Free calculator
Subscription Churn and LTV Calculator
Enter your subscription price, gross margin and monthly churn. The calculator shows average subscriber lifetime and LTV, then models what a lower churn rate would be worth.
Lifetime value today
$241
Average lifetime 12.5 months at 8.0% churn. LTV = price × margin ÷ monthly churn.
LTV at 6.0% churn
$321
$80 more per subscriber and 16.7 months of lifetime — churn works on LTV like compound interest, which is why small retention wins beat most acquisition wins.
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The math
With steady monthly churn, average lifetime ≈ 1 ÷ churn: 8% churn means a subscriber stays about 12.5 months. LTV = monthly price × gross margin × that lifetime. Halving churn doubles LTV — no acquisition win compares.
Where subscription churn actually comes from
For product subscriptions the top causes are mundane: failed payments (fix with retries and card updaters), overstocked customers (fix with easy skip and frequency changes), and cancel flows that offer no alternative. Making pause easier than cancel keeps revenue a hard cancel would have ended.
Full walkthrough: Refund, exchange or store credit: which should you offer?.
More guides on this topic
Frequently asked questions
How do I calculate LTV for a subscription?
The quick version: monthly price × gross margin ÷ monthly churn rate. At $35/month, 55% margin and 8% churn, LTV is about $240. It assumes churn is steady over a subscriber's life — good enough for pricing and acquisition decisions, refine with cohort data as you get it.
What is a good monthly churn rate for a product subscription?
Consumer product subscriptions typically churn much faster than B2B software — monthly rates in the mid single digits are strong, and early-tenure churn (the first and second renewal) is usually the worst stretch. Your trend matters more than the benchmark: measure by cohort so improvements show up.
Why does reducing churn matter more than adding subscribers?
Because churn compounds against the whole base: lifetime is 1 ÷ churn, so cutting churn from 8% to 6% stretches the average lifetime from ~12.5 to ~16.7 months and lifts every subscriber's LTV by a third — including everyone you acquire from now on. Acquisition wins once; retention wins on every renewal.
How do I reduce subscription churn?
Attack the involuntary part first — failed payments respond to dunning emails, smart retries and card-updater services. Then make skip, swap and pause one click each; most “too much product” cancels are really frequency problems. Finally, watch the first 60 days: onboarding gaps churn subscribers before habit forms.