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How long should your trial be?
Whether a longer trial's extra activation beats its extra support cost, and what the gap is worth every month.
Your numbers
Starting numbers: A self-serve software business running several hundred trials a month, choosing between a fortnight and a month. Change anything below.
Share of trials that reach the point where the product is genuinely useful, inside two weeks.
The same, given a month instead. Longer trials activate more people - and cost more to run.
What one longer trial costs you in support and infrastructure.
Once someone is genuinely using it, how often do they buy.
People beginning a trial each month.
Average monthly bill across paying customers.
What this also assumes (3)
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What the longer trial is worth a month
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How it's computed
About this calculator
The trial length debate reduces to one trade. A longer trial gives more users time to reach the activation milestone, and activated users convert to paid at the same rate regardless of trial length. But every extra day of trial carries support and onboarding cost, paid on every signup including the ones that never convert. This model prices both sides: the lifetime gross profit from the extra customers a longer trial activates, against the extra cost of supporting every trial for longer. The monthly value difference is the verdict, and it flips as the activation gap narrows or the support cost climbs.
Pull the two activation rates apart or together, raise the support cost, and watch the difference change sign. The chain shows every step of the arithmetic. Save the model with your numbers to stress-test scenarios and settle the debate with a model instead of opinions.
Every number on this page is computed live by the LeverMap engine.