Does the free plan pay for itself?

About this calculator

A free plan is an acquisition channel with a monthly bill. Every active free user costs infrastructure, and the tier as a whole carries support, fraud, and abuse overhead. What pays for it is conversion: each free user who upgrades brings a lifetime of gross profit. This model puts one month of cost against the lifetime value created by one month of conversions. The result is the free tier's net monthly contribution, plus the break-even conversion rate - the annual free-to-paid rate at which the plan exactly washes its face - and how much headroom sits between that floor and your actual rate. Pull the conversion, cost-to-serve, price, and lifetime levers to match your own product and watch the contribution flip between earning and bleeding. The chain shows every step. Save the model with your numbers to stress-test scenarios and share the answer with your team.