Pricing is one of the hardest decisions for indie creators. It’s not just a number , it’s a signal about your product’s value, your audience’s expectations, and your business’s viability. Here are the mistakes I see most often and how to avoid them.
The most common approach: “other apps charge $4.99/month, so I’ll charge $4.99/month.” Or worse: “I spent 6 months building this, so it should cost at least $9.99.”
Neither of these are pricing strategies. Your development time doesn’t determine value to the user. And competitor pricing only works if your audience, features, and positioning are similar.
Before committing to a price, test at least 2-3 price points. Use your soft launch or early users to run real pricing experiments. Even a small sample (500+ users) can reveal whether $3.99 or $6.99 converts better , and the answer is often surprising.
If users can do everything they need without paying, they won’t pay. It sounds obvious, but most indie creators err on this side because they’re afraid of losing users.
The result: thousands of happy free users and almost no revenue. Only about 4% of freemium users ever convert to paid, so if your free tier covers 90% of use cases, your actual conversion will be far lower.
Your free tier should deliver enough value that users love the app and want more. The “more” is what they pay for. Find the moment where free users naturally hit a wall , that’s where your paywall belongs.
The opposite problem. If your free tier barely works, users leave before they experience any value. They never reach the paywall because they’ve already deleted the app.
Users need to have at least one meaningful “win” before they see any restriction. Let them feel the benefit, build some investment, and then introduce the upgrade path.
Most indie creators pick a price and never change it. But pricing isn’t a one-time decision , it’s an ongoing experiment. Apps that test multiple prices regularly can see 15-30% revenue variance between the best and worst price points.
Treat pricing like any other feature: test, measure, iterate. A/B test different prices in different regions or over different time periods. Regional testing is especially useful because user acquisition costs are lower in some markets, making experiments cheaper.
$9.99/month is reasonable in the US. In India, Brazil, or Southeast Asia, it’s a significant expense. If you use a flat global price, you’re locking out billions of potential users.
Apps that implement regional pricing see significantly higher conversion in price-sensitive markets. With thoughtful regional pricing, you can open your app to 4+ billion additional users compared to standard pricing.
Both Apple and Google make regional pricing easy to set up. Start by adjusting prices for 3-5 high-potential markets. India, Brazil, Indonesia, and Mexico are good starting points. Even a small adjustment (50-70% lower than US pricing) can dramatically increase conversion.
Indie creators often think: “I’m just one person, my app is small, I can’t charge much.” But users don’t care who built it. They care about what it does for them.
If your app saves someone 30 minutes a day, that’s worth real money. If it helps them sleep better, meditate consistently, or manage their business more efficiently, price it based on that value , not on your imposter syndrome.
Ask yourself: what’s the alternative? If users would otherwise pay $50/month for a service your app replaces, $9.99/month is a bargain. Price based on value delivered, not effort invested.
Here’s the math that matters: how much does it cost to get one user (Customer Acquisition Cost, or CAC)? And how much does that user generate over their lifetime (Lifetime Value, or LTV)?
Your LTV should be 3-5x your CAC. If acquiring a user costs $2 and they generate $3 in revenue, you’re losing money at scale because of overhead, payment processing fees, and churn.
Calculate your CAC and LTV before scaling. If the math doesn’t work, either increase pricing, improve retention, or reduce acquisition costs. Don’t scale a broken model.
Users are drowning in subscriptions. The average person has multiple recurring app charges, and “subscription audits” (where users cancel everything non-essential) are increasingly common around months 3-6.
If you use a subscription model, make sure your app delivers clear, ongoing value that users notice. Send usage summaries, celebrate milestones, introduce new features regularly. The goal is to make your subscription feel essential, not forgettable. Also consider offering a lifetime purchase option for users who prefer to pay once.
From our work · Travel Diaries
Travel Diaries sells travel journals online and as printed books. It started free, monetised by book sales, and added a paid membership in 2022. Only about 10% of users converted, and book orders fell.
The number itself was not the whole problem. Users were asked to subscribe before seeing any value, and the plans did not map to what different people actually wanted. In the redesign (August to September 2025) we asked a few questions up front about the user's travel situation, then showed the plan that matched it: online journalling or printing.
We also cut the number of plans and made the benefits clearer. Cognitive load at the pricing screen is a pricing mistake too.
Test rather than guess. Use a soft launch or early users to compare two or three price points; even around 500 users can reveal which converts better. Your development time is not a pricing input, and competitor pricing only transfers when audience, features and positioning genuinely match.
Generous enough that users love the app, limited enough that they hit a natural wall. If the free tier covers 90% of use cases almost nobody upgrades, and only about 4% of freemium users ever convert as it is. Too restrictive and users leave before reaching the paywall at all.
Treat pricing as an ongoing experiment rather than a one-time decision. Apps that test regularly see 15 to 30% revenue variance between their best and worst price points. Regional tests are a cheap place to start, because acquisition costs are lower in some markets.
Reading about it is one thing. Knowing which change is worth making on your funnel, and what it is costing you today, takes a look at your numbers. I’ll do that and tell you what I’d fix first.
See App OptimizationConversion design for app creators. Screenshots, paywalls, onboarding — one funnel, not three projects.