Earn Trust Before You Ask People to Pay
People mostly find apps through people they trust and look for a free option before paying. Clear pricing reassures, so show the price and what they get before you ask.
- Yodel Mobile’s survey of 4,000 UK and US app users found 84% trust recommendations from friends and family, against 44% for AI tools.
- 76% said they usually look for a free alternative rather than pay, and 28% said they would never pay for an app or subscription.
- Asked what would give them confidence to pay for an unfamiliar app, 30% chose clear pricing with no hidden costs and 15% chose promotional offers, Adweek reports.
- 38% said they keep using an app because it saves them time; 14% said new products or features.
Yodel Mobile, an app growth agency, published The New Rules of App Growth on 20 October 2026. Opinium ran the survey for Yodel Mobile between 2 and 9 April 2026 among 4,000 adults who use an app at least weekly, 2,000 in the UK and 2,000 in the US. The figures here come from Yodel Mobile's summary and Adweek's write-up, not the full report.
If people find you through friends and check for a free option first, a vague price or a surprise paywall is where you lose them. Small makers can win here because being clear costs nothing.
Open your product's pricing or sign-up screen as a first-time visitor. Check you can see, before paying: the price, what is included, how to cancel, and what stays free. Fix whatever is missing before you try a discount.
Put it to work 15 minutes
A one-page before-you-pay check with one fix per gap
Write a one-page before-you-pay check for your own product: what a new person sees about price, what they get, any trial, and how to cancel, with one fix for each gap.
See a worked example
Use the pricing or sign-up screen a new visitor sees before paying.
- Price
- £5 a month, including all project tools.
- Cancel or stay free
- Cancel in settings; saved projects stay free.
- Fix
- Add the cancellation steps beside the price.
Your turn
Write what a new visitor sees about cost.
Explain cancelling or the free tier.
Name one change for each gap.
Your draft stays in this browser. No account needed.
This is a survey of what people say, not what they do. It ran in April 2026 and covers UK and US app users only; products sold to businesses may behave differently.
The figures are from an agency's own survey summary, based on Opinium fieldwork in April 2026, so treat them as a direction and check with your own users.
After making pricing clearer, do more new visitors start a trial or pay?
Watch: Pricing-page visits that end in a sign-up · Support questions about price or cancelling · Where new users say they heard about youKeep Going