How Stripe Radar blocks free trial abuse

Stripe analyzed hundreds of millions of transactions across its network and found that malicious free trials increased 6.2x from November 2025 to February 2026. AI companies that use costly compute resources have become a major target in particular, and AI startups offering self-serve sign-up and direct API access saw 10x more attempted abuse than enterprise AI companies.

Free trial abuse is not limited to a single industry. Similar patterns were confirmed across services that offer free trials, including SaaS and marketplaces, with malicious users repeatedly signing up for trials or using invalid payment methods to consume resources without converting to a subscription.

To stop this, Stripe Radar offers a feature that blocks free trial abuse with one click. When enabled, it predicts potential terms-of-service violations—such as repeated sign-ups or failure to cancel—with 90% accuracy, and a new analytics page lets businesses see high-risk payments that were blocked, as well as payments that would have been blocked had the feature been turned on.

This feature is based on a new AI model trained on payment methods, devices, and payment history across the Stripe ecosystem. Stripe detects abnormal patterns by analyzing a card's past free trial conversion history, successful and failed payments, BIN ranges and virtual card brands, new or temporary email domains, and suspicious session timing and card characteristics together.

AI companies like Cursor are already using this to block high-risk trials at the sign-up stage. Stripe said that in the first 2 months, it blocked more than 550,000 free trials across 4 high-growth AI businesses, preventing an estimated $4.4 million in downstream losses based on compute costs.

This solution is not limited to AI companies and is available across all industries. Stripe advised businesses seeking early access to the free trial abuse prevention feature to contact [email protected], and said additional fraud response directions will be introduced at Stripe Sessions.