Monthly Churn Rate
Percentage of paying subscribers who cancel in a given month. The inverse of retention. Monthly churn below 2% is world-class for SaaS; 2-5% is acceptable; above 5% is high-churn and unsustainable. Annual contracts effectively force 0% monthly churn during the contract period, making annual cohort churn (20-30% per year) a more meaningful benchmark for enterprise SaaS.
How to calculate it
(churned_subscribers_this_month / subscribers_at_start_of_month) × 100Lower is better. Revenue churn ($ lost) is often more important than subscriber churn (headcount) — a high-ACV enterprise customer churning matters more than 10 SMB plan customers. Mixpanel segmentation by plan tier is essential for benchmarking churn accurately.
Per-industry distribution (3)
Each row shows the cited p25 / p50 / p75 for Monthly Churn Rate in that industry. Click an industry to open the full benchmark page.
| Industry | p25 | p50 | p75 | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SaaS (B2B Software) | 1.8% | 3.2% | 5.5% | Mixpanel Product Benchmarks 2024 |
| Fintech (Consumer Finance)(derived) | 2.5% | 4.0% | 7.0% | Mixpanel Product Benchmarks 2024 (derived for fintech) |
| EdTech (Online Courses, LMS)(derived) | 4.0% | 7.5% | 12.0% | Mixpanel Product Benchmarks 2024 (derived for edtech) |
Primary source
Product Benchmarks Report (2024) · Mixpanel · 2024
Cohort-based analysis of 8,000 SaaS products using Mixpanel's analytics platform, covering 16 million+ daily active users. Computes activation rates, trial-to-paid conversion (separately for opt-in vs opt-out trials), 7-day and 30-day return rates, and monthly churn by product category. Uses median + quartile distribution rather than mean to reduce skew from enterprise outliers.