Teardowns › Pricing & paywalls › Reference price

NordVPN shows "Save 69%" on a 2-year plan, with the renewal price in small print

NordVPN · Pricing page · Logged-out visitors (USD shown) · nordvpn.com · captured 16 Oct 2026

Grey areaReference price Price & attribute framing Incentive

NordVPN Pricing page, captured 16 Oct 2026 — Our capture, 16 Oct 2026, logged out. Numbers match the steps.

Step by step

1
Default effect / status quo bias
The page opens on "2-year plans".
2
Reference price
The Basic plan shows "Save 69%" and "$3.49 per month", plus "+ 3 EXTRA months".
3
Price & attribute framing
Small print: "$312.93 $94.23 for the first 27 months… Savings: intro vs. renewal prices. Renews at $139.08/year."

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

"Save 69%" is measured against a struck-through reference price: the small print says the saving compares the intro price with the renewal price. A low monthly figure on a 27-month plan frames a large upfront bill as small, and "3 EXTRA months" adds a bonus. Whether this lifts sales for NordVPN is not public.

● Strong evidence · More on reference price, with sources →

Context

A consumer VPN sold mainly on long multi-year plans paid upfront.

Honest nudge or dark pattern?

Grey area

Grey area: the saving is measured against the renewal price, and the upfront total and renewal price are in much smaller print than "$3.49" and "Save 69%". It sits close to the hidden-costs line. See deceptive.design/hidden-costs.

Steal this, honestly

If you show a saving, show what it's against at the same size.
Show the upfront total as clearly as the monthly figure.

What to test: Monthly-equivalent vs upfront-total headline price. Measure purchases and refund requests.

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: NordVPN: NordVPN shows "Save 69%" on a 2-year plan, with the renewal price in small print
Bias: Reference price: A price is judged against a comparison price: a 'was' price, a monthly rate, a renewal rate.
Why it nudges: "Save 69%" is measured against a struck-through reference price: the small print says the saving compares the intro price with the renewal price. A low monthly figure on a 27-month plan frames a large upfront bill as small, and "3 EXTRA months" adds a bonus. Whether this lifts sales for NordVPN is not public.
Our verdict: Grey area. Grey area: the saving is measured against the renewal price, and the upfront total and renewal price are in much smaller print than "$3.49" and "Save 69%". It sits close to the hidden-costs line.
Source page: https://nudgeswipe.com/examples/nordvpn-save-69-intro-vs-renewal/ (JSON: https://nudgeswipe.com/api/teardowns/nordvpn-save-69-intro-vs-renewal.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 nordvpn.com, 16 Oct 2026
Kalyanaram & Winer (1995), Empirical generalizations from reference price research. doi.org/10.1287/mksc.14.3.G161
deceptive.design: hidden-costs

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