Freemium isn't about what you give away. It's about when and why users decide to pay.
Most builders spend weeks deciding which features belong in the free tier, agonizing over whether to gate the 3rd dashboard or the 5th export. Meanwhile, the apps actually making money from freemium aren't optimizing their free tier at all. They're engineering a specific moment: the point where users experience enough value that paying feels obvious.
Here's how to build a freemium app that generates revenue, not just downloads.
The problem with how most builders think about freemium
The conventional advice goes something like this: give away enough value to get users hooked, then lock premium features behind a paywall. It sounds reasonable, which is why so many builders follow it, and why so many freemium apps fail to convert.
The issue is that this framework treats freemium as a gating problem. How much do I give away? Which features do I lock? What's the right balance between generous and profitable?
But freemium isn't a gating problem. It's a conversion problem. The question isn't how much to give away. It's whether your free experience demonstrates enough value that users want to pay for more.
Most builders optimize in the wrong order. They chase downloads first, assuming conversion will follow. They focus on App Store rankings, launch campaigns, and viral moments, then wonder why thousands of new users don't translate into paying customers. The problem is that downloads only create opportunity for conversion. They don't cause it. A thousand users from a Product Hunt launch mean nothing if those users open the app once, hit a bug, and never return.
The builders who make money from freemium flip this priority. They optimize the free experience first, then scale distribution. A hundred users who have a genuinely valuable free experience will convert at higher rates than 10,000 users who bounce after one session.
Engineering the conversion moment
The builders who get freemium right work backwards from a single moment: the point where a user hits a limit that matters to them, for a task they actually want to complete. Everything else exists to make that moment happen reliably and feel earned when it does.
Design your free tier as a sales demo
Users decide whether your app is worth paying for based on their free experience. If the free tier feels incomplete, buggy, or frustrating, they assume the paid version will be the same, just with more features they won't use. The apps that convert well deliver a complete, polished experience in the free tier, then offer expansion in the paid tier rather than completion.
A realtor on Anything built a property portal and charges $85 per month. The free version lets potential clients browse listings and see basic details. The paid version unlocks AI-powered property analysis, virtual tours, and direct agent communication. The free tier proves the app works and the listings are real; the paid tier expands what users can do with that foundation. Users aren't hitting error messages or "upgrade to access" walls on core functionality. They're getting a real, useful experience, and then discovering there's more available when they're ready.
Engineer the "aha" moment before the paywall
Users should experience your app's primary benefit before they're asked to pay. If the paywall comes before the value, you're asking users to pay based on a promise. If the value comes before the paywall, you're asking them to pay based on experience.
A medical student built a CPR training app on Anything and charges $85 per month per user. Free users can access training modules and test their knowledge. The conversion moment comes when they see their results, understand where they need improvement, and realize the paid tier offers personalized training paths and certification tracking. The "aha" (I now know what I need to learn) happens in the free tier. The solution (a structured path to get there) is what they pay for.
Make stickiness your first metric
Users who try your free tier once and forget about it will never convert, no matter how good the experience was. Users who return constantly but never hit limits will never feel pressure to upgrade. The sweet spot is when users return regularly, build habits around your app, and gradually bump into the limits of the free tier. Each return reinforces value; each limit creates a small friction that accumulates toward conversion.
Daily check-ins, progress tracking, streaks, and notifications that actually provide value: these features don't directly monetize, but they create the foundation for conversion. Focus on getting users to return before you focus on getting them to pay.
Price early, learn faster
This is where most builders hesitate, and it costs them months of learning. The instinct is to build the perfect free tier, grow a user base, then "eventually" add payments. But you can't optimize conversion without conversion data, and you can't get conversion data without a price.
Add Stripe payments on day 1. Even a small price ($5 per month, $29 per year) reveals real demand. Ten paying users tell you more about your product than 1,000 free downloads. A habit tracker built on Anything launched with payments enabled and earned $2,000 in its first month. It didn't wait for a massive user base. It launched, learned what converted, and iterated.
Putting it into practice
The principles above only matter if you can act on them. Most freemium launches fail not because builders get the strategy wrong, but because they execute in the wrong order: chasing downloads before the experience is ready, adding payments after the user base plateaus, measuring conversion before they've built stickiness. Here's the sequence that works:
- Define the conversion moment first. Before you decide what to give away, decide why someone will pay. What problem does the paid tier solve that the free tier doesn't?
- Build the free experience around that moment. Users should finish their first session with a clear understanding of what your app does. Over subsequent sessions, they should build habits and gradually encounter the limits that make upgrading feel natural.
- Add payments immediately. With Anything, Stripe integration works in 1 prompt. Your first 10 paying users teach you more than your first 1,000 free users.
- Measure stickiness, then conversion. If users aren't returning, fix that first. Daily active users and session frequency predict conversion better than download counts.
- Iterate on the experience, not the paywall. The higher-leverage optimization is what happens before users hit the upgrade prompt, not the prompt itself.
The infrastructure underneath
Freemium only works if your app works. A user who experiences a crash, a failed login, or a broken payment flow during their free trial will never convert. They'll assume the paid version has the same problems.
With Anything, your database, authentication, payments, and hosting are built in and configured automatically. Google login works in 1 prompt. Stripe payments process real charges. Your app handles traffic at 3 a.m. when your first paying customer decides to upgrade.
You're not stitching together Supabase, Firebase, and 3 payment providers, hoping they work together. You're launching an app that's production-ready from day 1, which means your free tier delivers the reliability that drives conversion and your paid tier actually collects revenue.
A finance professional in Japan built AI finance tools on Anything and generated $34,000 in revenue. A marketer created an AI referral tool and earned $20,000. These results come from apps that work reliably and process conversions when they happen.
The bottom line
Your first paying user tells you more than your first 1,000 downloads. The goal isn't to maximize free users. It's to build an app where paying feels like the obvious next step.
Ready to launch a freemium app that actually converts? Start building with Anything.
