Toolradar Research
Free trial share of software tools 2026
2,885 of 10,667 published Toolradar tools have a stored free-trial flag (27%). The free path is a different cut: 5,834 tools (55%) are free, freemium, or open_source. Among Paid listings, 1,433 of 4,786 (30%) carry the trial flag.
Founder, Toolradar & Dupple
Key findings
What the data shows.
- 01
2,885 of 10,667 published tools (27%) have hasFreeTrial set on the stored pricing details. (Source: Toolradar directory, September 22, 2026.)
- 02
The free path is larger and answers a different question. 5,834 tools (55%) are labeled free (1,523), freemium (4,307), or opensource (4). A free plan is not a trial. (Source: same morning. The category breakdown of that 55% is free-tier share by category.)
- 03
Among the 4,786 tools labeled Paid, 1,433 (30%) carry the trial flag. Among 4,307 freemium tools, 1,378 (32%) do. Among 1,523 free tools, 64 do. (Source: Toolradar directory, September 22, 2026.)
- 04
The flag is the value stored on the listing. It is not a fresh fetch of every vendor pricing page on September 22. Dollar diffs from that same extractor are unreviewed. A boolean is coarser than a price, and this page still will not pretend each of the 2,885 was re-opened by hand.
- 05
The other labels are small. Enterprise 4 of 16, contact 1 of 9, usage-based 4 of 6, opensource 1 of 4. Custom and pay-per-use contribute 0. Those rows plus the three big labels sum to 2,885.
About the research
How we built this report.
Toolradar tool database. Editorial review with weekly pricing verification.
2026. Snapshot taken September 22, 2026. Refresh due Dec 22, 2026.
Public scoring rubric. See how we rate for the full criteria.
Creative Commons BY 4.0. Quote, link, and reuse with attribution.
Trial flag by pricing label
| Pricing label | Tools | With a trial flag | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paid | 4,786 | 1,433 | 30% |
| Freemium | 4,307 | 1,378 | 32% |
| Free | 1,523 | 64 | 4% |
| Everyone else | 51 | 10 | 20% |
| Catalog | 10,667 | 2,885 | 27% |
Everyone else is enterprise (16), contact (9), custom (8), pay-per-use (7), usage-based (6), open_source (4), and one blank label. 4,786 + 4,307 + 1,523 + 51 = 10,667. 1,433 + 1,378 + 64 + 10 = 2,885.
Source: Toolradar directory, September 22, 2026. Shares are rounded to the nearest percent. The counts are exact.
What a trial is, on this page
hasFreeTrial is a boolean on pricingDetails. It was written when a pricing page was extracted. A true value means the stored extract says the vendor offers a trial. It does not record the length (14 days versus 30), whether a card is required, or whether the trial is of the whole product or of one feature.
That is why a free tool can still have the flag (64 of them). The extractor saw trial language on a page that also has a free plan. And it is why a freemium tool can lack the flag: the free plan is the offer, and nobody described a separate trial.
Best free project management tools is the buyer page for one category where this split matters. ClickUp, Trello, and Jira publish an ongoing free plan. A trial of Premium is a second fact. This report counts the flag. The guide counts the free plan we could read on the vendor page.
What this page refuses
- It will not say 27% of software companies offer a trial. It says 27% of published Toolradar listings have the stored flag.
- It will not average this rate with the 55% free path and call the result "free software."
- It will not quote a new list price from the unreviewed pricing queue. That queue is software pricing changes we will not print yet. How recently a listing was re-checked is pricing check freshness.
Cite this report
Use the data, credit the source.
Released under Creative Commons BY 4.0. You may quote, link, and reuse the data with attribution.
More research
What Toolradar has stored: reviews and logos
57 of 10,667 published tools have at least one Toolradar review. 6,602 have a stored external-review payload. 4,065 have neither. 180 published tools have no logo file.
How fresh Toolradar prices are
On September 22, 2026, 7,331 of 10,667 published tools had their pricing re-checked in the last 30 days. 3,334 have never been checked. One check is older than 90 days. The median price lives on another page. This page is the age of the check.
Open source software statistics 2026
370 published Toolradar tools put open source in the name, the slug, or the tagline. 340 of them (92%) have a free path. Only 4 tools in the whole catalog carry the open_source pricing label.