What Is the Most Common Paywall CTA Button Text?
Across 1,886 role-labeled primary paywall CTAs from ~800 tracked mobile apps, the single most common button text is a bare 'Continue' — 350 instances, used by 66 of the 222 companies with a labeled primary CTA (29.7%) [1]. No other exact phrase comes close: 'subscribe' (89) and 'start free trial' (84) are the next two [2]. If you group by intent rather than exact string, trial-promise buttons collectively edge ahead, but 'Continue' remains the most repeated single word.
'Continue' is the most common primary paywall CTA — 350 of 1,886 primary CTAs, used by 66 of 222 companies (Lazyweb Research, 4,406-CTA corpus, July 2026).
The finding
Of the 1,886 primary paywall CTAs Lazyweb Research role-labeled from ~800 tracked apps, the exact lowercased string continue appears 350 times [1]. That is by far the most-repeated button text — more than 'subscribe' (89) and 'start free trial' (84) combined [2]. Bare 'Continue' is used by 66 distinct companies (29.7% of the 222 with a labeled primary CTA) [1], so this is a broad convention, not one over-screenshotted app.
Top primary CTA leaderboard
| Rank | Button text | CTA instances | Companies |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | continue | 350 | 66 |
| 2 | subscribe | 89 | 21 |
| 3 | start free trial | 84 | 22 |
| 4 | try for free | 74 | 16 |
| 5 | subscribe now | 54 | 14 |
| 6 | try 3 days free | 34 | 1 |
| 7 | start your free trial | 28 | 7 |
| 8 | start trial | 26 | 7 |
| 9 | upgrade | 25 | 7 |
| 10 | try free | 23 | 8 |
These ten phrases together account for 727 of 1,886 primary CTAs [2]. Note 'try 3 days free' (34) comes from a single company [3] — instance counts overweight heavily-screenshotted apps, so always read the company column.
How to apply it
'Continue' is the safe default: it lowers commitment anxiety at the button by deferring the money question to the plan cards above it. But it is not automatically best for you — group your own tests by intent. Across the corpus, trial-led buttons (try/start + free/trial) total 527 CTAs from 103 companies (46.4% of companies), versus 69 companies leading with 'Continue' (31.1%) [4]. More apps lead with a trial promise than with 'Continue'; 'Continue' just wins the exact-string count.
Caveats
All percentages here use the 1,886 primary CTAs (or the 222 companies) as the denominator, because 1,727 of the 4,406 total CTAs (39%) are role-unknown and excluded from role stats [5]. Exact-string counts merge casing and whitespace variants via lower(trim()); they do not merge synonyms, so 'Continue' and 'Continue →' are counted together only in the continue-led family cut, not in the exact-string leaderboard.
The numbers
| Stat | Computed from |
|---|---|
| continue = 350 CTAs, 66 of 222 companies (29.7%) | statpack top_primary_cta_overall + exact_continue_companies |
| top-10 primary leaderboard: continue 350, subscribe 89, start free trial 84, try for free 74, subscribe now 54, try 3 days free 34, start your free trial 28, start trial 26, upgrade 25, try free 23; sum 727/1886 | statpack primary_leaderboard_top10 |
| try 3 days free = 34 CTAs from 1 company | statpack primary_leaderboard_top10 / qualitative note |
| trial-led 103 companies (46.4%) vs continue-led 69 companies (31.1%) of 222 | statpack continue_vs_trial_company_level |
| 1,727 of 4,406 CTAs are role-unknown (39%); role stats use 2,679 labeled / 1,886 primary | statpack role_distribution + smallSampleWarnings |
Sources & citations
- [1] Lazyweb Research analysis of 1,886 primary paywall CTAs (from ~800 tracked mobile apps), July 2026. Exact lowercased button text grouped and counted; company counts via COUNT(DISTINCT lower(company_name)). ↩
- [2] Lazyweb Research analysis of 4,406 paywall CTAs (from ~800 tracked mobile apps), July 2026. Corpus of paywall CTAs extracted from app screenshots; 2,679 role-labeled, 1,886 primary. ↩
Source: Lazyweb Research — proprietary analysis of real, in-market app screens. Cite as Lazyweb Research, 2026-07-07.