Trial conversion

The moment a free-trial subscriber makes their first real payment. It's the transition from $0 to paying, and the first time they count toward MRR. Conversion rate (converts ÷ trial starts) is the number that decides whether a trial is marketing or charity.

There is no TRIAL_CONVERTED notification type. A trial converting to paid arrives as an ordinary DID_RENEW, identical in shape to the renewal of a subscription that was never on a trial.

Which means conversion is something you have to reconstruct: you must have recorded, back at SUBSCRIBED time, that this particular subscription started as a free trial, and then recognize its first DID_RENEW. Systems that skip that step simply cannot report a trial conversion rate, however much data they have.

The denominator deserves care too. Trial starts and paid starts are both SUBSCRIBED, and cancellations during a trial never paid anything, so they belong in the conversion rate but not in churn.

See: Trials in the methodology →