Trial Conversion Funnel: Where Free Trials End Up

Customers are cohorted by their cohort date. A customer is counted as having started a trial when any of their subscriptions began with a free trial. If one customer has several trials, RevenueDot counts the customer once, at the best outcome in this order: converted, set to convert, set to cancel, billing issue, abandoned.

The outcomes mean this. Converted: a paid period followed the trial. Set to convert: the trial is still running with auto-renew on. Set to cancel: it is still running with auto-renew off. Billing issue: it is running, or it ended, with a billing problem reported by the store. Abandoned: the trial ended and no paid period followed.

A cohort stays marked incomplete while any of its trials is still running. Product, store and offering filters change which trials count but not the new-customer denominator. Sandbox trials are excluded. You can open it in the dashboard under Charts or fetch it with GET /v2/projects/{project_id}/charts/trial_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.

A cohort of 500 new customers, after every trial has ended or been resolved.

Trial start rate is 120 / 500 = 24.0%. Trial conversion rate is 48 / 120 = 40.0%. The five outcomes add up to the 120 trials started.

The funnel splits one question into two that need different fixes. A low trial start rate points at the paywall, its price or where it appears. A low trial conversion rate points at the trial itself: the length, what the customer experienced during it, and the reminders before the first charge.

The set to cancel and abandoned bars show how many trials were lost to cancellation. A large set to cancel group among running trials is an early warning, because those customers will not pay unless they turn auto-renew back on. That is the group to reach with a message before the trial ends.

How to read it

• Look at both rates, not only the conversion rate. A higher conversion rate on fewer trials can lower revenue.
• Recent cohorts have many trials in set to convert and set to cancel. Wait for the incomplete mark to clear before you judge them.
• Billing issue trials are fixable. A customer with a failed card is not a customer who decided to leave.
• Segment by product to compare a 3 day trial with a 7 day trial on the same chart.
• Use Trial Cancellation Rate to see how early in the trial customers turn auto-renew off.