Customer Churn Rate Calculator
Calculate customer churn rate from customers at the start of a period and customers lost during that period.
Result
Customer Churn Rate
8.0%
How to Use the Customer Churn Rate Calculator
Enter the number of customers you had at the start of a period and the number of those customers you lost (churned) during that same period. Churn rate frames the calculation directly around losses, which makes it a natural fit for churn-focused reporting — it needs only a starting count and a lost count, without tracking new customer acquisition separately.
Churn Rate = (Customers Lost / Customers at Start) × 100
Example
A business starts the month with 500 customers and loses 40 of them during the month. Churn Rate = (40 / 500) × 100 = 8%, meaning 8% of the starting customer base churned that month.
Common Use Cases
- Tracking month-over-month or year-over-year subscription cancellations.
- Reporting churn to stakeholders in a format that highlights losses directly.
- Benchmarking churn against industry averages to gauge customer health.
FAQs
- How is this different from the Customer Retention Rate Calculator? Churn and retention describe complementary aspects of the same customer loss — but this tool frames the calculation directly around losses (useful for churn-focused reporting), while the Retention Rate Calculator instead uses starting, ending, and new-customer counts to measure how many original customers were kept. Retention rate = 100% − churn rate when both are measured over the same period the same way.
- What's considered a "good" churn rate? It varies by industry — subscription software businesses often aim for under 5-10% annual churn, while other industries with naturally higher turnover may tolerate more. Compare against your own historical trend rather than a single universal benchmark.
- Does this account for new customers gained during the period? No — this calculator measures losses only, relative to the customers you started with. If you also want to factor in new customers acquired, use the Customer Retention Rate Calculator instead.