Churn Rate: How to Calculate Subscription Churn for an App

At the start of each period RevenueDot counts the paid subscriptions with access. Then it counts the subscriptions that ended in the period: expirations, refunds that ended access, and the old subscription in a product change. It subtracts billing recoveries, where a renewal succeeded after a billing issue and the subscription continued. The result is churned actives.

Both numbers count subscriptions, not customers. A customer who resubscribes starts a new subscription, which does not reduce churn already counted. A customer who moves from a monthly to an annual plan counts as churn on the old plan, because the old subscription ended, while the Active Subscriptions Movement chart treats a paid-to-paid change as neither.

Because the denominator is the count at the start, a period that adds many new subscribers and loses a few can still show a high rate. The value can be negative when recoveries exceed losses and can pass 100 percent in an unusual period. Trials do not count, and the sandbox is excluded. Filters and segments: app, store, product, product duration, offering, country, platform and app version. You can open it in the dashboard under Charts or fetch it with GET /v2/projects/{project_id}/charts/churn. The response has the same shape as RevenueCat's Charts API, so scripts written for that API keep working. The secret key needs the charts_metrics:charts:read permission. The Charts guide lists every parameter.

One month for an app with monthly plans.

Churn rate is 50 / 1,000 = 5.0% for the month.

Churn sets the ceiling on your growth. At 5 percent monthly churn, a subscriber stays about 20 months on average. At 10 percent, about 10 months. Every point you remove from churn is worth more than the same relative lift in new subscribers, because it compounds on the whole base.

Segment by product duration and by store before you act. Monthly and annual plans have different churn rhythms: an annual plan has one decision point a year and a monthly plan has twelve. A single blended rate hides which plan or market is leaking.

How to read it

• Choose the resolution to match the plan length. Monthly resolution suits monthly plans. For annual plans use quarter or year.
• Compare churn rates at the same resolution. A daily rate is far smaller than a monthly one.
• A rate that falls while Active Subscriptions flatten can be a bookkeeping effect of a large new cohort. Check the denominator.
• Use Subscription Status to see how many subscriptions are set to cancel. They are the churn of the coming period.
• Filter by product duration to compare plan lengths, and by store to compare iOS and Android.