An app paywall is the screen inside a mobile app that asks a user to start a trial or buy a subscription before they get premium features.
A paywall that converts states what the user gets, makes one plan the obvious choice, explains the trial terms plainly and appears at a moment when the user already wants the product.
You find the right version for your app by A/B testing it, because the real tests below show the same change can win in one app and lose in another.
This guide walks through paywall design, plans, copy, placement and testing.
Every claim about what works links to a real experiment in our paywall test database, with the numbers the team reported and the name of whoever ran it.
What a paywall is: app paywalls vs news paywalls
The word "paywall" started with publishers. A news paywall blocks articles until you subscribe.
Some block everything (a hard paywall), and others let you read a few articles a month before blocking you (a metered paywall).
An app paywall does the same job inside an iOS or Android app.
It is usually a full screen or a sheet that lists subscription plans, a free trial offer and a purchase button.
On the App Store and Google Play, the purchase normally runs through the store's own in-app purchase system.
App paywalls come in a few shapes:
- Hard paywall: the user can't use the app until they start a trial or pay. Our guide on hard vs soft paywalls covers the trade-offs.
- Soft paywall: the user can close the paywall and keep using a limited free version.
- Feature-gated paywall: the paywall appears when the user taps a premium feature.
- Web paywall: the purchase happens on a web page, either before the install (web-to-app funnels) or by sending the user from the app to a browser checkout.
Which model you pick sets the ceiling for everything else.
RevenueCat's State of Subscription Apps 2026, built on data from over 115,000 apps, reports a median Day-35 conversion rate of 10.7% for hard paywall apps against 2.1% for freemium apps.
Hard paywall apps also earned $3.09 per install at day 60 versus $0.38 for freemium.
Yearly subscriber retention after one year was nearly the same: 27% for hard paywall apps and 28% for freemium.
That benchmark compares different apps, not the same app tested two ways.
Our database shows switches can go either way.
Opal moved from a hard paywall to a free tier and its pay penetration fell from 20% to 9%.
The entry is logged as a win in our database because of how Opal judged the move, but the lower pay rate shows the cost.
In an anonymized app that Phil Carter advised, a switch to freemium cut subscriber conversion by more than half (a before-after comparison).
Headspace saw a significant rise in paid subscribers when it fully locked its content.
Anatomy of a high-converting paywall
Most paywalls that convert share the same parts, in roughly this order from top to bottom:
- A headline about the outcome, not the product name. "Sleep better in 7 days" says more than "Go Premium."
- A short list of benefits, usually three to five lines.
- Proof: a rating, a review or a user count.
- Plan options, with one plan selected by default.
- Trial terms: how long the trial lasts, when the charge happens and what it costs.
- One clear purchase button, plus restore purchases, terms and privacy links.
Shorter often wins. Vahe Baghdasaryan redesigned paywalls for several apps, and in a party game app a shorter paywall with fewer plans lifted install-to-trial 31% and revenue 64%.
A food app saw +72% install-to-trial from a short paywall with a review stat.
Both changes were bundled redesigns, so the lift can't be pinned on any single element.
Length is not a rule, though. Speak4Me got +27% conversion and +36% proceeds from a multi-step paywall (Superwall case study, vendor-reported).
Stompers ran the opposite test and found its single-page paywall converted over 16% better than the multi-page version, with more yearly trials.
Visuals and video
Showing the product working can beat describing it.
Stardust tested a video background on its paywall and reported +67% paywall conversion and +12.5% proceeds per user.
FitnessAI reported about +80% revenue after adding video to its paywall, measured before and after rather than in a split test.
Unchaind showed users a preview of the app on the paywall and saw over +50% conversion and +64% estimated ARPU.
For more on layout patterns, see our paywall design element page.
Plans, trials and defaults
The plan section is where most paywall revenue is won or lost.
Three decisions matter: how many plans to show, which one is selected by default and whether a trial is attached.
How many plans
Fewer choices usually help, but removing too much can hurt.
Mojo saw +14% new subscription revenue when it hid credit packs and sold only subscriptions (Superwall case study, vendor-reported).
Stardust went further and tested a yearly-only paywall, and it lost on both conversion and proceeds per user.
A Stardust test that tucked extra plans into a "more pricing" drawer also lost.
A third, higher tier can raise revenue even if few people pick it.
Planner 5D tested three price tiers and reported +83% ARPU for the highest tier.
Rash ID moved to three plans with a "best offer" badge and reported about +20% ARPU and over +50% conversion to paid.
Anchors and defaults
Showing a pricier plan next to the one you want sold makes the target plan look cheaper.
Mojo added a monthly price as an anchor for its annual plan and reported +45% in Brazil, +26% in Mexico and +8% in the USA.
Preu AI anchored its annual plan and reported +80% proceeds per user and +22% trial conversion.
Microsoft 365 found that showing the expensive plan first sold more of both plans, the personal plan much more.
The default selection matters too. Mojo made yearly the default plan and saw yearly share rise 15 to 20 percentage points.
Stardust showed a discount badge with the weekly-equivalent price and reported +50% conversion, +62.5% proceeds per user and +30% yearly share.
Trials
A free trial usually lifts paywall conversion, but you have to judge it on paid conversion.
Stardust reported +131% paywall conversion after adding a 7-day trial.
In a PDF scanner app run by AEZAKMI Group, monthly converted at 1.21%, weekly at 1.63% and weekly with a trial at 2.29%.
Longer is not always better. Zumba cut its trial from 14 to 7 days and got +8% install-to-paid (RevenueCat customer story).
A wellness app that Daphne Tideman worked with tested a 14-day trial against 7 days and got slightly more trial starts but fewer paid conversions.
Across the market, RevenueCat's 2026 report found trials of 17 to 32 days converted to paid at 42.5%, against 25.5% for trials shorter than 4 days, and that 55.4% of 3-day trial cancellations happen on day 0.
Sometimes the best trial is no free trial.
Teaching.com replaced its trial with a money-back guarantee and saw slightly lower conversion but higher revenue and LTV.
Vahe Baghdasaryan tested a paid 30-day trial against a monthly plan with no trial and reported D90 ARPU rising from $2.23 to $2.89 (+30%).
Our pages on plans, free trials and subscription pricing go deeper on each choice.
Copy, social proof and trial timelines
Paywall copy should answer three questions fast: what do I get, why should I trust it, and what happens to my money.
Apple's App Store Review Guidelines (3.1.2(c)) say that before asking a customer to subscribe, you should clearly describe what the user will get for the price.
Google Play's subscriptions policy requires you to state the trial length, when and how it turns into a paid subscription, what it will cost and how to cancel.
Copy that sells the outcome
Clear 30 rewrote its paywall to preview the program the user would get, and conversion rose from 20% to 30% (+50%), measured before and after.
Localized copy can matter as much as the words themselves.
Daily Horoscope reported +183% trial start rate with localized paywalls, and Photoroom reported +50% upsell screen conversion from localized upsell paywalls.
Trial timelines
A trial timeline shows the user what happens on day 1, when you'll send a reminder, and when they'll be charged.
It answers the fear of a surprise charge.
Blinkist's timeline paywall, discussed by Marcus Burke, produced a significant rise in trial opt-in and 4% fewer trial cancellations.
Stardust's trial timeline design lifted conversion 13.6% with trial-to-paid unchanged.
Pepper split its paywall into a two-step flow with a timeline and reported +50% LTV.
The trial toggle
A trial toggle lets the user switch the free trial on or off.
Fits tested it against a timeline paywall and the toggle paywall won with +19% ARPU.
Adam Lyttle reported weekly revenue going from about $2,500 to over $5,300 after adding a toggle paywall, measured before and after.
Honesty pays later
Tricks that push trial starts often cost you in refunds.
BoldVoice tested a paywall with no close button and got more trial starts, but refunds rose by more than the gain.
An unclosable discount shown on dismiss had the same result.
Placement and timing
Where the paywall shows up can matter more than how it looks.
Most subscription apps show the paywall at the end of onboarding, and many show it again when a user taps a premium feature.
Show it early
Several teams in our database found that showing the paywall earlier raised revenue.
Rootd moved its paywall to the start of onboarding and reported revenue rising 5x (before-after).
Jake Mor's work with FitnessAI put the paywall before onboarding, and 50% more users saw it.
Greg added a paywall to onboarding plus feature gating and reported about +400% trial sign-ups, with sign-up-to-trial rising from 3% to 15%.
Match the paywall to the moment
A paywall triggered by a specific action can speak to that action.
JourneyStamp used context-specific paywalls and reported +50% conversion rate, reaching 7.3% overall.
Wizz showed fewer, better-timed offers and reported +81% on the primary offer flow and about 20% higher LTV.
A paywall doesn't always need to be the first ask.
Slopes replaced its paywall with a one-tap trial card and saw +25% trial starts, with trial-to-paid about the same.
Our paywall timing page and onboarding guide cover the flow around the paywall.
Web paywalls
Apple's guidelines now let apps on the United States storefront include buttons, external links and other calls to action that send users to other ways to pay (guidelines 3.1.1(a) and 3.1.3).
Outside the US, the old limits still apply except under specific entitlements.
That makes a web paywall, or a button from the app to web checkout, worth testing for US users.
The results so far are mixed. Superwall's pooled early tests of app-to-web checkout found 11.9% lower initial conversion but about 19.85% higher net proceeds.
Zumba added a web checkout button and saw immediate conversions fall 25% while LTV rose 17%.
On the other side, Dipsea's web-only paywall dropped initial conversion from 27.0% to 18.1% compared with in-app purchase, and an indie developer, Sebastian Szturo, found a small conversion dip cost more than the fees saved.
See our web-to-app guide for the funnel side.
How to A/B test your paywall
Paywall tests need a tool that serves different paywalls to random groups of users and ties each group to what they later pay.
Changing the paywall through an app update and comparing months is a before-after comparison, not a test, and many of the results above carry that caveat.
The tools
Three widely used paywall tools are compared below.
Prices are as of November 2026 and link to each vendor's pricing page.
We haven't used these tools ourselves; the details come from their public docs.
| Tool | Pricing (as of November 2026) | Paywall building | Testing | Not ideal for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| RevenueCat | Free up to $2,500 monthly tracked revenue, then 1% of tracked revenue | Templates, custom builds and an AI editor; single-screen or multi-step paywalls, changed remotely without an app update | Experiments compare Offerings, each with its own paywall | watchOS, tvOS, visionOS and Cordova apps, which RevenueCat Paywalls don't support |
| Superwall | Subscription infrastructure free; paywalls free up to $10,000 a month in paywall-attributed revenue, then 1% of that revenue | No-code editor, templates, Figma imports, web checkout through Stripe | Campaigns with traffic splits and no-paywall holdouts | Teams that want one bill to cover all revenue analytics from another vendor; fees track paywall-attributed revenue only |
| Adapty | Free up to $5,000 a month, then 1% of monthly tracked revenue | Flow and paywall builder | A/B testing included in Pro | Teams already standardized on another subscription SDK, since switching means migrating purchase code |
RevenueCat's Paywalls docs describe paywalls as part of Offerings, so you can test one paywall design per Offering through Experiments.
They support iOS 15+, Android 7+ and web via Web Purchase Links.
Superwall's campaign docs describe placements (the user actions that can trigger a paywall), audiences that filter who sees which paywall, percentage splits, and holdouts that show no paywall at all.
A holdout is useful because it tells you whether the paywall itself is paying off. Our paywall tools roundup compares more options.
Running the test
- Write a hypothesis. "Showing the weekly-equivalent price will raise yearly share because the yearly plan will look cheaper."
- Pick a revenue metric. Use proceeds per user, ARPU or LTV, not just trial starts. BuyBye's 50% higher yearly price cost 19% of conversions but raised proceeds per user 25%.
- Size the test. Use our sample size calculator before you start. Paywall conversion rates are often in the low single digits, so you need a lot of users.
- Wait for renewals. Trial-to-paid and first renewals arrive days or weeks after the paywall view. Judge the test after enough trials have ended.
- Change one thing when you can. Bundled redesigns can find big wins, but you won't know which part did the work.
Our mobile app A/B testing guide covers setup and metrics in more detail, and the paywall checklist gives you a pre-launch review.
What the database says works
Across the paywall tests in our database, a few patterns hold up.
None of them is a guarantee, and most results are vendor-reported case studies from RevenueCat and Superwall, which tend to publish wins.
- Price and plan tests move revenue most. PropGPT raised its weekly price from $6.99 to $9.99 and reported +47.5% proceeds per user. LookLab AI paired a free trial with a higher weekly price and campaign conversion went from 8.3% to 15.0%. SellRaze went the other way and got +10% ARPU from a lower annual price.
- Offers after a "no" can recover revenue. Superwall's cascading offers across three tiers reported +8.3% ARPU, about $14.7K a month in added proceeds. Flibbo got +20% revenue from a discounted first-week intro offer.
- Simplifying usually helps, until it removes a choice people wanted. Mojo's hidden credit packs won; Stardust's yearly-only paywall lost.
- Clear trial terms beat hidden ones. Timelines won at Blinkist and Stardust, while BoldVoice's no-dismiss paywalls lost to refunds.
- Trial starts are not the goal. Slopes, the wellness app and BoldVoice all raised trial starts without more paying users.
Before you copy any of these, remember the audience matters.
Mojo's price anchor lifted conversion 45% in Brazil but only 8% in the USA. Test the idea in your own app.
Browse every result in our paywall tests, or see our research on the app A/B test win rate to set realistic expectations.
Superwall