# Giving customers a free subscription period

There are several reasons you might want to give someone access to a paid Plan without charging them: a free trial, a few complimentary months for an existing customer, ongoing access for an employee, and more.

Clerk Billing has three ways to handle these cases:

1. A **free trial** on a Plan
2. A **100% Discount** on an existing Subscription
3. A **$0 complimentary custom price** you create and transition someone onto

All three can result in free access with paid Features. They differ in how conversion works, what shows up in Billing, who can self-serve, and how you move the account back to a commercial price later.

This post covers when to use each option. For a shorter version, see [Free and complimentary access](https://clerk.com/docs/guides/billing/free-and-complimentary-access.md) in the docs.

## Start from the relationship, not the amount

Ask four questions before you open the Dashboard:

1. **Have they ever paid or trialled?** Free trials are only for customers who have never paid and never used a free trial.
2. **What should happen when the free access ends?** A trial converts to a paid Subscription when a payment method is on file and the customer doesn't cancel. A finite Discount resumes full-price billing automatically. A $0 price stays at $0 until you transition the Subscription.
3. **Should they stay on the commercial price?** Discounts reduce what you charge. The Subscription price itself stays put. A $0 custom price _is_ their price.
4. **Is this a public offer or an exception?** Trials and promo codes scale to many customers. Complimentary $0 prices are for a small number of accounts, such as employees, partners, or internal dogfood users.

The answers usually make the right option clear.

## Free trials: the conversion path

Use a free trial when someone is evaluating the product and, with a payment method on file, should automatically move to a paid Subscription afterward.

Trials are Plan configuration, not a special Subscription type you create per customer. Turn them on, set the day count, and checkout flows like [`<PricingTable />`](https://clerk.com/docs/reference/components/billing/pricing-table.md) advertise them. Clerk can require a payment method up front (the default), email the customer before the trial ends, and emit `subscriptionItem.freeTrialEnding` so your own systems can follow up.

A trial is a product setting ("Pro includes 14 days free"), not a one-off support action. Use it for:

- New self-serve signups
- Opt-out trials where card-on-file is part of the funnel
- Experiments on trial length, since the setup is the same across customers

If the user already paid once, they can't start another trial. You can extend an _active_ trial, or use a Discount or complimentary price instead. If you need indefinite employee access, repeatedly extending a trial also requires ongoing manual management.

Read more in [Free trials](https://clerk.com/docs/guides/billing/free-trials.md).

## 100% Discounts: free time on a commercial Subscription

Use a 100% Discount when the customer should remain a normal subscriber at a normal price, and you only want to change what you collect for a while.

Create a percentage Discount at `100`, choose how many billing cycles it lasts (or **Forever**), and apply it to the Subscription Item. Renewals show the Discount. When the cycles run out, full price resumes without another Plan change.

A 100% Discount works well for:

- Goodwill after an outage
- Retention offers ("two free months if you stay")
- Migration grace while someone finishes paying you elsewhere
- Short-term negotiated comps where finance still wants them on the catalog price

Two things to watch for:

- **Using "Forever at 100%" for employees.** It works, but you've encoded an exception as a Discount that has to survive Plan changes. Transitioning Plan or price clears the Applied Discount, which is easy to miss during a pricing migration.
- **Using promo codes for individual comps.** Promo codes work well for campaigns. Hand-applied manual Discounts are better when you decide who gets free time.

Read more in [Discounts and promo codes](https://clerk.com/docs/guides/billing/discounts.md).

## $0 complimentary prices: access without a commercial price

Use a $0 complimentary custom price when someone should have paid Features without putting them on your public commercial price.

In the Dashboard, open the Subscription Item, choose **Change price** / **Create new price**, set monthly and/or annual to `$0`, and complete the transition. This does not publish a "Free Pro" tier on the Pricing Table. It creates a price for the accounts you move onto it.

This works well for:

- Employees and internal users who need production Feature parity
- Long-lived partner or dogfood accounts
- Cases where Billing should clearly show paid Features with no intent to charge

There are a few tradeoffs:

- Someone has to create the price and transition the Subscription, so it fits exceptions better than every signup.
- Moving off complimentary access later is another price transition back to a commercial price. That is fine for a handful of employees, and noisy if you used it as a stand-in trial for many prospects.
- Paid-to-paid transition timing still applies. Clerk schedules transitions to avoid double-billing or overlapping periods. A $0 target just means the charge is zero until you move them again.

Read more in [Custom Plans and prices](https://clerk.com/docs/guides/billing/custom-plans.md).

## Side-by-side

|                          | Free trial                       | 100% Discount                 | $0 complimentary price            |
| ------------------------ | -------------------------------- | ----------------------------- | --------------------------------- |
| Best for                 | New evaluators                   | Temporary comps on a paid Sub | Employees / internal / exceptions |
| Who starts it            | Customer at checkout (usually)   | You (or a promo code)         | You                               |
| Ends how?                | Timer → charge or return to free | Cycles exhaust → full price   | Until you transition them off     |
| Stays on catalog price?  | Yes after conversion             | Yes during the Discount       | No. $0 _is_ the price             |
| Public / self-serve?     | Yes                              | Promo optional; manual common | No                                |
| Already paid / trialled? | Not eligible                     | Yes                           | Yes                               |

## A simple default policy

If you want a policy your support and success teams can follow:

1. **Never paid, evaluating the product** → free trial
2. **Already subscribing, needs temporary free months** → 100% Discount for N cycles
3. **Needs ongoing Feature access and should never be a commercial customer** → $0 complimentary custom price

Most other cases map to one of these. When you're unsure, pick the option that matches how you want the account to look in six months: converting, back on full price automatically, or clearly marked complimentary.

## Where to go next

- Short docs version: [Free and complimentary access](https://clerk.com/docs/guides/billing/free-and-complimentary-access.md)
- [Free trials](https://clerk.com/docs/guides/billing/free-trials.md)
- [Discounts and promo codes](https://clerk.com/docs/guides/billing/discounts.md)
- [Custom Plans and prices](https://clerk.com/docs/guides/billing/custom-plans.md)