Short answer: a free trial is worth your subscription price after the store's cut, times the share of trials that convert to paid. A $39.99 yearly plan in the App Store Small Business Program keeps about $34. At a 30% trial-to-paid rate, one trial is worth about $10 in first-year revenue. If Meta charges you $56 to $93 per trial, as one subscription app developer posted this week, no amount of budget fixes that.
Working out the target and running the ads against it are one job, not two. A cost per trial on its own means nothing; it's only high or low next to what the trial earns you.
The formula
Value of one trial = price you keep per subscriber × trial-to-paid rate. The price you keep is the list price minus the store's commission: Apple takes 15% for developers in its Small Business Program and 30% otherwise, and Google Play takes 15% on subscriptions. Taxes and refunds take a little more, so treat the result as a ceiling.
That number is what a trial is worth, not what you should pay for it. If you want the ads to pay back inside the first year, your target cost per trial sits below it; how far below depends on your margin and on how long you're willing to wait. Renewals in year two raise the value, but only for the subscribers who stay, so count them once you have your own retention data rather than guessing.
| Yearly price | You keep (15% cut) | Trial-to-paid | One trial is worth |
|---|---|---|---|
| $39.99 | About $34 | 30% | About $10 |
| $59.99 | About $51 | 37.7% (Health & Fitness median) | About $19 |
| $29.99 | About $25.50 | 22.2% (Photo & Video median) | About $5.70 |
| $79.99 | About $68 | 43.5% (Travel median) | About $30 |
The trial-to-paid figures in the table are category medians from RevenueCat's State of Subscription Apps 2026, which covers 2025 data. Your own rate is the one that counts; the medians are there so you can sanity-check yours.
What other apps pay on Meta
Adapty's Meta ads benchmarks, built from campaign data of about 5,000 subscription apps across 45 countries from July to September 2026, give a median of $20.28 per trial for campaigns optimized for Start Trial, and $64.93 per paying user overall. They also found that campaigns optimized for Subscribe pay more per trial but less per paying user: $42.77 against $57.32.
Put that next to the table. An app worth $10 a trial that pays the median $20 is losing money on every trial, even though its cost is "normal". An app worth $30 a trial can pay the median and do well. The benchmark tells you what is typical; your trial value tells you whether typical works for you.
When cost per trial is far above what a trial is worth
- A gap of two or three times is usually creative and the store page, not budget. More money buys more of the same trials at the same price.
- Look at the click-to-install step first. If people click the ad but don't install, the App Store or Play Store page isn't doing what the ad promised.
- Then install-to-trial. If people install and don't start a trial, the paywall or onboarding is where they leave.
- Check what the campaign is optimizing for. If Meta isn't receiving trial events from your app, it is optimizing for installs or clicks and the cost per trial will drift. Confirm the events arrive in Events Manager before you judge.
- Give it enough results. Meta says an ad set leaves the learning phase after about 50 optimization events in seven days; with fewer, a single day's cost per trial is noise. This page has the budget arithmetic.
Once the target is set, cut by it. An ad that has spent two or three times your target cost per trial without producing one has had its chance, as covered in how much to spend before killing an ad. Raise budget only on ad sets that stay under the target for a week.
A trial is worth price after the store's cut × trial-to-paid rate. Set your target cost per trial below that, then judge every ad and every budget change against it. A cost per trial far above the value is a creative or store-page problem, not a budget problem.
How Everix runs app campaigns against a target
Everix makes the daily calls a media buyer makes on your Meta ad account, including app promotion campaigns. You give each lane the cost per result you can afford; it switches off ads that spend past it with the reason recorded, flags which country or placement is eating budget, and asks before adding budget to the ad sets that stay under it. It starts at $49 a month, with 7 days free.
Frequently asked questions
- How much is one free trial worth?
- Your subscription price minus the store's commission, times your trial-to-paid rate. A $39.99 yearly plan with a 15% cut and a 30% trial-to-paid rate gives about $10 per trial in first-year revenue.
- What is a good cost per trial on Meta ads?
- One below what a trial is worth to you. Adapty's July to September 2026 benchmarks put the median at $20.28 per trial for campaigns optimized for Start Trial, but that is only good if your trial value is higher.
- Should I count year-two renewals?
- Once you have your own retention data. Until then, judge on first-year revenue, because renewals only come from the subscribers who stay.
- Should I optimize for Start Trial or Subscribe?
- Adapty found Subscribe-optimized campaigns pay more per trial but less per paying user. If Meta receives enough subscribe events from your app, optimizing for them is worth testing.
- My cost per trial is three times my target. Should I raise the budget?
- No. A gap that large is usually the ad or the store page. Check click-to-install and install-to-trial before spending more.