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MMercury
Mercury
FREE TIER & TRIAL

Mercury added a free trial to Plus plan signups

By , Co-founder, PricingSaaS

Published

Mercury added a 30-day free trial before Plus plan billing starts.

See before and after

Mercury’s pricing page · Change detected

30-DAY FREE TRIALfirst seen Nov 5, 2026

What changed

Mercury changed the signup button on its Plus plan from "Open account" to "Start 30-day free trial," per the Plus plan’s pricing page Pulse saved on Nov 5, 2026. The new copy gives signups a 30-day free trial before Mercury starts billing, instead of billing starting the moment an account opens.

The rest of the Plus plan page — its price, feature list and the Free and Pro plan cards — carried over unchanged from the version Pulse saved the day before.

Why it matters

For a product leader, this is a low-risk way to lift top-of-funnel signups without touching the price on Plus: Mercury isn’t discounting the plan, it’s buying signups a month of use before the invoice starts. That distinction matters especially for banking-adjacent SaaS tools, where "open an account" reads as a bigger commitment than "start a free trial," even when the downstream economics are identical — a trial converts to the same bill either way.

Watch whether Mercury pairs this with a card-required trial to protect activation, or opens it card-free, and whether the free-trial framing migrates to the Pro plan next, since Plus and Pro share the same signup flow that Pulse has tracked since Jul 24, 2026.

In context

This is Mercury’s first free-trial change since Pulse started tracking its pricing page on Jul 24, 2026 — the company has made six real pricing moves in that span, most recently a Payroll add-on on Oct 26, 2026, with changes landing roughly every 21 days on average. Free-trial moves are common across the companies Pulse tracks: 134 pricing changes at 115 companies touched free trials in the last 180 days, about 5% of the 2,689 changes Pulse tracked in that window. Most of those moves cut trials rather than add them: per Pulse’s Nov 2, 2026 tracking, Distribute halved its Pro trial from 14 to 7 days, Arcsite swapped its trial for a sales demo, and Pingidentity dropped its trial for custom quotes. Mercury is moving the other way, adding a trial window where none existed — a cheaper way to lower the bar for Plus signups than discounting the plan itself.

Common questions

Does the 30-day trial apply to Mercury Pro too?

The item only flags a change to Plus’s signup button; Pulse’s brief doesn’t show whether Pro picked up the same trial, so treat it as Plus-only until a separate diff shows otherwise.

Is Mercury discounting Plus, or just delaying the bill?

Delaying it, not discounting it — the diff only changes when billing starts, not the Plus plan’s listed rate, so this isn’t a price cut or a promo.

Should we add a free trial before our own paywall, like Mercury just did?

Only if signup friction is costing you conversions, not your price — a trial delays the bill, it doesn’t lower it, so it fits better alongside a price you’re confident in than one you’re trying to protect.

Sources