MRR for subscription apps: how to calculate it

RevenueDot finds every paid subscription that has access at the end of the period. It takes the USD price of the current paid period and multiplies it by a factor from the product's duration: 1 day ×30, 3 days ×10, 1 week ×4, 2 weeks ×2, 4 weeks ×1, 1 month ×1, 2 months ×½, 3 months ×⅓, 6 months ×⅙, 1 year ×1/12. Without a catalog duration, the length of the paid period is used. The sum over all subscriptions is MRR.

A subscription is built from the purchase ledger. Each trial, purchase and renewal is one period, and periods of the same customer, store, app and product join into one subscription while each starts within an hour of the previous one ending. A longer gap starts a new subscription, unless the store reported a billing issue and the next period is a renewal. Then the subscription continues. A cancelled subscription counts until it expires, a subscription in a grace period counts, and a refund ends the period at the refund time. A product change ends one subscription and starts another.

MRR is a snapshot, so the current period is measured now and marked incomplete. Free trials count zero. Sandbox purchases, granted access and Family Sharing purchases are excluded. Each subscription keeps the exchange rate of its purchase date. Filter or segment by app, store, product, product duration, offering, country, platform and app version.

Find it in the dashboard under Analytics > Charts, or call GET /v2/projects/{project_id}/charts/mrr with a key that has charts_metrics:charts:read. The response has the same shape as RevenueCat's Charts API. The charts guide also prints the SQL that reproduces MRR from your own tables.

Illustrative numbers for one day. Each plan is scaled to a monthly value before it is added.

MRR = 1,600 + 360 + 400 = $2,360.

MRR is the cleanest line for judging whether a subscription app is growing, because it ignores when customers happen to pay. An annual plan counts one twelfth every month, so a big renewal month does not fake growth the way Revenue can.

Use it to judge a price change, a new plan or a paywall test: a change that works shows up as MRR moving away from its old trend within a few weeks. When MRR moves, open MRR Movement to see whether new customers, win-backs, upgrades or churn caused it.

How to read it

• An annual subscriber counts one twelfth of the price every month of the year, even though the cash arrived once.
• Cancelling does not lower MRR. The subscription leaves MRR when access ends, so check Subscription Status to see how much MRR is set to cancel.
• Only subscriptions count. Do not add one-time purchases or ad revenue to MRR.
• Weekly plans use a factor of 4, so a $2 weekly plan is $8 a month.
• The newest point is a snapshot taken now, so it can change before the period ends.