What is the Subscription Churn Rate metric?
Subscription Churn Rate measures the percentage of paid subscriptions that ended during a given month, relative to all paid subscriptions that were active at the beginning of that month. It's the metric to use when you want to understand retention at the product level - on a specific offer, price plan, or acquisition channel - rather than across your customer base as a whole (for that, use the Subscriber Churn Rate metric).
You can find it in the Cleeng Dashboard under Analytics, on the Subscription Churn Rate KPI dashboard.
Subscription Churn Rate also powers the churn tiles on the All Purchases Overview, Retention Performance and Retention Trends.
How is the Subscription Churn Rate calculated?
Formula:
(from among subscriptions active at the beginning of the month)
- A subscription is counted in the denominator if it was active and paid on the first day of the month.
- Free trials are excluded from the calculation.
- Subscriptions that both started and churned within the same month are not included - the metric tracks what happened to the population that existed at the beginning of the month.
- If a subscriber changes from one offer to another, for example, from a monthly subscription to an annual one, the subscription is counted under the offer it is on at the moment of the calculation, not the original offer they signed up with.
Example:
- A service had 10,000 paid subscriptions active at the beginning of the month.
- During the month, 500 of those subscriptions ended.
- The Subscription Churn Rate is: 500 / 10,000 = 5.00%
- Subscriptions that started mid-month - whether they remained active or also ended - aren't part of this calculation, because they weren't in the base population on day one.
How to use the Subscription Churn Rate metric?
- Compare retention across offers. Filter by Offer Title to see which offers retain better and which underperform.
- Compare retention across channels. Filter by Acquisition Channel to evaluate the long-term quality of subscriptions acquired through different routes (Web, Apple, Google, etc.).
- Compare monthly vs. annual retention. Filter by Offer Period to see how subscription length affects churn.
- Separate voluntary from involuntary churn. The two require different retention responses - cancellations point to product or pricing issues, while payment failures point to dunning and recovery.
- Diagnose spikes. When the headline number moves, combine filters (e.g. one offer + one channel) to isolate where the movement is coming from.
Available filters
Subscription Churn Rate can be filtered by:
- Date
- Customer Country
- Churn Type - voluntary vs. involuntary
- Acquisition Channel - Web, Apple, Google, etc.
- Offer Title
- Offer Period - monthly, annual, etc.
The Acquisition Channel, Offer Title, and Offer Period filters are the reason Subscription Churn Rate exists as a separate metric from Subscriber Churn Rate. Because each subscription belongs to exactly one offer and one acquisition channel, these dimensions produce clean, unambiguous numbers at the subscription level.
When to use Subscription Churn Rate vs. Subscriber Churn Rate?
Use Subscription Churn Rate when you want to analyze retention at the product level - on a specific offer, offer period, or acquisition channel. Because each subscription belongs to exactly one offer and one channel, that metric supports filtering by those dimensions; Subscriber Churn Rate doesn't, since one subscriber can span several offers and channels at once.
Use Subscriber Churn Rate when you want to understand the health of your paying customer base as a whole - how many people you're keeping vs. losing month over month. A subscriber is only counted as churned once all of their subscriptions have ended, so the metric reflects customer-level retention rather than the lifecycle of any individual subscription.
The two metrics are complementary. Watching them side by side often reveals useful patterns - for example, a stable Subscriber Churn Rate alongside a rising Subscription Churn Rate suggests that customers are switching between your offers rather than leaving altogether.
FAQs
What's the difference between Subscription Churn Rate and Subscriber Churn Rate?
Subscription Churn Rate counts contracts - every individual subscription that ends is counted, even if the subscriber still has other active subscriptions. Subscriber Churn Rate counts people - a subscriber is only considered churned once all of their subscriptions have ended. Use Subscription Churn Rate for product- and offer-level analysis; use Subscriber Churn Rate to track the health of your paying customer base.
Are users in a grace period included?
No. A subscription in a grace period is still treated as active until the grace period expires and the subscription is fully terminated.
Are free trials included?
No. Trials are excluded from both the numerator and the denominator. Only paid subscriptions are counted.
Are non-recurring offers (e.g., passes) included?
No. Subscription Churn Rate tracks subscription churn and does not apply to one-time purchases or non-recurring offers.
What happens to subscriptions that started and churned within the same month?
They are excluded. The metric is calculated against the population of subscriptions that were already active at the beginning of the month, so a subscription that didn't exist at that point isn't part of the denominator.
What happens when a subscriber switches offers mid-month?
Aggregation uses the current offer on the subscription, not the acquisition offer. If a subscription moves between offers, it's counted under the offer it was on at the moment of the calculation.
How is churn type determined?
Churn type is read directly from the subscription that ended - voluntary for subscriber-initiated cancellations, involuntary for payment failures and similar events.
Why doesn't the Subscriber Churn Rate dashboard have offer and channel filters?
Because a subscriber can hold subscriptions on multiple offers and can have been acquired through different channels over time, those dimensions don't have a single unambiguous value at the subscriber level. That's exactly why Subscription Churn Rate exists as a separate metric - to make that kind of analysis possible.
What factors can influence Subscription Churn Rate?
Pricing, product quality, content release cadence, customer service, competitive pressure, payment success rates, and the mix of offers and acquisition channels in your active base all affect the metric.