The Seed Stage Churn Calculator measures customer churn and recurring revenue churn over a selected period. It helps subscription startups distinguish between losing accounts and losing revenue, which can differ when customers have different contract values.
Use beginning-of-period customers and MRR as the denominator, then enter losses during that same period. The tool reports both rates and the implied customer retention rate.
Choose a month, quarter, or other consistent interval.
Use the active customer count at the beginning of the period.
Include customers who fully canceled during the period.
Use recurring revenue at the start and recurring revenue removed by churn.
A gap between the rates can reveal whether higher- or lower-value accounts are leaving.
Customer churn rate = Customers lost ÷ Customers at period start × 100
Revenue churn rate = MRR lost to churn ÷ MRR at period start × 100
Customer retention rate = 100% − Customer churn rate
New customers and expansion revenue are excluded from gross churn calculations.
Customer churn is the percentage of beginning customers that canceled during the period.
Use the same cancellation and revenue-recognition rules each period for a meaningful trend.
Given: 400 starting customers, 24 lost customers, $80,000 starting MRR, and $7,200 lost MRR.
Calculation: Customer churn = 24 ÷ 400 × 100 = 6%. Revenue churn = $7,200 ÷ $80,000 × 100 = 9%.
Result: Customer churn is 6%, while revenue churn is higher at 9%.
No. Gross customer churn uses customers active at the beginning of the period.
Downgrades are usually contraction rather than full customer churn. They may be included in gross revenue retention analysis but not lost-customer count.
Yes. That happens when churned customers have above-average recurring revenue.
Monthly churn is common for monthly subscriptions. Longer contracts may be clearer on a quarterly or annual basis.
Customer retention is 100% minus customer churn under this simple beginning-customer method. Revenue retention may also include contraction or expansion, depending on the metric.