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Lifecycle
Free trial
A time-limited period of full or partial access before billing starts, with or without a payment method collected.
A free trial gives time-limited access before the first charge. The design decisions are whether to require a card up front, how long the trial runs, and what happens at the end.
Card-up-front trials convert at a much higher rate but bring far fewer people in, and they generate a burst of involuntary churn at the conversion date when cards that were never validated fail. Card-later trials fill the top of the funnel and convert less.
The end of a trial is a billing event with real consequences: it needs notice, a clear downgrade path, and entitlements that change predictably rather than access that simply stops.