Customer churn vs revenue churn
Customer churn counts customers: the share of paying customers at the start of the period who canceled. Revenue churn counts money: the share of starting MRR lost to cancellations and downgrades.
The two drift apart when the customers who leave pay more, or less, than average. Example: 4 of 200 customers cancel, so customer churn is 2%. If those 4 paid $2,400 of your $40,000 MRR, revenue churn is 6%. The second number is the one your bank account feels.
Revenue churn here is gross: upgrades don't offset it, so it never goes below zero. Net revenue churn subtracts expansion and can go negative. For that view, use the NRR and GRR calculator.
Monthly vs annual churn
Annual churn is not monthly churn times 12. Each month's churn applies to a smaller group of customers, so the losses compound: annual churn = 1 − (1 − monthly churn)^12.
Example: 3% a month is about 30.6% a year, not 36%. Going the other way, monthly churn = 1 − (1 − annual churn)^(1/12).
Use monthly churn to spot changes early and annual churn to plan. If most customers pay yearly, a single month jumps around because cancels land at renewal; measure a quarter or a year and read the monthly rate.
How your rate compares
For monthly customer churn, below 3% is strong, below 5% is normal for early-stage SaaS, and above 7% needs immediate attention. For monthly gross revenue churn, below 3% to 5% is the healthy range.
Rates tend to fall as companies grow and sell to larger customers. See where you sit by company size in SaaS churn rate benchmarks, built from internal and external databases.
This calculator uses a strict definition: it leaves out customers who joined and canceled in the same period, and customers who came back. Your rate may read lower here than in tools that count them.
Which customers are behind the number
A churn rate tells you how many customers left, not who is next. Customers rarely leave all at once: seats get cut, logins fall, a card fails and nobody follows up, then the cancel arrives.
North Metric's churn prediction gives every paying Stripe customer a 0–100 risk score with up to three reasons, ranked by money at risk, and drafts the move to keep each one for you to approve.
The free churn report shows the money at risk across your customers and the first 5 to act on, from your Stripe billing, and nothing changes there.