How do you decide what features should be free and what should be paid?
Let me start from the creator’s perspective:
I personally don’t have a product (apart from hiring people for creative work or offering personal consultations).
But as a creator, I constantly share content, insights, and information, value that helps me build trust (for free). Based on that perceived expertise, people eventually decide to work with me (a paid service).
So some things I share for free to eventually move toward a paid collaboration.
Personally, it’s sometimes hard to judge when I might be giving away too much for free.
And I assume it’s similarly tricky for builders.
You want users to try the product, but then comes the question of paid features, or a trial limited by time or usage.
How do you decide which parts of your product or service remain free, and which become paid?
When I share content publicly, I usually provide generalised advice. But when it comes to a specific case or a tailored strategy that requires a personal approach, that’s where it becomes paid.
Replies
In the dating space, the free tier needs to be useful enough that people experience real value - seeing profiles, basic searching. But the paid features should solve a specific pain point: video chat, AI coaching, verified profiles. If your free users can't tell you what they're missing, your paywall isn't positioned right.
the real answer nobody here is saying: if your product has variable costs per user (like AI inference), your free tier IS your marketing budget. treat it that way.
i run AI-heavy pipelines and every prompt costs real money. so i structured it as: free tier = enough to hit the wow moment, maybe 5-10 uses. paid = unlimited or high volume. the key insight was tracking exactly where users go from "oh cool" to "i actually need this in my workflow" and putting the gate right after that moment.
what changed everything for me was caching aggressively. i cache outputs with vector similarity search so if someone requests something close to what already exists, i serve the cached version instead of burning another API call. cut my costs by 60-70% overnight. suddenly the free tier became way more generous without actually costing more.
the trial vs freemium debate is a false choice imo. trials work when your product needs time to click (like writing tools or habit apps). freemium works when value is immediate but scales with usage. combining both usually just confuses people about what theyre actually getting.
The way we think about it at PrometAI: free should solve a real problem on its own, not just hint at one. If the free tier feels like a demo, users churn before they ever see the value.
The line we drew was between breadth and depth. Broad access is free. The deeper the output, the more it becomes a paid feature. That way someone can get genuine value without paying, but scaling that value requires upgrading.
The "giving too much away" anxiety is real, but in practice most people don't convert because of what they got for free. They convert because they trust the product enough to pay. Free builds that trust.
I'm Narek, co-founder of PrometAI. We built an AI business planning platform trusted by 100,000+ founders worldwide. From idea validation to financial projections, we guide the whole journey. Relaunching on PH soon! Follow along if that sounds interesting. Let's connect!