Billing metric definitions

Below you’ll find definitions and examples for metrics found in the Billing analytics Dashboard and in downloadable reports.

Metric definitions

Customers, subscribers, and subscriptions

In Stripe, you create Customer and Subscription objects. If a customer has one or more subscriptions attached, Stripe considers that customer to be a subscriber. If any of the customer’s subscriptions are paid subscriptions in an active or past_due state, the customer is an active subscriber.

When a subscriber’s subscription is canceled or marked as unpaid, then the subscription is considered churn and no longer counts towards MRR.

When all of a subscriber’s subscriptions are canceled or marked as unpaid, then the subscriber is considered to have churned and no longer counts as an active subscriber.

Revenue

Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)

MRR is the sum of the monthly-normalized value of all your active and past_due subscriptions. MRR calculations exclude subscriptions in trial periods, any taxes applied to the subscription, any subscribers on free plans, and any metered (usage based) products.

For example, in a given period, 100 subscribers are on Plan A (100 USD per month) and 50 subscribers are on Plan B (600 USD per year). MRR = (100 × 100 USD) + (50 × (800 USD/12)) = 12,500 USD

Learn more about how your MRR is impacted by taxes, trials, delinquency, and refunds.

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MRR growth

MRR growth is the net change in your MRR over a period of time starting with the MRR at the beginning of the period, adding any new MRR and expansion MRR, subtracting any contraction MRR and any churn MRR and adjusting for any foreign currency (FX) impact.

For example, at the start of the period, your MRR is 1,000 USD.

• New MRR: During the period, you have one subscriber convert from a free trial to Plan A (100 USD per month). This is a positive change of +100 USD to your MRR.
• Expansion: During the period, you have one subscriber upgrade from Plan A (100 USD month) to Plan C (150 USD per month). This is a positive change of +50 USD to your MRR.
• Contraction: During the period, you have one subscriber downgrade from Plan A (100 USD per month) to Plan B (60 USD per month). This is a negative change of -40 USD to your MRR.
• Churn: During the period, you have one subscriber downgrade from Plan B (60 USD per month). This is a negative change of -60 USD to your MRR.
• FX Adjustment: You have a single customer paying in a foreign currency. They subscribed to Plan A in a foreign currency last period. During that period it was worth (100 USD per month) but the currency lost value in the current period and it’s now worth 95 USD per month. This is a negative change of -5 USD to your MRR.

Here’s a summary breakdown:

Usage

Aggregate usage

Aggregate usage is the sum of all usage events over a given time, based on the meter’s aggregation type. Use it to analyze consumption patterns and trends.

For example, given the following meter:

• Meter Name: Data Transfer Meter
• Aggregation Type: SUM (total the amount of data used)

Customer A subscribes to a usage-based billing subscription with the above meter. The following usage events occur for Customer A in the month of January:

• Event 1: 100 GB used on January 1
• Event 2: 200 GB used on January 15
• Event 3: 50 GB used on January 30

The aggregate usage for the month is 350 GB (100 GB + 200 GB + 50 GB).

This aggregate usage figure can help businesses anticipate service demands and adjust their infrastructure accordingly.

Usage revenue

Usage revenue is the total monetary amount generated from usage events across all meters during a given time period, excluding taxes and discounts. It equals the subscription price of a metered product multiplied by the customer’s total number of usage events within the billing period of an active subscription. It provides insight into the revenue expected from consumption-based billing.

For example, given the following meter:

• Meter Name: Data Transfer Meter
• Aggregation Type: SUM (total the amount of data used)

Customer A subscribes to a usage-based billing subscription with the above meter at a price of 0.10 USD per event. If customer A uses 150 GB of data in a billing period, their total usage revenue is 15.00 USD (150 GB multiplied by 0.10 USD).

Subscribers

Active subscribers

Active subscribers only includes subscribers with positive MRR that are in an active or past_due state (read more about subscription states here). It doesn’t include subscribers on free plans or trials. A customer with multiple active subscriptions is counted as a single active subscriber.

If a subscriber drops to 0 USD in MRR, we consider them churned in the period. This most commonly happens when a subscription is canceled. It can also occur if you’re choosing to subtract discounts from your MRR. In this case, we consider a subscriber churned if they have a 100% coupon applied and they become active again if you remove the coupon.

Active subscriber growth

Active subscriber growth is the net change in your number of active subscribers over a period of time. Start with the number of active subscribers at the beginning of the period, add any new active subscribers and any reactivated subscribers, and subtract any churned subscribers.

New subscribers

The sum of paid subscribers who became active for the first time during the period. This doesn’t include subscribers on free plans or trials. We don’t count existing paid subscribers who add additional subscriptions multiple times. We also don’t include reactivated customers.

Trials

New trials

New trials refers to the sum of subscriptions that started a trial during the period. We count the number of trials at the subscription level rather than at the customer level, so a single customer can count as multiple trials. For example, each of the following scenarios counts as two new trials in January:

• Jane creates two subscriptions in January. Each subscription starts with a 7-day free trial period on January 1.
• John enters a 7-day free trial period on January 1. He then starts another 7-day free trial period on January 21.

Trial conversion rate

The trial conversion rate is the number of subscriptions that converted from a trial to a paid plan in the last 30 days divided by the number of trials that ended in the last 30 days. The number might exceed 100% if some subscriptions convert to a paid plan after the end of their trial period.

The number reflects the trial conversion rate at the end of the selected time period.

For example, during a 30-day period, 100 trials ended and 15 trials converted. The trial conversion rate equals 15 divided by 100, or 15%.

Churn

Subscriber churn rate

The number of active subscribers lost due to churn over the last 30 days divided by the number of active subscribers in a given period divided by the number of active subscribers at the start of the period.

The subscriber churn rate is the total churned subscribers in the past 30 days, divided by the number of active subscribers 30 days ago, plus the total new subscribers in the past 30 days:

For example, at the start of the month, the business had 1000 subscribers. During the month, the business added 100 subscribers and churned 100 subscribers. The subscriber churn rate equals the number of churned subscribers (100) divided by the sum of the subscribers at the beginning of the month and the subscribers added during the month (1000 + 100). 100 / 1100 = 9.1%

Churned revenue

The sum of churned MRR and contraction MRR in the period.

For example, during the period, Jane cancels her 120 USD per year plan and John downgrades from a 50 USD per month plan to a 25 USD per month plan. The churned revenue during the period equals 10 (Jane) + 25 USD (John) = 35 USD.

Retention by cohort

Stripe assigns cohorts to subscribers based off of when they first started generating positive Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) by starting active paying subscriptions. Revenue retention considers expansion and thus can increase above 100%.

For subscriber retention:

• The start value is the initial number of active subscribers in the cohort.
• Month x refers to the remaining number of active subscribers at the end of each subsequent month.

For revenue retention:

• The start MRR is the MRR of all active subscribers in the cohort.
• Month x refers to the amount of MRR remaining from subscribers in the cohort at the end of the each subsequent month. The MRR for a cohort can change due to upgrades, downgrades, and cancellations and thus can exceed 100%.

For example, if each month’s subscriber churn rate is 10%, you can expect the following retention rates in each following month:

• Month 1: 90%
• Month 2: 81%
• Month 3: 73%
• Month 4: 66%
• Month 5: 59% and so on.

In January, 100 subscribers became active on 10 USD per month plans. The starting MRR is 1,000 USD. At the end of month 1, 10 subscribers have churned and 5 subscribers have upgraded to 25 USD per month plans. The net MRR impact is: 125 USD of expansion MRR − 100 USD of churn MRR = +25 USD. Therefore in Month 1, you see 102.5% revenue retention.

Average revenue per user (ARPU)

This is your average MRR per paid subscriber. ARPU is calculated by dividing your total MRR by the number of active subscribers. The number reflects the ARPU at the end of the selected time period.

For example, you have 100 active subscribers at the end of January. The total MRR at the end of January is 50,000 USD. Your ARPU at the end of January is 50,000 USD divided by 100, or 500 USD.

Subscriber lifetime value (LTV)

The subscriber lifetime value is calculated by dividing the Average revenue per user (ARPU) by the subscriber churn rate. This is an estimate of LTV based on the values at various points in time.

For example, in January the business started with 110 subscribers and finished with 100 after 10 subscribers churned. The total MRR at the end of January is 50,000 USD. The ARPU at the end of January is 500 USD while the January subscriber churn rate was 9%. Subscriber lifetime value at the end of January is therefore (500 USD) / (9%) = 5,555 USD