Weekly subscriptions: when do seven-day plans make sense?

The 2025 State of Subscription Apps report was full of stats that intrigued me, but one that I just couldn’t let go of was weekly subscriptions.

I’ve never had a weekly subscription myself, yet in gaming, a staggering 77% of users were on weekly plans. And it turns out that gaming isn’t the only one: 

• Business (44.7%)
• Social and Lifestyle (40.9%)
• Photo & Video (38.8%) 
• Utilities (36.1%)

Most categories report a high proportion of weekly subscriptions. The only ones that didn’t seem as popular were:

• Education (5.3%)
• Health & Fitness (4.5%)
• Travel (5.3%)

That got me thinking: when do weekly subscriptions actually make sense, and should more apps be testing them?

Being a naturally curious person (read: nosy), I wanted to understand why this model has become so popular. Interestingly, it appears to be slightly more prevalent in regions such as India and Southeast Asia (36.4%), the Middle East (34.6%), and Latin America (31.3%).

So I dove into the data to understand when and why apps offer weekly subscriptions, so you can decide whether it’s worth testing for your own product. There isn’t a lot of research available on weekly subscriptions, so I compiled what insights I could find and spoke with a few experts in the space to fill in the gaps.

Why are weekly subscriptions so popular in certain categories?

There appear to be three main drivers (potentially four) behind weekly subscriptions; the first being short-term usage.

1. Short-term usage

Why subscribe to an app if you only plan to use it for the short term? You could, in that case, choose not to offer a subscription at all, but one-off payments often end up more expensive for the user and less valuable for the app maker. Not only that, but the duration of that short-term usage can also vary. For example, let’s say you need to edit some photos. This could be a one-time round of edits, but it could also be a project that lasts a few weeks.

Flighty, a flight tracking app, offers subscriptions for weekly, monthly, annual, and lifetime plans. By offering weekly subscriptions, they can reach an audience of infrequent users who want to use their service but only need it for a limited time.

Interestingly, it costs almost the same per week as it does for a month with the annual subscription. Users are willing to pay quite a bit more when they won’t need your app as long. When offering this to different audiences, it’s essential to clarify who each subscription is intended for. For example, Flighty clearly states that the weekly plan is for less frequent flyers and also excludes features that they probably won’t need from the plan. 

Another interesting example is dating apps. Almost everyone has been there, swiping away in the hopes of finding love. But once you match with someone you want to date exclusively, the first thing you’ll want is to cancel your subscription. If this happens at the start of the month, though, you’re stuck paying for the rest of the month without being able to use the app. A lot can happen to a relationship in a month, less so in a week.

Finally, seasonality is another important consideration I learned from speaking with Hanna Greveilus, CPO of Golf Gamebook, who has extensive experience working with apps that offer weekly subscriptions.

“Weekly subscriptions can make sense for hobby-based or highly seasonal products, especially those where peak engagement happens over the weekend. Unlike utility apps (think: timers, calendars, to-do lists) where daily use is natural and DAU is a solid metric, hobby-driven apps often see a sharp spike in WAU, with weekends being the clear prime time. 

Layer on seasonality—like sports or activities that only happen in specific weather (skiing in winter, fishing or golf in summer)—and it’s easy to convince yourself that a weekly subscription aligns perfectly with user behavior.”

This is where the overview of the categories falls a bit short. Something like skiing or fishing may fall under Health & Fitness, but would actually work with a weekly subscription. 

2. Commitment phobe

This brings us to the second reason, which is very fitting for dating apps: commitment phobia. Tinder found that Gen Z users didn’t want to commit and often preferred a weekly subscription. So it could also be that certain generations prefer weekly subscriptions. The irony? Tinder increased revenue by playing into that fear of commitment by offering shorter subscriptions. 

Here, the difference isn’t as significant because the monthly alternative still offers flexibility, but you still save 52% on a monthly subscription. Overall, when we compare pricing for weekly vs monthly and annual subscriptions, we see the following trend:

The medium weekly price is $4.99, compared to $6.68 for monthly. If we work it out per month (with 4.33 weeks in a month), weekly users are, on average, paying 3.23 times more than monthly users.

3. Try before you buy

Some apps also use a weekly plan as a trial, which is what we see with Woofz, a dog training app:

Interestingly, they call it a 7-day plan, not even a week, and highlight it as the most popular. As a dog owner, I can almost guarantee that even with dedication, your dog won’t be fully trained after a week. Is this their way of getting people to try out the app without offering a free trial?

4. More accessible payments

While I couldn’t find any concrete data on it, I imagine a fourth reason could be making payments more accessible to lower-income groups. In the UK, we’re accustomed to being paid monthly, with payday being a real event at the end of the month. However, not every country or role follows that pattern. For those paid weekly or bi-weekly, a weekly subscription model could be more accessible.

Even if it’s not due to budget constraints, there is a certain affordability around a weekly payment, as Hannah Parvaz, founder of Aperture, shares:

“The main thing is the anchoring element: £3.99 a week feels less expensive than £9.99/month, even though it adds up to more quite quickly. Especially when someone is looking for the result of a long onboarding flow, this small price feels like a tiny hurdle to pay to get their result, or to do their immediate task, like measuring something with a utility app – especially when it’s combined with “cancel anytime” messaging.”

So it can make the price feel more accessible to the user, even if in reality it’s higher.

What are the advantages of weekly subscriptions?

Weekly subscriptions can help you tap into a new target audience, as seen with Flighty. Infrequent fliers were unlikely to commit to a month-long subscription, but they appreciated having the option to pay weekly.

It may not always be a completely new audience, but rather a subset of your existing users with a shorter-term use case.

As we discussed earlier, weekly subscriptions also lower the barrier to entry, making it easier for users to try out the service. For those looking to move beyond a free trial, a weekly option could be a great alternative.

Finally, you can charge more on a weekly basis compared to monthly subscriptions. Despite the higher cost, users still opt for weekly subscriptions, likely due to:

• Control / Fear of commitment – Ability to cancel each week if financial situation changes
• Mental accounting – Smaller payments feel more accessible. This is the rhetoric I’ve taken for my wedding budget: look at the individual costs, not the whole budget (far less painful)
• Loss aversion – A fear of wasting money on something you won’t use

What are the disadvantages of weekly subscriptions?

The last thing you want is for users to make the most of their weekly subscription and then leave after a week. If this is a potential issue with your app, you’ll need to assess whether the weekly subscription is adding value or detracting from the overall user experience.

Another risk is that if the weekly option cannibalizes your monthly subscribers too much, it could negatively impact your Lifetime Value (LTV) and retention. As seen in the SOSA 2025 report, weekly users tend to have lower retention over the course of six months:

Sure, a few monthly users may switch to weekly, as I mentioned in the dating example. However, the last thing you want is for so many users to switch and stay for shorter periods, ultimately lowering your overall revenue. 

While you could argue whether this decline is due to the weekly subscription option itself or the overall value you’re providing, the data suggests that retention tends to decline for weekly subscriptions across the board:

In 2024, on average, 4.2% of weekly subscribers were retained after a year. However, in 2025, that dropped to 3.4%. Hanna Greveilus has experienced this firsthand:

“The challenge with weekly subscriptions? It can look great at first. A weekly plan often boosts conversion rates and gives users a lower barrier to entry. But if you don’t carefully model the long-term impact on LTV, it can become a revenue trap. We’ve seen early metrics look promising, only to realize that the cannibalization of longer-term plans led to a significant hit on overall revenue.

So yes, weekly plans can be useful—especially as part of a broader pricing strategy or in specific seasonal windows—but they need to be approached with eyes wide open and a solid LTV model in place.”

Now this is a bit of a math game. Weekly users are paying, on average, 3.23 times more than monthly, so that difference needs to be significant in retention for it to make sense. It also needs to be a case that you would have kept the users on a monthly subscription otherwise. While retention is worse, as we saw with Flighty and Tinder, some groups might not have subscribed to the monthly option. Better to get them for a week than not at all, right? 

Finally, there are also certain cases where it doesn’t make sense to offer weekly. If value comes from long-term usage, it may even be more valuable to only offer annual plans and remove monthly and weekly options.

How do you know if you should add or remove weekly plans?

If you’re considering whether weekly subscriptions are right for you, I’d recommend walking through the following questions first:

1. Do weekly subscriptions make sense for your category? 

Consider where your audience is and what’s common in your category. Based on the data, are weekly subscriptions popular in your space? If the answer is yes, move on to question 2.

2. Does it make sense for your use case? 

There’s a reason weekly subscriptions are less prevalent in certain categories: they’re typically better suited for apps that users engage with more frequently and for shorter periods. Even if you’re in a category where weekly subscriptions are common, take a step back and assess if this model aligns with your app’s use case. Nathan Hudson, founder of Perceptycs, shares:

“In my experience, weekly subscriptions tend to lend themselves to products where both the developer and customer recognise there’s a pretty slim chance of long term retention. So for products whose core value is innately tied to commitment and long term usage, weekly plans often aren’t a great bet. Unless users are just ‘giving it a go’.”

3. Are you willing to potentially remove or not offer a weekly trial? 

Weekly trials and subscriptions can be a tricky mix if you also offer monthly and annual options—it can get confusing for users. If you offer a weekly subscription, it can essentially function as a trial, but you’ll need a clear upsell strategy in place.

If users are engaging with your app during a trial but not converting to a paid plan, it could signal short-term usage, suggesting that a weekly subscription might be a better fit. Alternatively, for short-term usage apps, consider offering a weekly option with a trial, but without a six-month or annual plan. A/B testing by Information Solution, a PDF scanner app, showed higher ARPU for users who tried a weekly subscription with a trial compared to just weekly or monthly plans.

4. Will it target a different audience or use case than monthly users? 

Whether it’s shorter-term usage or a different audience (like those hesitant to commit long-term), ideally, you don’t want to target the same group as your monthly subscribers. 

Weekly plans are popular for a reason, but they should align with a different use case or user profile. As Flighty demonstrates, clearly communicate how the weekly plan differs from monthly or annual options in your plan overview.

5. Will your CAC support a weekly plan?

If your retention for weekly subscriptions is likely to be lower than for monthly plans, can you justify the cost of acquiring weekly users? One solution could be to optimize your acquisition campaigns for monthly or annual users, treating weekly users as ‘extra’ rather than risking damage to your LTV/CAC ratio.

Testing roadmap

Even if you answered ‘yes’ to all five questions above, always test it before rolling it out widely. Think carefully about how to structure the test for your app. Some ideas:

• Start by testing in select regions
• Show the weekly option only after the initial onboarding flow, and only to users who haven’t yet converted

In my experience, adding an extra pricing option can sometimes reduce clarity and introduce confusion. It’s worth testing different layouts and messaging before deciding whether weekly subscriptions are right for you.

Conclusion

Overall, weekly subscriptions can work well, but need to be approached with caution and a strategy to prevent the potential extra churn. Hannah Parvaz explains it as follows: 

“The churn on a weekly basis can be quite brutal, as weekly subs amplify buyer’s remorse. There are often high refund requests for this, and high cancellation rates. It can also feel quite predatory, especially if someone isn’t getting a lot of value. So it works really only when paired with a strong onboarding flow, perceived transparency, and moments of delight or curiosity.”

End of the day, the success metric of testing a weekly subscription isn’t just how many users pick the weekly plan. Ideally, track revenue per user over time (e.g., after 90 days) for each plan and assess whether the weekly option has improved your overall subscription conversion rate. The goal is to increase overall profitability, not to cannibalize your monthly and annual subscribers. And of course, more than ever, to add value for the end user by giving them a payment option that better suits their needs.