What is ARPU (average revenue per user)?

Stripe defines ARPU as the average MRR per paid subscriber: total MRR divided by total active subscribers. Other teams divide by all active users, including people on a free plan. The first is sometimes called ARPPU, average revenue per paying user. Pick one definition, write it next to the number, and keep it the same over time.

ARPU explains movement in MRR. If MRR grows while ARPU falls, you are adding cheaper subscribers, perhaps through a discount or a weekly plan. If ARPU rises while subscribers fall, price or plan mix is doing the work and you may be losing the low-price customers. ARPU is also half of the simple LTV formula, ARPU divided by churn.

RevenueDot has no single ARPU chart. You can compute it from the MRR and Active Subscriptions charts. Realized LTV per Paying Customer shows revenue per payer inside a fixed window, and the Ad ARPDAU chart shows ad revenue per daily active user for apps that sell ads.

Example

A subscription app has $5,000 of MRR and 500 active paying subscribers. ARPU is $10. If 2,000 free users are counted too, revenue per user across all 2,500 people is $2.

Sources: Stripe Docs: Billing analytics definitions