“Try for free did not convert as well as try for $0. Just another example of how the 2026 report is better and bigger than ever.”

"Try for $0" outperforms "try for free" — concrete framing drives more conversions

Duolingo's chief product officer shared that replacing 'try for free' with 'try for $0' on the paywall CTA delivered a meaningful conversion lift. The mechanism is specificity: '$0' anchors the user to the concrete cost (zero dollars) rather than the abstract concept of 'free,' which carries ambiguous implications. This finding is one data point in the SOSA 2026 paywall CTA word-cloud analysis showing enormous variation in CTA performance.