Enter your customer counts (and optionally revenue) to calculate churn rate and implied average customer lifetime.

SaaS Churn Rate Calculator

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Customers at start of period

Customers lost during period

MRR at start of period ($, optional)

MRR lost (churned + downgrades) ($, optional)

Customer churn rate	5.0%
Revenue churn rate	4.0%
Implied average customer lifetime	20.0 months

Implied lifetime = 1 / churn rate, a simplified approximation that assumes a constant churn rate over time - actual customer lifetimes often vary by cohort and tenure.

The formula

Customer churn rate = Customers lost / Customers at start of period Revenue churn rate = MRR lost / MRR at start of period Implied average customer lifetime (months) = 1 / Monthly churn rate

Example

1,000 customers at the start of the month, 50 lost: a 5.0% customer churn rate. With $100,000 starting MRR and $4,000 lost to churn/downgrades: a 4.0% revenue churn rate - lower than customer churn, suggesting the lost customers were smaller-than-average accounts. Implied average customer lifetime: 20 months.

Step-by-step guide

Count customers (or subscriptions) at the start of the period and how many were lost (canceled, not renewed) by the end.
Optionally track MRR churn separately - this captures dollar impact, which can differ meaningfully from customer count churn if lost customers weren't your average-value accounts.
Compare customer churn to revenue churn - a gap between them tells you whether you're losing disproportionately small or large accounts.

Why customer churn and revenue churn often tell different stories

These two numbers can diverge significantly, and the direction of that gap is genuinely informative. If revenue churn is LOWER than customer churn (as in the example above), it typically means the customers leaving tend to be smaller, lower-value accounts - a less alarming signal than it might first appear. If revenue churn is HIGHER than customer churn, it means you're disproportionately losing your bigger, more valuable accounts - a more serious problem, since it suggests something is going wrong specifically with larger customers or higher-tier plans, which usually deserves faster investigation than losing smaller accounts would.

Common mistakes

Ignoring "net revenue churn" - which nets out expansion revenue (upgrades) against contraction and cancellations - businesses with strong upsell motion can have negative net revenue churn, meaning existing customers grow revenue faster than churn erodes it.

Comparing churn rates measured over different time periods without annualizing - a 2% monthly churn rate is not the same as a 2% annual rate; they compound to roughly 21.5% annually if sustained.

Frequently asked questions

What's a "good" monthly churn rate for a SaaS business?

It varies significantly by segment - businesses targeting large enterprise customers often see under 1% monthly churn, while those targeting small businesses or consumers commonly see 3-7% or higher, since smaller customers tend to be more price-sensitive and have shorter typical lifespans.

Does the implied lifetime formula account for changing churn rates over time?

No - the simple 1/churn formula assumes a constant rate, which is a simplification. In reality, churn often decreases as customers stay longer (survivorship), so this formula can understate true average lifetime for a mature customer base.

What's the difference between "logo churn" and "revenue churn"?

"Logo churn" is another term for customer churn (counting accounts, regardless of size), while revenue churn weights by dollar value - both are commonly reported together since they can tell meaningfully different stories.

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