Churn Rate Calculator

Use your repurchase cycle. Find the typical gap between orders for repeat customers — say 90 days — and treat anyone silent for two to three times that window as churned. A coffee store might use 60 days; a furniture store, two years. The exact threshold matters less than applying it consistently, so period-over-period comparisons stay honest.

For subscription e-commerce, 5–10% monthly churn is common and under 5% is strong; consumable subscription boxes often fight to stay below 10%. For repeat-purchase retail measured annually, keeping churn under 60–70% of a cohort is typical since many buyers are one-time by nature. Compare against your own history and category, not a universal bar.

No — the denominator is customers at the start of the period only. Mixing mid-period acquisitions into the base dilutes the rate and makes churn look better as you grow faster, which is exactly when retention problems hide. If you want to track how new customers behave, run a separate cohort analysis that follows each month’s signups over time.

Because churn compounds against you every period. At 8% quarterly churn, a cohort of 500 shrinks to about 358 in a year; at 6%, about 390. That 32-customer difference repeats for every cohort you ever acquire, and each retained customer keeps buying without new acquisition cost — cutting churn by a quarter often beats raising ad spend by half.