Offering free premium to early users — is this a good validation strategy?

So I recently made my first app — Spenlys.com — an AI-powered personal finance tool. It gives users spending insights, AI suggestions more useful stuff.

But as you know, AI infra isn’t cheap. And getting users for a brand-new tool is kinda hard. So I’m trying this approach:

Some features are behind a “premium” paywall (looks real).

But when users click “Upgrade to Pro,” they see the pricing and if they click buy they instantly get it for free with a note like:

“You got premium for free as a thank-you for trying the app early.”

Then I ask them:

“Would you have paid for it?”

It helps me validate if the features are valuable before building a real pricing wall.

No A/B test, no credit card wall — just honest feedback from early users.

So far I’m still early, don’t have a lot of data, but would love thoughts:

• Is this a decent strategy for validation?

• Anyone else tried something like this?

• Should I even validate?

Open to feedback!