Patreon free trials and free memberships both let people in without paying, but they do different jobs. A free trial, as Patreon's Free Trials FAQ describes it, opens one paid tier for 7 days to someone who has never paid you, with a card on file and a full monthly charge when the trial ends unless they cancel. A free membership is a standing, no-card option that lasts as long as you offer it and only shows the posts you aim at free members or the public. Pick a trial when seeing inside the paid tier is what sells it, and free membership when people need repeated contact before they are ready to pay.
This guide covers the two features, the tools that sit next to them, and when each fits. Judging whether a trial worked is a measurement question, handled in our guide to measuring free trial conversion, written for another platform but built on the same method. Where to send people once the offer is live is covered in how to promote your Patreon.
How a Patreon free trial works
Trials are switched on tier by tier. In the tier editor on your Membership tab, a Free trials toggle changes the tier's Join now button to Start free trial, and the FAQ lets you add a trial to any or all tiers, suggesting your most popular tier as the place to begin. Two conditions apply before the toggle appears: the page must use subscription billing, and work categorised as Adult must complete ID verification. If you are still on a legacy billing model, our subscription billing switch checklist covers the move, and the guide to Patreon adult content rules explains verification.
The FAQ and Patreon's member-side guide to starting a free trial describe the same sequence from the fan's point of view:
- The fan adds a payment method at checkout and pays nothing while the trial runs.
- Access starts immediately and covers every benefit of the tier, including posts published before they joined. Merch rewards are the exception and only begin to accrue after a first payment.
- They receive the usual confirmation and welcome email, with your tier's welcome note, and your new-member notification marks them as a trial.
- Discord roles and other integrations treat trial members like payers and remove access if they cancel.
- A member who cancels keeps access until the trial period ends. One who does not cancel is charged for a full month, then monthly on that date.
- Every trial becomes a monthly subscription. A member who wants an annual plan has to change it afterwards in their own membership settings.
Eligibility is deliberately narrow. Only people who have never subscribed to you can start a trial, once per account and form of payment, so a former member sees the trial tier as an ordinary paid join. Custom pledges are not supported, and since Apple's in-app purchase rules reached Patreon's iOS app, trials can only be started on the web, mobile web or Android. Switching trials off leaves running trials to finish.
The choice of tier matters more than the toggle. A trial suits a tier whose value shows within days, such as a deep archive or a steady posting rhythm, and suits a tier built around a monthly live session far less. Our Patreon tier ideas guide helps decide what each tier should promise first.
How free membership works
Free membership is the Join for free option. Patreon's article on how free memberships can help grow your community says a fan without an account only enters a name and email address to join, with no password to create, and then receives your Public, All members and Free members only posts by email and in the app, with comment access if you allow comments. The member guide to becoming a free member adds that you can see each free member's email address, and that they can stay free for as long as you keep the option.
Three settings decide how much work the free option does for you:
- Visibility. All-ages pages show free and paid options together by default, while pages categorised 18+ lead with Become a member. Either kind can switch to showing paid options only, which moves Join for free into the page's “…” menu rather than removing it.
- Post audience. Patreon's guide to setting post access lets you aim a post at free members only, at free and paid members together, or at free members plus public visitors without notifying paid members, which suits an upgrade pitch your payers do not need to see.
- First impression. The welcome notes editor has a separate field for free members, so a new free joiner can be told straight away what the paid tiers add.
Free membership also catches people on their way out. Paid members who cancel are offered the chance to stay connected for free, and Patreon's Membership Insights article says members whose payment retries fail for about 30 days are converted to free members. Both routes swell the free count with people who are not new fans. Keeping former payers engaged is covered in our guide to reducing Patreon churn.
Free trial or free membership: side by side
| Question | Free trial | Free membership |
|---|---|---|
| What the fan hands over | A payment method that is charged when the trial ends | A name and an email address, with no card |
| How long it lasts | One fixed trial period, then normal monthly billing | Open-ended, for as long as you keep the option on |
| What they can see | Everything in the trial tier, back catalogue included | Only posts set to public, all members or free members |
| Who can use it | First-time fans, once per account and payment method | Anyone, including people who have cancelled a paid tier |
| What your page needs | Subscription billing, ID verification for Adult pages, and fans joining outside the iOS app | Nothing extra; placement is controlled in Page settings |
| What Insights shows | Trials started, completed, cancelled and converted | The free and paid split, upgrades and the Free to Paid path |
| Main risk | Fans work through the archive and cancel before the charge | The free feed gives away enough that few people upgrade |
Decision table: goal, feature, settings, risk
Start from what you need the offer to do rather than from the feature list. Each row names a goal, the Patreon tool that fits it, the settings to check before you switch it on, and the risk to watch once it is running.
| Goal | Feature | Settings to check | Risk to watch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Let undecided visitors judge a paid tier from the inside | Free trial on that tier | Subscription billing on, a welcome note that suits trial joiners, the archive reviewed | Day-one access to every past post invites a binge before the first charge |
| Build an audience you can reach whenever you publish | Free membership | Join for free kept visible, a free-member welcome note, a regular free-only post | Free posts slowly become a full substitute for the paid tier |
| Stay in touch with people who stop paying | The free option offered during cancellation | Free membership left switched on, and occasional free-only updates on what has changed | The free count climbs for reasons unrelated to new interest |
| Move free members onto a paid tier | Autopilot upgrade offer or Teaser campaign | A maximum discount and eligible tiers; teaser posts chosen, on all-ages pages only | Fans learn to wait for a discount before they join |
| Give a named group access without asking for a card | Creator gift link | A tier without limited spots, the gift length, a redemption cap and an end date | The gift lapses and recipients drift off with no payment method on file |
| Create urgency around a launch or anniversary | Membership discount, as a public sale or codes | Sale dates, the tiers included, and whether a trial is running on them | A public sale hides the trial button and a code overrides the trial |
| Try a new price on an existing tier | Tier repricing, not a trial | The trial switched off first, because trial tiers cannot be repriced at present | Two changes at once make it impossible to tell which one moved members |
On the Autopilot rows, the free member upgrade offer is a one-time discount on a first month, sent only to free members Patreon judges likely to upgrade, and needs subscription billing plus ID verification on 18+ pages. Patreon's Autopilot guide says the Teaser campaign emails new free members a selection of up to 5 paid posts, one a day, after a review, and only on all-audiences pages using subscription billing.
Gifts are how you open a whole paid tier to someone without asking for a card. Patreon's gifting guide allows gifts of 1 to 12 months for up to 1000 people per link, or a lower cap you set, on published tiers without member limits, with subscription billing and, for 18+ pages, age verification. Thanking collaborators and letting fans try the page before committing are among the uses Patreon names.
Settings that clash with trials
Run through this list before switching a trial on, and again before any promotion that touches the same tier:
- Public sales hide trials. Patreon's Discounts FAQ says the trial option does not show while a public sale is displayed, and a discount code entered at checkout overrides the trial. Running both on one tier means the sale wins.
- Trial tiers are locked on price. Patreon's guide to adjusting tier prices says tiers with free trials cannot currently have their prices updated, so turn the trial off before repricing. Our guide to raising Patreon prices without losing members covers the rest of that process.
- Welcome notes travel with the trial. Trial joiners receive the same note as payers, so a note that links to a downloadable archive or an outside folder hands it over before any money changes hands. Patreon's welcome notes guide suggests comparing who can reach an outside folder with your active member list every month.
- Earnings arrive later than members. The FAQ counts trial members as active for the whole trial, yet no earnings show for them until each one is charged.
- The button change alone is easy to miss. The FAQ advises mentioning the trial wherever you promote the membership, since a visitor who never scrolls to that tier never sees Start free trial.
Conversion review log
Patreon reports the raw counts; a log turns them into a record you can compare between periods. The Free Trial Conversions section of Membership Insights shows trials started, completed, cancelled and converted, and its Path to Paid filter separates Direct to Paid joiners from Free to Paid upgrades. The same Membership Insights article says the dashboard refreshes every 4 hours, so read it at a similar time each period, and keep the period length constant.
| Field | Where to find it | Your entry |
|---|---|---|
| Review period and reading date | Your own calendar, with the same span every time | ________ |
| Offers live during the period | Promotions tab: trials, sales, codes, gifts and Autopilot toggles | ________ |
| Trials started | Free Trial Conversions in Membership Insights | ________ |
| Trials still running | Relationship Manager filtered by free trial status | ________ |
| Trials converted to paid | Free Trial Conversions, counting only trials that have finished | ________ |
| Trials cancelled before billing | Free Trial Conversions, cancelled before the trial ended | ________ |
| New free members | New members view, filtered to free members | ________ |
| Free members who upgraded | Path to Paid filter, Free to Paid | ________ |
| Posts where memberships began | Popular Posts, filtered to new paid or new free members | ________ |
| Other changes in the period | Your notes on launches, sales, price edits and failed-payment conversions | ________ |
| Decision and next check | Keep, change one setting, or stop, with a date to look again | ________ |
Read trial figures only for people whose trial has ended; the Free Trials FAQ warns that trials still in progress are not yet eligible to count as converted. The “other changes” line exists because several things move these counts without any new interest: a public sale suppressing the trial, Autopilot discounts, and members turned free by failed payments. For denominators, follow-up windows and uncertainty, apply the method in our guide to measuring free trial conversion without overstating results.
Where Patreon's articles disagree
On 1 October 2026 Patreon's help centre contradicted itself on three points that affect these features:
- New member counts. The Free Trials FAQ says trial members are included in your New member count for the length of the trial, then says further down that they will not count as new until they have been charged for a first payment. Membership Insights only states that trial members count as active. Until Patreon clarifies, log trials on their own lines rather than reading them out of the new-member total.
- Special Offers. The FAQ still explains how trial members qualify for a Special Offer, while Patreon's Special Offer article says the feature is being retired and new ones cannot be created. Treat the FAQ line as out of date and use discounts, trials or gifts instead.
- Help with the billing switch. The banner on the Free Trials FAQ asks creators who want one-to-one help moving to subscription billing to contact Support by September 30, 2026, while the tier pricing article gives a cut-off before October 15, 2026. Trials need subscription billing and the earlier date has passed, so a creator still migrating should contact Support now.
Limitations of this comparison
This page reflects Patreon's help centre as it read on 1 October 2026. Features reach pages unevenly: Teaser campaigns are limited to all-ages pages, Autopilot offers and gifts need extra verification on adult pages, and the iOS app still cannot start a trial. Your own Promotions tab and tier editor are the final word on what your page can use.
Nothing here predicts how your audience will respond. Patreon's articles quote platform-wide results for free memberships and discounts, but those are averages across very different creators, not a forecast for your page. Change one setting at a time, keep the log, and let each cohort finish its trial before you judge the change.