Customer Churn Rate
The percentage of customers who cancel each month.
Put this metric to work: explore FlowMRR's MRR retention analytics to track revenue movements, retention and forecasts from your own account.
The share of paying customers who cancelled this period. Also called logo churn. This is the headline retention number — every other retention metric is a derivative.
Formula
Customer Churn = Churned Customers ÷ Customers at Start of PeriodWorked example
Start month with 400 customers, 8 cancel → Customer Churn = 8 ÷ 400 = 2.0% monthly = ~21.5% annual.
Illustrative comparisons
B2B SaaS monthlyThese unsourced ranges are illustrative scenarios, not measured industry benchmarks, percentiles or recommended targets. Their qualitative labels are editorial interpretations. Compare your own cohorts using the same segment, period, currency and measurement basis.
Why it matters
Customer churn caps your maximum customer count. At 5% monthly churn, you cap out around 1 / 0.05 = 20× monthly new acquisition. You literally cannot grow past that ceiling without either reducing churn or accelerating acquisition forever. Most failed SaaS startups have a churn problem disguised as a growth problem.
Common mistakes
- Excluding involuntary churn (failed cards) from the headline number — that's a measurement choice, not a definition.
- Annualising monthly churn by multiplying by 12 (it's compounding: 1 − (1 − m)¹²).
- Mixing B2B and B2C benchmarks — a healthy B2C number is a death sentence for B2B.