What Is a Good Trial-to-Paid Conversion Rate? By Category, 43.5% to 22.2%

The short answer: a good trial-to-paid conversion rate depends on your category

A good trial-to-paid conversion rate depends on your category and, to a smaller degree, your geography. There's no single global number worth chasing. Travel apps convert trials to paid near 43.5%, Photo & Video apps near 22.2%, and both can be healthy for what they are (RevenueCat State of Subscription Apps 2026, 115,000 apps). Benchmark against your category and region, not an average that blends all of them together.

The spread between categories is wide, and the spread inside a single category is wider still. Media & Entertainment apps run anywhere from 11.5% to 69.5% in the same dataset. So the honest benchmark is a range you sit inside, not a line you clear. Below are the category numbers, the geography numbers, and the two levers that actually move your rate.

Trial-to-paid conversion rate by category: Travel leads at 43.5%, Photo & Video trails at 22.2%

RevenueCat's 2026 report ranks trial-to-paid by category across 115,000 apps. Travel leads at 43.5%, and its top quartile reaches 62.4%. Health & Fitness follows at 37.7%. Gaming sits at 25.0%. Photo & Video trails at 22.2%, roughly half of Travel's rate. Same funnel step, very different odds, depending only on what your app does.

The gap tracks intent, not just the category label. A Travel subscriber often has a concrete, time-boxed need during the trial, so it converts while the need is live. Health & Fitness sits high at 37.7% for a related reason: apps like Cal AI and Bend sell an ongoing commitment the user has usually already decided to make. Photo & Video trails because more of its trials are one-off explorations. Before you judge your own rate, find your category's line. A 30% trial-to-paid rate is average for Travel and excellent for Photo & Video.

The spread inside a category is wider than the spread between categories

Here's the part most benchmark charts bury. Media & Entertainment, the category with the widest range, runs from 11.5% to 69.5% trial-to-paid in the same report. That's roughly a 6x gap between a weak app and a strong one doing the exact same thing, in the exact same category. The category median tells you the starting line. It doesn't tell you the ceiling.

Travel's top quartile hits 62.4% while its median is 43.5%, so even the leading category has a long climb from typical to top. Read your category benchmark as the middle of a distribution you can move within, not a grade you pass or fail. The apps at the top of their category aren't in a different business. They execute the trial-to-paid step better, and that's the same hard paywall vs freemium lesson: the model label predicts far less than the build quality.

Geography moves it too, but category moves it more

Where your users are matters as well, just less than what your app does. North America leads trial-to-paid at 34.2%, with a top quartile of 47.9%. Asia-Pacific runs 31.9%, Western Europe 29.7%, MEA 19.5%, and India plus Southeast Asia trails at 15.2%. The regions sit closer together than the categories do, so category is still the benchmark to start from.

One comparison shows how the two interact. North America's floor of 15.6% is roughly India plus Southeast Asia's median. A bottom-tier North American funnel converts trials about as well as a typical funnel in the lowest-converting region. If most of your users sit outside North America, weight your target down, and read subscription revenue by country for the full geography picture.

The two levers that move your trial-to-paid rate

Once you know your category's line, two levers move you up it, and both live in the back half of the funnel, between trial start and the charge. The first is trial length. Longer trials convert better: 42.5% for 17-32 day trials versus 25.5% for trials of 4 days or fewer, about a 70% lift from the window alone. If your rate is low and your trial is short, trial length is the first thing to test.

The second lever is the first session. Cancellations are front-loaded: most trial cancels happen on Day 0, before the user has felt the product work. A longer trial only helps if the user survives that first day, so the fix is usually getting your aha to land fast, not stretching the window. If your trial-to-paid rate sits below your category line, start by learning why users cancel free trials on Day 0, then decide whether the lever is length, the first session, or both.

How to benchmark your own trial-to-paid rate

If you want these category benchmarks on tap while your AI coding agent builds your trial and paywall flow, that's the tasu MCP: the conversion-expertise layer your agent calls as it works. It returns sourced claims and numbers, not code, so your agent does the building.

• Find your category's line first: Travel 43.5%, Health & Fitness 37.7%, Gaming 25.0%, Photo & Video 22.2%. A 'good' rate is good relative to that, not to a global average
• Read the median as the middle of a range, not a passing grade. Media & Entertainment spans 11.5% to 69.5%, so there's room above your category median
• Adjust for geography if your users skew outside North America. NA leads at 34.2%, India plus Southeast Asia trails at 15.2%
• If you're below your line, pull the trial-length lever first (17-32 day trials convert about 70% better than 4-day), then attack Day-0 cancellations
• Don't compare your Photo & Video app to a Travel app's rate. Different intent, different funnel, different benchmark