A true month-by-month simulation of what churn takes from your revenue over 12, 24 and 36 months, and exactly what fixing it is worth. No annual-multiplication shortcuts, no email gate.
Your monthly recurring revenue today.
From new customers. Set to 0 to see pure decay.
MRR lost to cancellations and downgrades each month.
Percentage points of churn you could win back. Capped at your current churn rate.
current churn improved churn zero-churn baseline · shaded wedge = revenue you keep with less churn
Cumulative revenue counts the MRR you collect each month. The cost of churn compares it against a zero-churn baseline with the same new-MRR growth.
| Horizon | MRR at current churn | MRR if improved | Cost of churn | Improvement worth |
|---|
Most churn calculators multiply one month's churned MRR by twelve. That ignores compounding in both directions: your base shrinks as customers leave, and your new MRR keeps adding to it. This tool runs the actual recurrence, month by month.
MRRt = MRRt−1 × (1 − churn) + new MRR Revenue booked in month t is the MRR at the end of that month, after churn and new sales. Summing those 36 values gives cumulative revenue. The cost of churn is the gap between that sum and the same sum with churn set to zero.
At zero churn the recurrence collapses to straight-line growth (MRR + new MRR × months), so the cost of churn is zero and no division ever touches a zero denominator. Churn typed above 100% is clamped, and the improvement scenario is capped at your current churn rate, since churn cannot go negative.
The growth ceiling comes from the steady state of the recurrence: with fixed new MRR g and churn c, MRR converges on g ÷ c and can never pass it. It only appears when both g and c are above zero. If your MRR is already above the ceiling, the simulation shows it shrinking towards that level.
One honest limitation: the model assumes a flat churn rate and flat new MRR. Real businesses see churn fall as they move upmarket and new MRR grow with the team. Treat the outputs as a floor on what churn costs you, not a forecast.
Two large datasets publish monthly churn benchmarks. ChartMogul's figures are customer churn rather than revenue churn, so treat them as directional when comparing against this calculator.
Source: ChartMogul customer churn benchmarks, 2025, from a dataset of 2,500+ SaaS businesses.
| Company size | Median monthly churn |
|---|---|
| Under $300k ARR | 6.5% |
| $1M – $3M ARR | 3.7% |
| Above $8M ARR | 3.1% |
| Best-in-class (most size bands) | 1.3% – 1.5% |
Source: Recurly Research churn rate benchmarks, 2024–2025. Roughly 4% monthly is considered a good benchmark for subscription businesses.
| Segment | Average monthly churn |
|---|---|
| All subscription businesses | 3.27% (2.41% voluntary + 0.86% involuntary) |
| B2B, including software | 3.8% |
| Consumer / DTC categories | 6.5% |
Around a quarter of that churn is involuntary, from failed payments. Dunning and card retries recover much of it; our failed payment recovery calculator shows what that is worth.
SaaS Capital's 2025 survey of private SaaS companies found businesses with $25,000–$50,000 ACVs report a median net revenue retention of 102%, with the top quartile at 111% and the bottom quartile at 97%. The median growth rate across companies above $1M ARR was 24%. NRR nets expansion against churn, so a company can clear 100% while still leaking gross revenue; see the NRR calculator for that split.
Take your current MRR and simulate it forward month by month: each month you lose MRR × churn rate and add any new MRR. The cost of churn is the gap between the revenue you would have collected with zero churn and what you actually collect over the period. A single-month snapshot understates it badly, because every churned dollar is also missing from every month that follows.
It depends on stage and customer size. ChartMogul's benchmarks across 2,500+ SaaS businesses show median monthly customer churn of 6.5% for companies under $300k ARR, falling to about 3.1% above $8M ARR, with best-in-class around 1.3–1.5%. Recurly's churn benchmarks put B2B software at roughly 3.8% monthly on average.
For an early-stage SaaS it is close to the median, but the compounding is brutal: at 5% monthly churn you lose 1 − 0.95¹² = 46% of your starting revenue base within a year. It also caps your growth. Adding $1,000 of new MRR a month at 5% churn means your MRR can mathematically never exceed $20,000. Getting from 5% towards 3% is usually the highest-leverage work an early-stage founder can do.
Customer churn counts how many customers cancelled; revenue churn measures how much MRR they took with them. They diverge whenever plan sizes differ. Losing one $500/month customer hurts far more than losing five $20/month customers. This calculator models revenue churn, because revenue is what pays the bills and what compounds.
More than most founders expect, because the saved revenue compounds every month. For a business at $10,000 MRR adding $1,000 of new MRR a month, cutting monthly churn from 5% to 4% is worth about $7,900 in extra revenue in the first year and roughly $62,800 over three years. The longer the horizon, the wider the gap grows.
Because each month's churn is applied to whatever MRR remains, and every dollar that churns stops paying you in every subsequent month. Losing 5% a month does not mean losing 60% a year of the base, since the base shrinks as you go, but the cumulative revenue foregone keeps stacking up month after month. That is why a modest-looking monthly percentage becomes a five- or six-figure annual cost.
Only up to a hard ceiling. If you add a fixed amount of new MRR each month, your MRR converges on new MRR ÷ churn rate and can never pass it: a leaky-bucket equilibrium where new sales only replace losses. Past that point the only ways to grow are adding more new MRR each month, expansion revenue from existing customers, or cutting churn. Our maximum MRR calculator explores this ceiling in depth.
Recurly Research's churn benchmarks report an overall average monthly churn rate of 3.27%: 2.41% voluntary and 0.86% involuntary from failed payments. B2B categories such as software average about 3.8% monthly, while consumer categories run higher at around 6.5%. Note that roughly a quarter of all churn is involuntary, which dunning and card-retry tooling can recover.
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