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 cancelled or marked as unpaid, then the subscription is considered churn and no longer counts towards MRR.

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

Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)

MRR is the sum of the monthly-normalised 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.

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.

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:

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 cancelled. 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.

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 could count as multiple trials.

Example

• Jane creates two subscriptions in January.
  • Each subscription starts with a 7-day free trial period on 1 January.
  • Jane counts as two new trials in January.
• John enters a 7-day free trial period on 1 January.
  • John doesn’t renew.
  • John then enters another 7-day free trial on 21 January.
  • John counts as two new trials in January.

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.

Example

During the month, 100 new trials were created and 15 trials converted. The trial conversion rate equals 15 divided by 100, or 15%

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:

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 for the period equals the number of churned subscribers (100) divided by the number of existing subscribers plus the number of added subscribers (1000 + 100) or, 9.1%

Churned revenue

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

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 each subsequent month. The MRR for a cohort can change due to upgrades, downgrades, and cancellations and thus can exceed 100%.

Example

In January, 100 subscribers become active subscribers. Each month the subscriber churn rate is 10%. Consequently, you’d expect to the following retention rates in each 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.

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 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.

Example

January 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