Teardowns › Pricing & paywalls › Price & attribute framing

The Economist prices a year by the week, and preselects it

The Economist · Pricing · Prospective digital subscribers (US-priced page) · economist.com · captured 16 Oct 2026

Honest nudgePrice & attribute framing Reference price Default effect / status quo bias

The Economist Pricing, captured 16 Oct 2026 — Our capture, 16 Oct 2026, logged out.

Step by step

1
The annual plan is shown as "$3.88/week", not as an annual figure.
2
"Save $86.70*" sits under it; the asterisk says savings are based on the renewal price.
3
The real bill is shown in grey: "$289 $202.30 for first year, then auto-renews at $289 annually".
4
The Annual option is already selected; the alternative is "4 week: $0 first 4 weeks".

Prices quoted in dollars ($), exactly as shown on the page we captured (US-priced). Prices vary by region and change over time.

The psychology

Why it nudges

The Economist uses temporal price framing: restating a yearly price per week makes it feel smaller (the pennies-a-day effect). The struck-through $289 and "Save $86.70" give a reference price to judge the offer against. The preselected Annual radio adds a default: doing nothing means choosing the annual plan. Whether this lifts conversion for The Economist is not public.

● Strong evidence · More on price & attribute framing, with sources →

Context

A premium publisher selling to prospective subscribers on its own subscribe page. The page we saw showed US dollar prices. The annual introductory price is likely the plan it most wants new subscribers on, since it's both badged and preselected.

Honest nudge or dark pattern?

Honest nudge

Honest nudge as captured: the total, the renewal price and "Cancel auto-renewal at any time" are on the same screen. It would become a dark pattern if the total or renewal terms were hidden. See deceptive.design/hidden-subscription.

Steal this, honestly

Restate an annual price in the unit people budget in (per week or per month), and keep the total visible on the same card.
Show the reference price you're comparing against and say what it is ("based on renewal price").
If you preselect a plan, preselect the one that suits most buyers and keep the alternative one click away.

What to test: Per-week vs annual-total headline price on the same plan. Measure paid conversions and 90-day refund or cancel rate, not just clicks.

Next: run it on your product

Apply this with your agent

Take the steps above into your own flow. The prompt carries this teardown, the honest-vs-dark line and the steps.

You are helping me apply a behavioural-design pattern ethically.

Pattern: The Economist: The Economist prices a year by the week, and preselects it
Bias: Price & attribute framing: The same price or attribute feels different depending on how it's expressed.
Why it nudges: The Economist uses temporal price framing: restating a yearly price per week makes it feel smaller (the pennies-a-day effect). The struck-through $289 and "Save $86.70" give a reference price to judge the offer against. The preselected Annual radio adds a default: doing nothing means choosing the annual plan. Whether this lifts conversion for The Economist is not public.
Our verdict: Honest nudge. Honest nudge as captured: the total, the renewal price and "Cancel auto-renewal at any time" are on the same screen. It would become a dark pattern if the total or renewal terms were hidden.
Source page: https://nudgeswipe.com/examples/economist-per-week-price-preselected-annual/ (JSON: https://nudgeswipe.com/api/teardowns/economist-per-week-price-preselected-annual.json)

Rules: say a brand "uses" a tactic, never that it "worked"; outcomes are not public unless the company published them; no invented uplift estimates; flag mixed evidence. Honest nudge = true, visible, easy to reverse, and in the user's interest. Dark pattern = hides costs, fakes scarcity or popularity, shames, or makes leaving harder than joining. Quote company-published results as "X reports", with the source link, and don’t generalise them. Don’t cite retracted or failed-to-replicate studies as support (e.g. Ariely & Wertenbroch 2002). Don’t state study figures unless they’re on this page or in a source you can link. If an idea crosses the line, link the matching deceptive.design pattern.

Tasks:
1. Ask me for my product, the flow (URL or screenshots) and the goal.
2. Audit where this pattern already appears, or could, in that flow.
3. Propose 2-3 ethical experiments: hypothesis, variant copy or UI, primary metric, and a guardrail metric (refunds, complaints, cancellations).
4. Flag every dark-pattern risk and say how to stay on the honest side.

Open in ChatGPT Open in Claude Open in Grok Open in Cursor

ChatGPT, Claude, Grok and Cursor open with the prompt filled in (it is also copied, in case the prefill doesn't load). Gemini and Codex don't support prefilled links, so the prompt is copied and the app opens; paste it in.

Sources

Our capture of economist.com, 16 Oct 2026
Tversky & Kahneman (1981), The framing of decisions. Pennies-a-day: Gourville (1998). doi.org/10.1126/science.7455683
deceptive.design: hidden-subscription

Related teardowns

slack.com

Slack Pricing screenshot, captured 16 Oct 2026

Reference priceConditional

Slack shows the full price struck through next to the intro price

Slack · Pricing · $ as captured

mailchimp.com

Default effect / status quo biasHonest nudge

Mailchimp preselects a free trial of its Standard plan

Mailchimp · Pricing · $ as captured

hubspot.com

HubSpot Pricing page screenshot, captured 16 Oct 2026

Reference priceGrey area

HubSpot shows Starter at $7 against $20, for a limited time

HubSpot · Pricing page · $ as captured

5 new nudges, every Friday

Five real product and marketing moments, the psychology behind each, and one thing to try. Weekly issues start soon. Your email is stored with our email provider (Resend) and used only for this newsletter.