Prodigy is downloadable software, which comes with particular trade-offs. We couldn't offer a downloadable trial from the website without exposing ourselves to significant piracy risk. It's easy for subscription models to offer free trials...But subscriptions have many disadvantages for users as well.
The majority of our customers do feel confident about the purchase even without a trial. I think the trust we've built up from our open-source work on spaCy is a big factor in this. I think most people also see that we're a small company that genuinely cares about what we do.
Some companies do get in touch about a trial, which we normally do by launching a VM with the software installed. We don't normally get requests about trials for personal users, but we could set something up for you if you email me: matt@explosion.ai . We're also happy to issue you a refund if you find the software isn't suitable for your project.