screenroveSaaS paywall examples: what 308 paywalls from 89 products actually do
We studied 308 SaaS paywall examples from 89 products: when they appear, trial lengths, annual discounts, prices, CTAs and how many let you leave for free.
Most SaaS paywalls are not interruptions at all: 48% of the 308 we captured sit on a billing or plans page the user went looking for, and only 7% appear at the moment someone hits a limit. We pulled every paywall, upgrade modal, feature gate and plan picker from 89 products in the Screenrove library to see what SaaS paywall examples actually look like when you sign up and use the product, not what pricing pages promise.
Every screen is on the paywalls wall, filterable by the attributes we counted here.
The short version
- One in three paywall interruptions has no close button or skip link. 68 of the 194 paywalls that are not full pages give you no way to dismiss them, across 45 of 89 products.
- 36% of products put a paywall inside signup. 32 of 89 showed one during onboarding, typically around step 6 or 7.
- 30 days is the most common trial. 9 products state a 30-day trial, 8 offer 14 days and 7 offer 7 days.
- The annual discount is about 20%. Across 34 products that state a percentage, the median saving is 21%, and exactly 20% is the most common figure.
- The cheapest paid plan costs about $12 a month. That is the median across 70 products, with the middle half between $9 and $20.
- "Upgrade" starts 41% of paywall buttons. The single word "Upgrade", alone, is the label on 64 screens.
- Only 7 of 38 trial screens say whether you need a card. The other 31 leave it out.
| Measure | Result | Base |
|---|---|---|
| Most common paywall type | Plan picker, 45% | 308 screens |
| Shown from a billing or plans page | 48% | 308 screens |
| Shown during onboarding | 32 products (36%) | 89 products |
| Offers a free plan or free path | 26% | 308 screens |
| No close button or skip link | 35% | 194 non-page paywalls |
| States a free trial | 23 products (30 days: 9, 14 days: 8, 7 days: 7) | 89 products |
| Median stated annual saving | 21% (20% most common) | 34 products with a % saving |
| Median cheapest paid plan | $12/month (middle half $9 to $20) | 70 products with a USD price |
| Buttons starting with "Upgrade" | 41% | 295 labelled CTAs |
| Plans shown on a plan picker | 3 (42% of pickers) | 139 plan pickers |
| Plan pickers with a highlighted plan | 72%, most often Pro | 139 plan pickers |
| Dark theme | 14% | 308 screens |
What kind of paywalls SaaS products show
Almost half (139, or 45%) are plan pickers: a grid or list of tiers. Next come feature gates (53, 17%), where a locked feature tells you to upgrade, and billing pages (35, 11%). Usage limits number 21 and trial offers 20.
Where they show up is more revealing. 147 screens (48%) are reached from billing or plans, 70 (23%) appear when you touch a locked feature, 31 (10%) sit in the interface while you work, 39 (13%) appear during onboarding, and just 21 (7%) appear at a usage limit. Usage limits cluster in a few products: Mermaid Chart accounts for 5 of the 21 and Runway for 4.
When the paywall appears in signup
32 of the 89 products (36%) showed us a paywall during onboarding. Taking the first one in each flow, the median position is step 6.5, around a sixth of the way through the flows we recorded. Relume asks at step 2 and Padlet at step 3; Render (step 16) and Netlify (step 18) wait longest.
Onboarding paywalls are mostly plan pickers (25 of 39) or trial offers (9). 15 of the 39 have no close or skip control, but 10 of those 15 still offer a free choice on screen, as Twenty does by preselecting its no-card option.
A free way out, or no way out
Only 79 of 308 screens (26%) show a free plan or a free path next to the paid one. On plan pickers specifically it is just under half (67 of 139). Of the 194 paywalls that are modals, banners, popovers or inline blocks rather than whole pages, 126 have a close button, a skip link or both. The other 68 have neither, and 54 of those 68 offer no free option on screen either.
Feature gates are the biggest group without a dismiss control (25 of the 68), and you can usually navigate away from a locked page. The harder stops are usage limits like Splitwise's, where the sheet has no close button and the free option exists only as a sentence.
Trials: 30, 14 or 7 days
23 of 89 products state a trial length somewhere on a paywall. Nine offer 30 days (Adobe Express, Canva, Confluence, Hygraph, Jira, Maze, Sanity, Toggl, Twenty). Eight offer 14 days (Any.do, Canny, folk, Grafana, Plane, Prezi, Wrike, Zapier). Seven offer 7 days (Any.do, Clockify, Evernote, Lucidchart, Relume, Splitwise, Todoist). (Any.do shows both 7 and 14 days in different places.)
The card question is mostly left unanswered. Of the 38 screens that name a trial length, 31 do not say whether a card is needed; 5 say it is not and 2 say it is. Twenty uses the card as a lever, trading a longer trial for billing details. Todoist spells out "Due today (7 days free) $0" above the dated $60/year charge, and Lucidchart draws the whole timeline.
Annual discounts and the $12 plan
103 screens (33%) carry a monthly/yearly toggle, across 51 products. 89 screens state an annual saving in some form, 70 of them as a percentage. Across the 34 products that give a percentage, the median saving is 21%, and 20% is by far the most common value (12 products, 21 screens). Krea, Any.do, Dribbble and Taskade reach 50%, and VEED says "Save up to 51%". Eleven screens use months instead ("2 months free", "12 months for the price of 8"). And 21 of the 103 toggles state no saving at all.
We recorded the cheapest paid monthly price on screen for 70 products quoting US dollars, leaving out ElevenLabs' $1 first-month promotion and a $2 Toggl add-on. The median is $12. The middle half sits between $9 and $20, and the range runs from $5 (Todoist's Pro, billed yearly) to $199 per project for Hygraph's Growth plan. 35 screens (11%) use a struck-through price, usually a monthly price crossed out beside the annual one.
Plan pickers: three cards, one highlighted, one word
Three plans is the default: 59 of 139 plan pickers (42%) show exactly three, and 98 (71%) show three or four. Only 15 show five or more. 100 pickers (72%) visually push one plan, and when they do it is most often called Pro (29), then Business (12) and Free (10).
The button is the least varied part of the whole wall. Of 295 labelled CTAs, 120 (41%) start with "Upgrade", and 64 say only "Upgrade". "Start" (39) and "Get" (26) follow far behind.
Paywalls are overwhelmingly light: 265 of 308 (86%). The 43 dark ones come from 13 products, mostly AI and creative tools such as Runway, Krea, Kapwing, Leonardo and Recraft, plus developer tools like Bolt, CodeSandbox and StackBlitz.
What to steal from these SaaS paywall examples
- Put the free option on the screen. Three in four paywalls do not. If a free path exists, show it as a link or skip.
- Answer the card question in the same line as the trial. 31 of 38 trial screens are silent. Todoist and Lucidchart show it can be one row of copy.
- State the saving if you show a toggle. 20% is the market's anchor; 21 toggles we saw say nothing at all.
- Name the blocked action in the headline. VEED reuses one picker and only changes the title.
- Write a button that says what happens. When 41% of buttons say "Upgrade", "Start 7-day trial" or "Get Creator" is clearer and stands out.
- Decide where the first ask goes in signup. The median product asks about a sixth of the way through signup.
How we counted
We captured these screens in desktop browsers with research accounts between September and October 2026, during signup and normal use. A vision model recorded each screen's attributes (type, moment, way out, trial length, prices, CTA and so on), and every value can be checked on that screen's page. Product-level figures count each product once. Prices are what our accounts saw, and some are per seat. This is what the products showed us, not A/B test results: we make no claim about which pattern converts better.
To use these as references while you build, connect the Screenrove MCP server and ask your agent for "plan pickers with a free option and a trial" or "usage-limit paywalls with a close button".