Free-to-Paid Conversion Rate
Percentage of free trial or freemium users who convert to a paid subscription
What is Free-to-Paid Conversion Rate?
Free-to-paid conversion rate is the percentage of activated free trial or free plan users who become paying customers. It shows how well a product turns free use into revenue.
For software businesses using free tiers or trials to acquire users, it is a core measure of how well the product and pricing work.
How this KPI is measured
- Function
- Sales
- Sub-function
- Product-Led Growth
- Industry
- Software / Technology (SaaS)
- Type
- Lagging
- Impact
- Revenue
- Unit
- %
- Measurement frequency
- Monthly / Quarterly
- Formula
- (Users converting to paid / Total free trial users activated) × 100
How to calculate it
Divide users converting to paid by total free users who have activated, and multiply by 100.
For example, if 5,000 users activated a free trial and 400 became paying customers, the rate is 8%.
Use activated users as the base, not sign-ups, and follow each cohort for a fixed time.
Where it is used
Improving the trial
Test onboarding and prompts.
Setting pricing
Decide free plan limits.
Forecasting revenue
Estimate paying customers.
How to improve it
Tips and common mistakes
- Compare cohorts of the same age.
- A higher rate is not always better if it hurts growth of free users.
- Track time to convert.
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