“If you give away 30 days of free AI feature usage and you have whales racking up massive compute costs without paying you a dime and then they churn — that's not a sustainable business.”

Shorten free trials for AI apps — whales consuming free compute without converting are not sustainable

RevenueCat data shows most apps trending toward shorter trials despite 14-30 day trials outperforming on conversion. Carter believes AI apps are the primary driver — unlimited AI feature access for 30 days is economically untenable at scale. He suspects if you segmented the data by AI vs non-AI apps, the trend would be even more pronounced. Pair shorter trials with strong paywall placement to convert users before they burn through free AI compute budget.