Paywall Conversion Rate: How to Measure It Per Paywall

RevenueDot pairs each customer with each paywall they saw and dates the pair by the first impression. A pair converts when the customer started a trial, bought a subscription or made a one-time purchase on calendar days 0 to 3 (UTC) counted from that impression. The four rates are initial conversion (a trial start or a purchase), paid conversion (a purchase, or a trial that then converted), trial start rate and trial conversion rate.

All four rates are divided by paywall viewers. That makes the trial conversion rate here different from the Trial Conversion Rate chart, which divides by trial starts. A customer who saw two paywalls and then bought appears as a viewer and a conversion for both, because the match is by time window, not by which paywall's button was pressed.

You can segment and filter by paywall, app, country, platform and app version. Pairs are marked incomplete until their window is over. The paywall events come from the SDK. You can open it in the dashboard under Charts or fetch it with GET /v2/projects/{project_id}/charts/paywall_conversion. The response has the same shape as RevenueCat's Charts API, so scripts written for that API keep working. The secret key needs the charts_metrics:charts:read permission. The Charts guide lists every parameter.

One paywall with 1,000 viewers, read after the 4 day window has passed.

Initial conversion is 13.0% and paid conversion is 9.4%. The trial conversion rate on this chart is 54 / 1,000 = 5.4%, while 54 of 90 trials is 60% on the Trial Conversion Rate chart.

Paywall conversion is where the design and the price of the paywall show up. Segment by paywall to compare two designs or two prices on the same traffic and pick the one that converts more, then check Paywall LTV to confirm the winner also earns more over time.

Looking at all four rates together stops a bad trade. A paywall can lift the trial start rate while lowering the share of trials that convert, and the paid conversion rate shows the net effect.

How to read it

• Compare paywalls on the same period and the same audience. Different countries convert differently.
• Wait for the 4 day window before you call a test. Pairs inside it are marked incomplete.
• Paid conversion is the rate to optimize for money. Initial conversion rewards free trials that may never pay.
• Because a purchase is matched by time, a customer who saw two paywalls counts as converted for both. Keep tests clean by showing one paywall per customer.
• Segment by country when a paywall wins overall but loses in your biggest market.