Offer a free trial

You can offer a free trial to your customers with Kinde Billing.

Free trials let customers use a paid plan for a limited time before they are charged. They are a common way to reduce signup friction while still moving toward a paid subscription. With Kinde Billing, trials are implemented using Stripe subscription trials: the customer gets plan entitlements during the trial window, and the subscription can convert to paid automatically when the trial ends.

This page describes the end-to-end experience and points to detailed plan settings in Create plans.

Configure free trials

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Go to Billing > Plans and edit the plan you want to configure:

1. Turn on Trial period.
2. Set Trial length in days (default 30, minimum 1).
3. Set Days before trial end to prompt for credit card (default 3; must be less than the trial length).

For step-by-step instructions, see Create plans — Configure trial period.

What do customers get during a trial?

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When someone subscribes to a plan that has a trial enabled:

• They receive full access to the plan’s features for the trial length you configure (in days).
• No charge is made while the trial is active.
• Near the end of the trial, they are prompted for payment details (if your plan is set up to collect a card before conversion). The timing of that prompt is configurable.
• When the trial ends, Stripe converts the subscription to paid according to your plan’s pricing, provided payment details are in place.

To see how this maps to billing screens (plan selection, payment details, and trial messaging), see Customize the plan sign-up experience.

What do I need before offering a trial?

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• Billing trials must be enabled for your business. If you do not see trial options in plan settings, contact Kinde support or check your feature settings.
• Stripe must be connected and working for Kinde Billing, because trials are created as Stripe subscriptions with a trial period.
• Ask for credit card must be on for the plan. Trials cannot be enabled on plans where credit card collection is turned off. You can still use a No credit card required message in your own marketing; see below.

Can I advertise “No credit card required” for a trial?

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Yes. You can show a No credit card required message on your landing page or elsewhere in your product. In Kinde, Ask for credit card must still be on so that trials are allowed, but customers are not asked for payment details at signup. They are prompted later, based on Days before trial end to prompt for credit card (by default, 3 days before the trial ends).

What will customers see on the pricing table?

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Plans with a trial show a “Free trial for N day(s)” badge on the plan card. You do not configure the badge separately; it appears when the plan’s trial period is enabled. For when pricing tables appear (B2C vs B2B), see Pricing table display defaults.

Can I use trial information in my application?

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Yes. Billing-related access tokens can include trial fields (for example, whether the subscriber is in a trial and when it ends). See What trial-related claims appear in access tokens? in Billing concepts and terms.