The short answer: in a January 2026 survey of 200 B2B software products, the median free-to-paid conversion rate was 8%. A free trial that asks for a credit card converted at 30%, more than 5 times the rate of a trial that does not. Source: ChartMogul, The Conversion Report, written by Kyle Poyar with ChartMogul and ProductLed, 4 February 2026, read 14 October 2026.
A second dataset, from 86 SaaS companies tracked between the first quarter of 2022 and the third quarter of 2025, puts a trial with no card at 18.2% and a trial with a card at 48.8%. Source: First Page Sage, SaaS Free Trial Conversion Rate Benchmarks, 5 September 2025, read 14 October 2026.
The two sets of numbers are far apart because they count different things. This page gives both, says how each one was measured, and shows how to place your own rate against them. For the formula and a worked example, see our pages on trial-to-paid conversion rate, freemium conversion rate and visitor-to-trial conversion rate. To work out your own rate, use the trial conversion rate calculator.
The Conversion Report surveyed 200 software products in January 2026. A typical respondent has between $1 million and $10 million in annual recurring revenue and earns $50 to $249 a month per customer. The survey asked what share of leads or free signups become paying customers within six months.
Free trials are the most common way in: 57% of the products start new customers on a free trial, 26% on a freemium plan, 7% on a reverse trial, 7% on an interactive demo and 4% on a paid trial. The most common trial length is 14 days, used by 62% of products, followed by 7 days (14%) and 30 days (14%).
| How people start | Good | Great |
|---|---|---|
| Free trial, all products | 4% to 6% | 10% to 15% |
| Free trial, credit card required | 25% to 35% | 50% to 60% |
| Freemium, self-serve | 3% to 5% | 8% to 12% |
| Freemium you can use before signing up | 7% to 9% | not given |
| Reverse trial | 4% to 6% | 8% to 12% |
| AI-native or AI plus SaaS product | 6% to 8% | 15% to 20% |
All rows are from The Conversion Report, read 14 October 2026. The report says the reverse trial sample was small, and that products sold mostly to businesses convert somewhat higher than consumer or mixed products.
The report's own warning is that 8% describes almost nobody. It found a 10 times gap in conversion between the top 20% of self-serve products and the bottom 20%. Among free trial products, 20% convert below 2.5%, 30% convert between 2.5% and 7.5%, and 23% convert above 25%. The remaining 27%, which is our subtraction and not a figure the report prints, sit between 7.5% and 25%.
Share of free trial products in each conversion band, 2026 survey
Freemium products bunch lower. In the same report, 25% of them convert below 2.5%, 29% between 2.5% and 7.5%, and another 25% between 10% and 15%. The report calls conversion above 15% rare for freemium.
In the 2026 survey, 20% of free trial products ask for a credit card before the trial starts and 80% do not. The ones that ask convert at 30%. The report counts 25% to 35% as good and 50% to 60% as great for a trial with a card, against 4% to 6% and 10% to 15% for free trials overall.
A higher rate is not the same as more customers, because a card at signup turns some visitors away. The report follows 1,000 website visitors through each model:
| For every 1,000 website visitors | Free signups | Paying customers |
|---|---|---|
| Free trial, credit card required | 35 | 10.5 |
| Freemium you can use before signing up | 70 | 5.6 |
| Freemium | 90 | 5 |
| Free trial | 45 | 3.6 |
Paying customers for every 1,000 website visitors, 2026 survey
In that survey the trial with a card wins on customers as well as on rate. The 2025 dataset below points the other way on customers, which is why the answer for your product has to come from your own traffic. The trade-offs are on our page about requiring a credit card for a free trial.
First Page Sage is a marketing agency. Its report, last updated on 5 September 2025, pools its own SaaS clients from the first quarter of 2022 to the third quarter of 2025: 86 companies, 71% selling to businesses and 29% to consumers. It counts a conversion as even a single paid month.
| Step | Organic traffic | Paid traffic |
|---|---|---|
| Visitor to free trial, no card | 8.5% | 7.1% |
| Free trial with no card, to paid | 18.2% | 17.4% |
| Visitor to free trial, card required | 2.5% | 2.2% |
| Free trial with a card, to paid | 48.8% | 51% |
| Visitor to freemium | 13.3% | 15.9% |
| Freemium to paid | 2.6% | 2.8% |
All rows are from First Page Sage, read 14 October 2026.
Conversion to paid by model, 2025 dataset, organic traffic
Three things explain why 18.2% here and 4% to 6% in the survey can both be right:
Run the dataset's own numbers through 1,000 organic visitors and a trial with no card gives about 15 customers (85 trials at 18.2%), while a trial with a card gives about 12 (25 trials at 48.8%). That is our arithmetic on First Page Sage's figures. It is the opposite of the survey's result, where the card won.
First Page Sage also splits its dataset by industry, for every market where it has had at least 5 clients. It gives one visitor-to-trial rate and one trial-to-paid rate for each.
| Industry | Visitor to trial | Trial to paid |
|---|---|---|
| CRM | 9.7% | 29.0% |
| IoT | 12.6% | 25.2% |
| Education | 10.3% | 24.8% |
| Advertising | 9.1% | 24.3% |
| ERP | 9.4% | 23.7% |
| Regulatory technology | 11.7% | 23.6% |
| Communications | 8.3% | 23.4% |
| Legal | 9.7% | 23.1% |
| Environmental | 11.1% | 22.9% |
| HR | 8.1% | 22.7% |
| Real estate | 7.1% | 22.7% |
| Cybersecurity | 7.4% | 21.9% |
| Agriculture | 8.8% | 21.5% |
| Healthcare | 12.3% | 21.5% |
| Financial | 9.0% | 19.4% |
| Enterprise | 5.5% | 18.6% |
All rows are from First Page Sage, read 14 October 2026.
A benchmark helps when it measures what you measure. Before you set your number against any figure on this page, line up four things.
Four checks before you compare your rate with a benchmark
Filling the top of the funnel: Outbound is a meaningful (and often under-counted) source of high-intent trials for B2B SaaS. If your trial volume is the bottleneck rather than your conversion rate, self-serve cold email software like EmailChaser lets you build and run targeted outbound campaigns in-house, while Prymatica's done-for-you cold email and B2B lead generation builds qualified pipeline for you. Both behave like high-quality outbound channels: book the right prospects into a trial, then use the playbook below to convert them. Emailchaser is built by the same team as 1Capture.
Neither source says which trial length converts best. The survey reports only what is common: 14 days for 62% of products.
The payment itself is the last step. A card that has expired or cannot cover the price fails at the end of the trial, after you have served that user for weeks. Our pages on card decline rate and failed payment rate show how to measure that loss, and the failed payment recovery calculator puts a number on it.
The figures are VoiceDrop's own, and the full account is in our VoiceDrop case study.
| Source | Published | What it counted |
|---|---|---|
| ChartMogul, The Conversion Report, by Kyle Poyar with ChartMogul and ProductLed. The same study ran in his Growth Unhinged newsletter as A new look at free-to-paid conversion. | 4 February 2026 | A survey of 200 software products in January 2026. Leads or free signups that pay within six months. |
| First Page Sage, SaaS Free Trial Conversion Rate Benchmarks | 5 September 2025 | 86 SaaS clients of the agency, first quarter of 2022 to third quarter of 2025. A trial that pays for at least one month. |
Both were read on 14 October 2026.
1Capture builds trial pages that save a card at signup and collect payment when the trial ends.
Free under $10K MRR • 5-minute setup • No credit card
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