Every indie dev I know has had this conversation with themselves: "Should I offer a free tier?"
I had it too. Three times, actually — once for each Mac app I've shipped. Every time, I landed on the same answer: no.
Here's why.
The Freemium Trap Nobody Warns You About
Freemium sounds smart on paper. Get users in the door, convert a percentage, grow from there. But here's what actually happens when you're a solo developer:
Free users are the most expensive users you'll ever have. They file bugs. They request features. They leave 1-star reviews when something doesn't work perfectly. And they generate exactly $0 in revenue while consuming 100% of your support bandwidth.
When I shipped Monk Mode — a Mac focus app that blocks feeds instead of entire apps — I priced it at $15 from day one. No free tier, no trial-that-nags-you-to-upgrade. Just a straightforward purchase.
The result? Every single user who reached out had skin in the game. Bug reports were specific and helpful. Feature requests were reasonable. Nobody demanded I rebuild the entire app for free.
The Math That Changed My Mind
Let's say you have 10,000 free users and a 2% conversion rate. That's 200 paying customers. Sounds decent until you realize you're supporting 9,800 people who will never pay you.
Now imagine you just had those 200 paying customers from the start. Same revenue. A fraction of the support load. And you can actually focus on building instead of managing a funnel.
For my other app, TokenBar — a menu bar token counter for LLM API usage — I went even lower: $5 lifetime. No free tier. The price is low enough that it's an impulse buy for any developer who uses AI APIs regularly, but high enough that it filters out people who aren't serious.
What I Actually Do Instead of Free Tiers
I'm not saying "never let anyone try your product." I'm saying there are better approaches than freemium:
1. Be transparent about what the app does. Screenshots, a clear feature list, maybe a short demo video. If someone knows exactly what they're buying, they don't need a free trial to decide.
2. Price it so low that the risk is negligible. $5 for TokenBar. $15 for Monk Mode. If either of those prices makes someone hesitate, they probably weren't going to convert from free anyway.
3. Offer a refund, not a trial. Apple handles this through the App Store. If someone buys and doesn't like it, they can get their money back. This is effectively a free trial, but the default is "paid" instead of "free."
The Psychological Shift
Here's what nobody talks about: charging from day one changes your relationship with your product.
When you have paying customers, you feel accountable. You ship faster. You fix bugs before they pile up. You don't waste two weeks building an onboarding flow for free users who will never convert.
When you're optimizing a freemium funnel, you're a marketer who occasionally writes code. When you charge upfront, you're a developer who occasionally markets. For a solo dev, that distinction matters.
When Freemium Actually Makes Sense
I'm not dogmatic about this. Freemium works when:
- You have a team to handle support volume
- Your product has strong network effects (more users = more valuable)
- You can afford to lose money per-user while scaling
If you're a solo dev shipping Mac apps or dev tools? None of those apply. Charge from day one. Price it fairly. Build for the people who value your work enough to pay for it.
The best customers I've ever had are the ones who paid upfront. Every single time.
What's your take — freemium or paid-upfront for indie dev tools? I'd love to hear what's worked for you.
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