What counts as a good trial-to-paid conversion rate in 2026

RevenueCat says hard paywalls convert roughly five times better than freemium. Adapty says soft paywalls outconvert hard ones by nearly half. Both are correct, and the disagreement is the most useful part of either report.

Two of the industry’s most cited subscription reports appear to contradict each other on the single most common paywall question: hard or soft. RevenueCat’s State of Subscription Apps 2026, built from over 115,000 apps and $16 billion in tracked revenue, puts hard paywalls’ median Day-35 paid conversion at 10.7% against 2.1% for freemium, a roughly fivefold gap. Adapty’s State of In-App Subscriptions 2026, built from over 16,000 apps and $3 billion processed, measures soft paywalls converting nearly 50% better than hard ones.

Why they disagree: they are not measuring the same thing

RevenueCat’s number includes everyone who installed the app and never even reached a paywall, which a hard paywall forces and a freemium flow does not. Adapty’s number starts the clock once someone is already looking at the paywall, a group that a hard paywall filters far more aggressively before it ever counts them. Neither figure is wrong. They answer different questions, and citing either one without saying which is how two correct numbers end up looking contradictory.

By trial length

Within RevenueCat’s own data, longer trials convert substantially better than short ones, which argues against the instinct to shorten a trial to get users to a decision faster.

By category

By region

A category or region sitting at the bottom of these charts is not automatically underperforming. A gaming app compared against gaming’s own median is a fair comparison; the same app compared against travel’s 43.5% is not.

Placement and what it trades away

Adapty’s report adds a detail RevenueCat’s does not: paywalls shown after a user reaches a real value moment in the app see trial starts at roughly 65%, against roughly 31% for a paywall shown immediately on open, a bit more than double. But the same report finds hard paywalls generate about 21% higher lifetime value per subscriber than soft ones, despite converting a smaller share of installs. A higher conversion rate and a higher-value subscriber are not the same win, and a team optimising only the percentage on one dashboard can miss which one it actually has.

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