Free trials

Free trials let your users explore paid features for a limited time for free, helping them build confidence in a purchase decision. With Clerk Billing, you can turn on free trials for any plan, or set the same trial period across all your plans.

Enable free trials

To enable free trials for your plans:

1. Navigate to the Plans⁠ page in the Clerk Dashboard.
2. Select the plan you want to enable free trials on.
3. Enable Free trial and set the number of trial days (minimum is 1 day).

What your users experience

Starting a trial

Only users who have never paid for a subscription and have never used a free trial can start a free trial.

A credit card is required to start a free trial. This helps prevent abuse and ensures a smooth transition to paid service when the trial ends.

During a trial

Users get access to the plan's paid features for the configured number of days. If they cancel during their trial, they keep access until the original trial end date.

When the trial ends

If the user didn't cancel their subscription during the trial, they are charged using their default payment method on file. This may be a different payment method than the one used during checkout when the trial started.

If the user cancels their subscription during the trial, they lose access at the end of the trial and are moved back to the free plan. They are not charged.

Both you and your users will receive notifications when a trial is about to expire:

• You'll receive a subscriptionItem.freeTrialEnding webhook event 3 days before the trial expires.
• Users receive an email notification 3 days before their trial expires.

If the trial period is shorter than 3 days, these notifications are sent immediately when the trial begins.

Manage trials

You can manually change the duration of a user's trial:

• Cancel at the end of the trial: Cancel the trial while allowing the user to keep access to the paid features until the trial period ends. This prevents their default payment method from being charged when the trial period ends.
• End immediately: Immediately move the user back to the free plan and terminate their access to the paid features they were trialing.
• Extend a trial: Make a user's trial last longer. You must extend a trial by at least 1 day and no more than 365 days.

You can only manage the trial of a user while the trial is active. Once a trial ends, you can no longer extend or cancel it.

To manage a trial for a subscription:

1. Navigate to the Subscriptions⁠ page in the Clerk Dashboard.
2. Select the subscription with the trial you want to manage.
3. Under Subscriptions, select the ... menu to see the available actions for managing the trial.