Free tool Churn rate calculator: how to calculate churn rate
Churn rate is the share of the customers you started a period with who left by the end of it. Enter both numbers to get churn, retention and what a monthly rate adds up to over a year.
- Churn and retention
- Annualised from monthly
- Runs locally
Work out churn for a period
Count only customers who were there at the start. People who signed up during the period are not in either box.
Paying customers or active users on the first day of the period.
How many of those starting customers cancelled or stopped being active during the period.
Churn rate
5.0%
Customers lost ÷ customers at the start.
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https://tapcub.com/tools/churn-rate-calculator
Version v1.0Updated Update history
What the three numbers tell you
Churn and retention are the same measurement seen from two sides. The annualised figure shows how a small monthly rate compounds.
Churn rate
The share of your starting base that left. 60 lost out of 1,200 is 5%: one customer in twenty, every month, has to be replaced before you grow at all.
Retention rate
The share of the starting base still here: 100% − churn. Report whichever framing your team uses, but do not mix them on one chart.
Annualised churn
What a constant monthly rate does over twelve months. 5% a month keeps 0.9512 ≈ 54% of customers, so annual churn is about 46%, not 60%.
The period matters
Weekly, monthly and annual churn are different numbers for the same business. Ignore the annualised output if your period is not a month.
For products without subscriptions, “lost” needs a definition: for example no purchase in 90 days, or no session in 30 days. Write it down and keep it fixed.
Three decisions before you count
Churn is only comparable from month to month if it is counted the same way each time.
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1
Fix the period
A calendar month is the usual choice for subscriptions. Use the same period every time you report.
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2
Count the starting base
Customers active on the first day of the period. Do not add sign-ups from during the period.
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3
Count who left
Cancellations, non-renewals, or users who crossed your inactivity window, out of that starting base only.
Churn rate = customers lost ÷ customers at the start
The denominator is the base you had when the period began. New customers are left out because they were not there to lose, and including them makes churn look lower in fast-growing months.
- Retention rate = 1 − churn rate, for the same group and period
- Annualised churn = 1 − (1 − monthly churn)^12, because each month’s loss comes out of a smaller base
- Revenue churn uses recurring revenue lost instead of customers, and can tell a different story
- Some teams divide by the average of start and end counts; that is a different metric, so label it
Churn rate
churn = lost ÷ customers at start
60 ÷ 1,200 = 5.0%
Retention rate
retention = 1 − churn
1 − 5.0% = 95.0%
Annualised churn
annual = 1 − (1 − monthly churn)^12
1 − 0.95^12 = 46.0%
A growing base can hide rising churn
Three months of a subscription product. The customer count rises every month, yet the share leaving rises too.
| Month | Customers at start | New sign-ups | Lost | Churn rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | 1,200 | 150 | 60 | 5.0% |
| February | 1,290 | 180 | 71 | 5.5% |
| March | 1,399 | 210 | 84 | 6.0% |
The base grew from 1,200 to 1,525, while churn rose from 5.0% to 6.0%. Dividing by the end-of-month count instead would show 4.7%, 5.1% and 5.5% — lower every month. Sample figures.
Where churn numbers mislead
The division is simple. The traps are in which customers you count.
New customers in the base
Adding sign-ups to the denominator, or using the end count, lowers churn exactly when growth is fastest.
Multiplying by 12
Churn compounds. 5% a month is about 46% a year, not 60%. Use the annualised output instead.
Mixing monthly and annual plans
Annual customers can only churn at renewal. Blending them with monthly ones hides monthly risk; report them separately.
Only tracking the rate
The rate says how many left. Splitting by channel, plan or country says who left and where to look.
See who leaves, not just how many
TapCub builds retention from your events: choose the start event, the return event and the period. Split by segment or channel to see whether churn is concentrated in one group.
Churn rate questions
Still have a question?
Chat with the team behind TapCub — we usually reply within a few hours on business days.
How do I calculate churn rate?
Churn rate = customers lost during the period ÷ customers at the start of the period × 100. If you began the month with 1,200 customers and 60 cancelled, churn is 60 ÷ 1,200 = 5% and retention is 95%. Leave out customers who joined during the month: they were not in the starting base.
What is churn rate?
The percentage of customers or users you had at the start of a period who left by the end of it. See churn in the glossary for customer, revenue and activity churn.
How do I turn monthly churn into annual churn?
Annual churn = 1 − (1 − monthly churn)^12. 5% a month is 1 − 0.95^12 ≈ 46% a year. Multiplying by 12 overstates it because each month’s loss comes from a smaller base.
What is the difference between churn rate and retention rate?
They are two sides of one number. For the same group and period, churn + retention = 100%. The retention calculator handles several cohorts at once.
What is a good churn rate?
It depends heavily on price point and customer type: products sold to large companies usually churn far less per month than low-priced consumer subscriptions. There is no single benchmark worth trusting; compare your own months and cohorts.
How do I measure churn for an app or store without subscriptions?
Choose an inactivity window that matches how often people should come back — 7 days for a daily app, 30 for a weekly one, 90 for a store — and count users active before the window who were not active during it.
Can I use the same formula for employee turnover?
The arithmetic is the same: people who left ÷ headcount at the start. HR teams often divide by average headcount instead, so check which convention your company uses before comparing.
Update history
New features, fixes and data refreshes for this tool, newest first.
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· v1.0
LaunchedFirst release.
Missing something or found an error? Tell us — requests that come up often go into the next update. All tool updates
Turn churn into the numbers that use it
Churn feeds lifetime value and caps how fast you can grow. Measure it from real events, per segment and per channel.