Free Customer Retention Rate Calculator

Enter your subscriber counts to instantly see your retention rate, the inverse churn rate, and how you compare to industry benchmarks.

Your Data

Existing Customers at Start of Period

Total Customers at End of Period

New Customers Acquired During Period

Required. Enter 0 if you acquired none. We subtract these from your end count so the result measures only the customers you started with.

Key Takeaways

Retention rate is the share of customers still with you at the end of a period, the direct inverse of churn. Both are quoted for a period, so a figure without one attached can't be compared against anything.
Median annual customer retention runs 54% under $25 average revenue per account against 79% above $1,000 (ChartMogul SaaS Benchmarks, 2023). Price point moves retention more than any other single factor we hold data on.
Billing period is the lever most businesses underuse. Among companies under $25 average revenue per account, those billing annually retained 62% against 41% for monthly billing (ChartMogul SaaS Billing Report, 2025), the widest gap reported at any price band.
Best-in-class isn't one number either. Top-decile annual customer retention runs 75% under $25 average revenue per account and 92% above $1,000 (ChartMogul SaaS Benchmarks, 2023), so the bar worth measuring against moves with what you charge.

Annual Retention Rate Benchmarks

Range	Annual Retention Rate
Needs Improvement	70–90%
Good	90–95%
Excellent	95%+

What Is Customer Retention Rate?

Customer retention rate is the share of the customers you started a period with who are still subscribed at the end of it. It's the direct inverse of customer churn, so a business losing 5% of its customers per month retains 95%, and reporting either one tells you the same thing.

It's normally measured on customer counts rather than revenue, which means it treats a small account and a large one identically. Measuring the same base by revenue instead gives gross or net revenue retention, and those two can move in the opposite direction from the customer number when your larger accounts behave differently from your smaller ones.

Customer Retention Rate Formula

Take the customers you started the period with, subtract the ones you net lost, and divide by where you started: ((Starting Customers − Net Churned Customers) ÷ Starting Customers) × 100. Customers acquired during the period are excluded, so the measurement follows a fixed group rather than a moving one.

For example, beginning a year with 500 customers and ending with 425 of that original group gives 425 ÷ 500 × 100 = 85% annual customer retention. The period matters as much as the number here, since 85% a year and 85% per month describe entirely different businesses.

Retention Rate Benchmarks for Subscription Businesses

ChartMogul publishes annual customer retention in four tiers across six price bands, and the spread inside a single tier is wider than the spread between tiers. At the median, retention runs 54% under $25 average revenue per account, 66% at $25-100, 72% at $100-250, 73% at $250-500, 77% at $500-1k and 79% above $1k (ChartMogul SaaS Benchmarks, 2023). Best-in-class over the same bands runs 75%, 84%, 87%, 90%, 93% and 92% (ChartMogul SaaS Benchmarks, 2023).

Two things follow, and both are easy to get wrong. A business under $25 average revenue per account hitting 75% annual retention is best-in-class for its own band while sitting below the median for a business above $1,000 (ChartMogul SaaS Benchmarks, 2023), so the same score means opposite things depending on what you charge. And the top band is not the top score: best-in-class at $500-1k is 93% against 92% above $1k (ChartMogul SaaS Benchmarks, 2023), so the relationship flattens out near the top rather than climbing forever.

How to Improve Your Retention Rate

Billing period is the lever with the clearest evidence behind it. Among companies under $25 average revenue per account, those billing annually retained 62% against 41% for monthly billing (ChartMogul SaaS Billing Report, 2025), which is the widest gap reported at any price band. An annual commitment removes eleven opportunities a year to reconsider, and it moves the decision to a moment when the customer has just chosen you rather than a moment when they're reviewing a card statement.

After that the work splits by cause. Recovering failed payments is infrastructure and usually the fastest return available. Reducing deliberate cancellations means selling accurately, getting new subscribers to the thing they bought quickly, and continuing to deliver after the novelty wears off. Offering a pause helps more than its reputation suggests: merchants who added one saw 25% of subscribers pause instead of canceling (Recurly State of Subscriptions, 2025).

Retention Rate Calculator FAQ

They're the same measurement stated two ways over the same period and the same base: whatever share you lose is churn, and the rest is retention. If you lose 5% of customers per month, you retain 95%. Use whichever your team already reports, and make sure everyone means the same period by it.

Because including them measures two things at once. If customers acquired during the period sit in the denominator, a strong sales month makes retention look better without anyone keeping a single extra customer. Excluding them follows one fixed group forward, which is the only way the number describes retention rather than growth.

Subtract it from the whole for the same period. If you lose 5% of customers per month, retention is 95% per month. Converting to an annual figure needs compounding rather than multiplication, so 95% per month is roughly 54% per year, which is a much less comfortable number and the reason period labels matter so much.

It depends on what you charge. Median annual customer retention is 54% under $25 average revenue per account and 79% above $1,000 (ChartMogul SaaS Benchmarks, 2023), and 90% monthly retention compounds to about 28% annually, which sits below the median in every price band. Monthly figures flatter themselves, which is why an annual basis is the fairer comparison.

Customer retention counts people and net revenue retention counts money, including expansion. A business can lose customers while growing revenue from the ones it keeps, so the customer figure can fall while the revenue figure rises. Reporting only the revenue figure can hide a steady loss of smaller accounts underneath healthy expansion.