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Free Trial to Paid Target

What conversion rate must your free trial hit to clear your monthly revenue target? Reverse-solve from signups, ARPU, and churn.

Your numbers

Start from an example

$
$
$

Lifetime revenue per paying customer; about ARPU ÷ monthly churn.

$

Marketing spend ÷ trial signups. Cost per PAID customer = this ÷ conversion.

Monthly churn after conversion

Share of paying customers who cancel each month. Must be above 0.

Result

Required trial-to-paid conversion
2.04%
Paid conversions needed per month
40.8
CAC per paid customer
$392
Payback (months)
8 mo
Status: in range.LTV:CAC
3.06×

Holding $50,000 a month takes 1,020 paying customers. At this conversion rate, MRR reaches 90% of the target about 56 months after you start from zero. With 10% more signups the required rate falls to 1.86%; with 10% fewer it rises to 2.27%.

Required conversion rate

Trial-to-paid conversion needed to hold the revenue target, by signup volume.

10% fewer signups
2.27%
Signups as entered
2.04%
10% more signups
1.86%

General business information, not legal, tax or financial advice. The result comes only from your inputs and the published method. How we check our numbers.

How to use it

  1. Enter your target monthly revenue, your LTV per paid user, your CAC per signup, your monthly trial signups, your churn rate after trial, and your monthly ARPU. The tool reverse-solves the problem most founders state backwards: instead of guessing a conversion rate and hoping the revenue follows, it tells you the exact trial-to-paid rate your funnel needs to hit the revenue number you actually want.
  2. Read the required conversion rate, the paid conversions needed each month, the acquisition cost per paying customer, the payback period, the LTV:CAC ratio, and the line under the tiles: paying customers needed, months to reach 90% of the target from zero, and the rate needed if signups come in 10% higher or lower. The required rate is the headline: the paying customers your target needs, times monthly churn (the customers you must replace each month), divided by signups.
  3. Use the required rate as a reality check against your own trial cohorts: published conversion figures vary too widely with card requirements, trial length and how conversion is counted to serve as a benchmark. If the required rate sits well above what your recent cohorts converted, you need more signups, higher ARPU, or a different sales motion rather than a heroic onboarding fix.
  4. Read the 10%-more and 10%-fewer signup rates to see how dependent the target is on signup volume. If the required conversion rate swings sharply between the 10%-more and 10%-less signup cases, your plan is fragile to top-of-funnel variance, and stabilising signups may matter more than optimising conversion. Check the LTV:CAC ratio too, since a healthy required conversion rate built on unprofitable unit economics still fails.
  5. Re-run whenever your ARPU, signup volume, or post-trial churn changes, and use the required rate to set a concrete onboarding goal rather than a vague aspiration to convert better. Pair this with the unit economics tool to confirm the paid users you need are actually profitable, and the churn-retention tool if post-trial churn is the constraint.
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Use it from code

The same calculation as a JavaScript module you can import. It runs where you import it, with no request, key or rate limit.

import { compute } from "https://aibizhub.io/engines/free-trial-to-paid-target.js";

Input and output contract, TypeScript types and the guide for agents.