💔 What's your monthly churn?
I keep seeing founders and teams calculate churn different ways. I made a free churn calculator and wanted to create a thread to discuss it.
Terms and formulas to calculate the churn:
- Monthly churn – % of customers lost this month (lost / start)
- Retention – % of customers retained this month (1 − churn)
- Annualized churn (approx.) – churn projected over 12 months (1 − (1 − monthlyChurn)^12)
- Net growth rate – overall customer growth ((end − start) / start)
Common mistakes founders make:
- Mixing customer churn and revenue churn in one number – keep them separate
- Using end-of-month customers as the denominator – use start of month
- Mixing trials and internal accounts in the calculations – exclude them
I'll drop the link to the tool in comments. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!
What do you think is a good churn rate? If you feel comfortable, please do share your rates and lessons you learned.
Thanks for sharing this, Kristyna! Really useful calculator and breakdown of the common mistakes - I see a lot of confusion around these metrics too.
One unique perspective from my experience with a free loyalty card app (55k+ downloads): traditional churn metrics get tricky when your core offering is free. Instead of subscription churn, I track:
• App deletion rates (closest to traditional churn)
• Monthly/daily active user retention
• Feature engagement decay over time
• Conversion rates for any premium features or partnerships
The challenge is that with free apps, users can go dormant for months then return when they need the service again. So "churn" might look high but they're not truly lost customers.
For fellow founders dealing with freemium models: I find cohort analysis of engagement more valuable than traditional churn metrics. Users who stick around 30+ days show dramatically different long-term retention patterns.
What's your take on measuring "churn" for free products? Do you think the metrics need to be fundamentally different, or can the traditional SaaS formulas still apply with modifications?
Thank you for checking it out and taking the time to share your view!
I like your take on free apps, and I agree it depends on the specifics of the product a lot. Yes, deletion rates are a crucial signal – it may even deserve a separate "immediate deletion" category to separate instant rejection from later churn. What do you think?
Monthly/daily usage can vary wildly – there are apps people use every day, and there are apps used a few times a year, yet both can be successful.
For free products, I’d define “churn” as a period of inactivity beyond a sensible window.
Do you do any reactivation nudges (like emails/push notifications) that meaningfully change the retention?
Here’s the tool – https://sidemail.io/tools/saas-churn-calculator/
It's free, no login, private (calculations run in your browser). You can calculate the churn there and generate shareable JPG from results.