifetime or $19.99 a yearMost sales come from the $29.99 lifetime plan
- Show paid Instagram and Facebook users a paywall with no X; let organic users close itReported to perform a lot better; no numbers shared
- Simply: Price each country with your own Big Mac-style index, not currency conversionBig ARPU jump in most countries; a few didn't work and were adjusted
- Sway AI: Sell AI photo packs at $14.99 for one and $49.99 for tenBiggest upsell in the app; no spending cap lets big spenders pay more
- Show two plans, hide the rest behind 'View all plans', preselect annualGuest's standard setup; no numbers given
- Give the top plan a dark, premium look that switches when users pick itMore users chose the top plan; no numbers
- Duolingo: Charge $1-3 to fix a broken streakA good share of users paid; showed how much users value their streak
- Duolingo: Launch a plan with no ads, offline use, and 'support our mission'About half of early buyers paid to support the app; started a run rate
- Duolingo: Give subscribers unlimited hearts so mistakes never stop their lessonsBig turning point: raised subscription conversion and retention
- When a purchase is cancelled, offer a discount on the annual plan onlyWeekly or monthly discounts failed in dozens of tests
- Burner: Add a monthly and annual plan with unlimited texts, calls and photosBiggest single jump in revenue in company history; subscriptions now 90%+ of revenue
- Tinder: Offer three subscription levels and sell extra boosts on topFormer CPO calls it one of the best ways to price consumer apps; no revenue split given
- Subway Surfers: Ask players' age, show kids only child-safe ads, and block gambling and gun adsVery few complaints across a billion ad impressions a month
- Apple: Let every app sell subscriptions and take 15% after a subscriber's first yearHost says it drove the current App Store era; review fell from 7-14 days to 1-2
- Japan Dev: List jobs free and charge a fee only when someone gets hiredSales converted pretty well; business at ~$60K/month
- BoldVoice: Sell to working professionals with good English, and skip beginners entirelyFounder credits this focus for ~$10M ARR; no split by segment
- Harpagia: Price in-game purchases between $4.99 and $9.99Players buy readily in that band; above $9.99 converts worse. No test numbers given
- Bickster: Sell lifetime access instead of subscriptions unless the app has real running costsWorks well across their apps; subscriptions drew complaints on one
- Visualizee: Switch from one-time payments to $35 or $80 monthly plans with a 7-day trial~300 subscribers, $8.2K MRR, 25% trial-to-paid; the app was also redesigned
- Swipe.by: Skip free trials and push small businesses to pay a year up frontMost customers pay the year up front
- Simply: Sell a bundle of all your apps on the web, where you can explain itGuest says it works well; no numbers
- Simply: Offer a family plan with up to 5 profiles that covers every appMulti-app, multi-profile accounts retain best in every cohort
- Simply Piano: Lean on monthly plans once people keep renewing month after monthHigher LTV on monthly than annual in Simply Piano; no numbers
- Natal: Merge several niche apps into one app users keep across life stagesLess confusion and a lower price; ARR +20% in Q1 2026
- Opal: Sell the app to schools as a phone policy after students asked for itGrew from one school to many US high schools; front-page LA Times coverage
- TaskMagic: Sell a one-time lifetime deal plus pay-per-use pricing instead of a subscriptionCalled a major early unlock that let the business fund itself; no numbers
- Halo AI: Charge $8.99 a week after a free trial, with extra offers when people leaveWeekly has worked best so far; yearly tested and dropped for now
- Super Unlimited: Give away an unlimited free version, paid for with an ad or twoLow paid conversion, but 1M+ mostly organic downloads a day and very profitable
- Super Unlimited: Charge for no ads, faster servers, more locations and use on every deviceCompany growing and very profitable; no conversion numbers
- Answer 'do you ship to my country?' comments with videos and offer free shipping codesPart of the run to 25K followers and 18M views; no separate numbers
- Lose It!: Build in-app sales timed to each user's journey, with deeper discounts off a higher priceHigher base allows 25-75% discounts to more users; no conversion numbers
- Skylight: Knock money off the device when people buy it with the subscriptionMuch higher subscription attach on the own website than on Amazon or in stores; no numbers
- Skylight: Make every first purchase cover what you paid to get the customerEvery order in company history paid back on day zero; grew without VC money
- ElevenReader: Sell hours of listening instead of AI credits, and drop a planCalled the app's biggest win of the year; no numbers shared
- Tinder: Limit free swipes per day and charge for moreStopped mass-swiping and auto-swipers; turned into a strong revenue driver (no numbers)
- Tinder: Offer several paid tiers, from cheap starter to big spenders at $50K a yearGuest's biggest revenue unlock at Tinder; no numbers given
- Claim: Drop the free trial once trial starts and trial-to-paid are both strongMore revenue without the trial, guest says; no numbers given
- FinalBoss Sour: Put a flash sale on a TikTok Shop item to reach more For You pagesGuest says it automatically boosts the product and brand; no numbers
- Bending Spoons: Buy mature apps, let go of almost all staff, and run them on one central teamEvernote kept ~2 of hundreds of staff and still rates 4.4 stars; company valued at $11B
- The Washington Post: Pair the news subscription with coffee: cafe access and branded coffee beansGuest cites press and business results; no numbers
- Opal: Charge $120 a year and pitch it as paying for itself in work timeGuest says it unlocked very high LTV; no figures beyond price
- Add in-app coins that people earn from ads or buy in packsApps that crack consumables reach deeper LTVs, per talks with hundreds of founders
- LinkedIn: Offer a two-person plan at 20% off, plus a big annual-plan discountBoth offers retain better; no retention figures given
- Apple: Stop charging $129 for OS upgrades so everyone updates automaticallyEnabled automatic overnight updates; profits at record highs anyway
- Life360: Don't charge anything until you reach 10 million active usersFounder says charging early would have killed them; no direct numbers
- Codecademy: Set different price levels by country, not just currencyWorked to raise total cash, but left 10 price packages to maintain forever
- On Android, let people buy one feature or one piece of contentGoogle reports much better Android monetization with hybrid models; no numbers given
- StageTimer: Offer a limited free plan that shows your logo on the on-stage timerWord of mouth is 40%+ of signups; logo effect not measured
- Switch from a paid app to free with purchases, then to subscriptionsMade more money at each step, per the friend; no numbers
- Show different prices depending on what people answer in onboardingHeard it works really well; app unnamed, no numbers
- VueMagnet: Sell a pricier agency plan so agencies can manage many creators in one placeUnexpectedly became the main earner; most of the $6,500 in 60 days (implied)
- Snag: Charge a few dollars a month for access to free stuff worth hundredsFounder credits it for a very high conversion rate; no rate given
- Life360: Offer a free Tile tracker to people who subscribeHelps conversion for certain users; no numbers
- Boost App Social: Add features beyond the core tool so people stay and pay moreFounder credits it, with Meta ads, for $100K MRR; no split given
- Sunflower: Lower your prices when your users have little moneyLower prices made more money; no numbers given
- RevenueCat: Build the product so free users cost almost nothing to supportLets the company keep a generous free tier; no numbers
- Charge about $20 a month for an AI chat app tuned to one nicheUsers pay for it, per the guest; no revenue shared
- Lose It!: Keep the free version good enough to reach the goal without payingRetention very stable after doubling the price, per guest
- Tinder: Build engagement and retention first; push monetization only years laterReached 30-40M monthly users before revenue became a focus in years 4-5
- The Washington Post: Bundle the news subscription with Headspace for readers overwhelmed by newsGuest cites business results but warns partnerships are very hard
- Slopes: Sell day and season passes next to the subscription for occasional usersHost cites it as working; no numbers
- Uber Eats: Sell a monthly membership mainly to stop customers switching to rivalsGuest says members are way less likely to use a rival; no numbers
- Drop prices far lower in Brazil, where ads are very cheapFinally made ad spend in Brazil work; no numbers
- GlamUp: When people close the paywall, show the same plans at 50% off
- When users close the paywall, show cheaper plans, then a 33%-off yearly dealNo result given; guest's go-to for apps that already test a lot
- Rizz: Let users skip the free trial for a lower price: $6.99 vs $9.99 a week
- App Masters: Price utility apps at $5 a week, $20 a year, or $30 once
- Welltory: Offer just a $99.99 yearly plan with no free trial, but let users close it
- If you charge under $10 a month, test $20 on 10-20% of users
- Hiro Analytics: Charge agencies by how many clients they manage, after a 30-day free trialAbout $500/month at 10 clients, $600 at 20, a few thousand at 200
- Once: Charge per event based on guest count: $2 for 10 guests, $50 for 150Part of a model at ~$22K/month; no pricing test reported
- Pingo AI: Offer the free trial only on the yearly plan and hide the monthly one
- Keep one-time offers at 25-33% off; save big sales for Black Friday
- Yousician: Set calendar reminders to recheck price tests at 3 and 6 monthsCatches price 'wins' that flip once renewals come in; no numbers
- Skylight: Keep old customers on the old price, and honor it for anyone who asksGave up an estimated couple million dollars for goodwill; no measured effect
- Tinder: Interview users spending $100-250 a month, then build a top plan for themLed to Tinder Platinum; no results shared
- Tinder: Test many prices for each plan and add-on, country by countryHundreds of price SKUs live at once; no test results shared
- The Washington Post: Offer a $2-a-month, 4-stories plan only to visitors unlikely to subscribeLTV impact not shared; aimed at getting people into paying at all
- Add a $20/year tier using free Apple weather data next to the $40 plan
- Show a paywall for the locked feature, then all perks, then sell just that featureNo numbers; relayed as a pattern to catch more of the demand curve
- Swipe.by: Give websites and online ordering away free; charge for the AI services on top
- Pep AI: Show 'try it free' slides before a paywall with $40/year and $10/month plans
- 3AK: Charge teens $10 a month or $30 a year, below typical training plansTested several yearly prices; no results shared
- Simply: Test annual discounts as deep as 60-75% off monthlyGuest calls discount depth a valuable lever; no numbers
- ToneAdapt: Offer a $10 weekly plan next to a $60 yearly plan
- Life360: Give every software feature a great free version; charge for costly services
- Sprout: Skip the annual plan for a job-search app; sell weekly and monthly via Stripe
- Tinder: Offer the subscription first; show the one-off purchase only to people who say no
- Lose It!: Raise the price only for new users; keep current subscribers on their old priceAvoided an untestable churn risk; no numbers on the effect
- Judge a new lifetime plan against what a subscriber pays over timeTests otherwise wrongly crown lifetime, e.g. 250 vs 100 instead of 250 vs 300 euros
- ElevenLabs app: Offer one price in the mobile app and test offers around itKeeps pricing simple and the team accountable; no numbers shared
- Tinder: Set different prices by country, starting with fast-growing markets like India
- Flighty: Give the first flight free with every pro feature, then lock some
- Burner: Offer 8 plans so short-term and long-term users pick what fits
- Start at $20-30 a month; if nobody pays, fix the product, not the price
- Strava: Buy a beginner-friendly app and sell it to your users as a bundleDeal closed; adviser calls it '1+1=6'; no post-deal numbers shared
- Wired: Make editor Q&A sessions subscriber-only and add them to the subscription
- Sell $5-10 top-up credits on top of subscription tiers
- Bags: Pay token creators 1% of every trade, not just the launch
- Expo: Give the framework away free and charge for cloud builds and hostingCloud builds are one of the main revenue sources; no numbers
- Rundown Studio: Launch a cheaper version of a $6,000/year tool for the same customersGrowing alongside the main product; founder notes more stress
- Put a hard paywall with one lifetime price on an app ranking in search
- Practice by Numbers: Charge a percentage of the practice's revenue instead of per-feature fees
- Savvy Navvy: Offer a free tier in the US but charge from day one elsewhere
- Simply: Try weekly plans for a skill that takes months to learnTested in some apps; none offered now
- Savvy Nomad: Offer three plans for different customers and charge upfrontMiddle plan is the most popular; $140K MRR
- Glam Up: Lock every app behind a paywall with weekly or monthly plansUsed on apps peaking at $150K and $250K MRR; no test reported
- Duolingo: Keep AI features in a pricier top plan; give basic users a taste
- Tolan: Start with a 7-day free trial, then tune trial length to limit AI costs
- Rise Science: Push monthly and quarterly plans on the web instead of annualFounder says web needs different packaging; no numbers
- Grindr: Add a several-hundred-dollar monthly AI tier that does the swiping and matching
- YourMove AI: Keep the cheap text tools behind a soft paywall; hard-paywall AI photosStill how it runs; photos gated because compute is costly
- Lovely: Drop the hard paywall and go freemium after bad reviews
- Fitted: Drop the hard paywall and make the app free, with some paid features
- Burner: Drop the $1.99 download price once there is money to cover free users
- Vogue: Offer everything from a free app to pricey white-glove in-person experiences
- Soundmap: Sell power-ups on top of the subscription, like 2x more songs nearbyGuest says it captures what each user is willing to spend; no numbers
- Strava: Keep a bought app separate and sell one subscription for both apps
- Clear 30: Test $30, $40 and $50 yearly pricesSettled on $30/year; no test numbers shared
- Shot Pattern: Add features users already want, then double the price to $75 a yearPrice now ~$75/year; no separate conversion impact reported
New tactics every Monday
The week's founder interviews, boiled down to what they did and what happened.