“We don't show the paywall on onboarding, and if you talk to paywall specialists they will tell you that the biggest mistake [is not doing it]... when you get the paywall on onboarding where you know there is a little cross at the top right that fades in slowly so that you think that the only option is to pay.”

No onboarding paywall — a deliberate brand bet against the category playbook

Standard utility-app playbook is a hard onboarding paywall with a delayed dismiss button. Genius Scan refuses, even knowing it could likely triple revenue, because they believe word-of-mouth and lower churn from free users converting later outweigh the lift. Their differentiation in a category full of dark patterns is built on this restraint.