CONSUMER_APP_INDEX
Pricing Watch · October 22, 2026 · ~4 min read
SmartyMe killed its $6.93 trial. The cheapest way in now costs 2.2x more.
We captured the same SmartyMe engineering funnel in August and again this week. The 51 quiz screens did not change. The scratch card still says 60% off. The price ladder underneath it is a different product.
Pricing Watch · Consumer App Index · October 22, 2026
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- 🚪 The $6.93 trial door is gone. Entry now starts at $15.19.
- 🪜 A 24-week tier appeared at the top, and the default moved to the middle rung.
- 📈 14 months of SmartyMe traffic: 107K visits to 2.07M, then a September dip.
SmartyMe is a microlearning app from Cyprus that buys YouTube traffic into topic quizzes: engineering, electricity, science. We walked its engineering funnel on August 24 and again on October 22, both times from a US IP. Same URL. Same 51 screens. Same scratch card. Here is what moved.
What changed · The ladderThree rungs in August, three rungs in October. Only one of them is the same rung.
Put the two paywalls next to each other and the swap is obvious. The top card used to be a 1-week trial at $6.93. Now the top card is a 12-week plan at $31.99. The bottom card used to be that 12-week plan. Now it is a 24-week plan at $47.99.
| Rung | August 24 | October 22 |
|---|---|---|
| Top card | 1-Week Trial Removed | 12-Week Plan |
| Middle card Default | 4-Week Plan | 4-Week Plan |
| Bottom card | 12-Week Plan | 24-Week Plan New |
USD, both captures through a US exit. Renewal terms read from the fine print with each plan selected. 60% scratch-card discount applied in both.
The door · Why the trial wentA $6.93 week that renewed at $38.99 was a 5.6x jump
Look at the August trial card again. Under “1-WEEK TRIAL” there is a small green tag: “4-WEEK PLAN.” That tag is the whole story. The trial was a $6.93 week that rolled into the $38.99 four-week plan. A 5.6x step on the second charge.
Our read: that is the shape that produces refund requests and chargebacks, and a 28-day money-back guarantee sits right under the plans. Cutting the trial trades some front-end conversion for a first charge that matches the renewal. Nobody who pays $15.19 is surprised by $38.99 four weeks later the way a $6.93 buyer is.
Audit the gap between your cheapest first charge and the charge that follows it.
SmartyMe's was 5.6x. If yours is above 3x, you are buying trial conversions with refund rate and card-network goodwill. Run the cohort before you decide the trial is worth it.
The default did not move. Everything around it did.
In August the pre-selected 4-week plan was the middle price, between a $6.93 trial and a $31.99 twelve-week. In October it is still the middle price, between $31.99 and $47.99. Same card, same $15.19, same “MOST POPULAR” ribbon. But the cheapest neighbour is now 4.6x more expensive than it was.
That is the compromise effect, run deliberately. The 24-week plan exists to make $31.99 look moderate and $15.19 look cheap. It also posts the lowest per-day number on the page, $0.29, which is the figure the card is designed around. Whether anyone buys 24 weeks of engineering trivia is secondary to what it does to the two cards above it.
Change what surrounds your default before you change the default.
SmartyMe kept its best-converting card untouched and rebuilt the frame around it. If you want a higher average order, add a longer tier above and remove the cheap one below. Then watch whether the middle holds.
Same scratch card, same 60%, same ten-minute clock
Everything that makes the price feel like a deal is untouched. Two screens before the paywall you scratch a purple card and win 60% off. The promo code is your own first name plus the date. The paywall opens with that code “applied” and a 10:00 timer counting down beside it.
In August we let the clock run out. The promo banner vanished and all three cards reverted to list price: $17.33, $38.99, $79.99, with no way to get the discount back on reload. We did not re-run that test this week, so treat October's list prices ($79.99, $38.99, $119.99) as the struck-through numbers on the cards.
From 107K to 2.07M monthly visits in nine months, then a September dip
Price tests like this one are cheap when the top of the funnel is this big. SimilarWeb puts smartymeapp.com at 1.24M visits in September 2026. That is 7.1x September 2025, and still 37% below the August peak of 1.99M. The all-time high was May at 2.07M.
Monthly visits to smartymeapp.com, SimilarWeb via Consumer App Index. Aug 2025 from web2app data. Bars are proportional to the May 2026 peak.
Our read: the pattern is a paid-traffic account breathing. Two spikes, May and August, each followed by a pullback of roughly half. The October price change landed after the second pullback, which is when you would expect a team to go looking for margin on the buyers it already has rather than for more buyers.
Keep the discount theatre, rewrite the ladder underneath it. SmartyMe did not touch the scratch card, the code, the timer, or the pre-selected plan. Those are the parts a returning visitor would notice. It only changed the two cards nobody was supposed to pick. Make your pricing changes where the eye is not looking, and keep the ritual the same.
Both SmartyMe captures, every tier and every renewal term, are in the Consumer App Index terminal.
250+ web2app apps tracked. When a funnel changes its prices, the old capture stays next to the new one, so you see the before and the after, not just the after.
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Until the next price change,
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Prices captured Aug 24 and Oct 22, 2026 from a US IP in USD. Traffic from SimilarWeb, Sep 2026 snapshot taken Oct 12. Funnel: start.smartymeapp.com/smartyme-g135-ngr.
