Average Churn Rates for Subscription Services: Data From 8 Industries
SaaS averages at 4-6% churn rates per month. While ecommerce subscriptions hover at 10-15%. Telecom is lower at 1-2%.
As the saying goes, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.". But if you must know the averages, here they are.
| Industry | Average Monthly Churn Rate (%) |
|---|---|
| SaaS | 4-6% |
| E-commerce Subscription Boxes | 10-15% |
| Media & Entertainment Subscription | 5-8% |
| Telecom Subscriptions | 1-2% |
| Health & Fitness Subscriptions | 7-10% |
| Financial Services Subscriptions | 2-4% |
| Education & E-learning Subscriptions | 8-12% |
| Retail Subscriptions | 5-7% |
| Gaming Subscriptions | 5-9% |
These are monthly churn rates. At 5% per month, businesses lose around half of their customers annually. At 10% monthly churn, they lose 70% of their customers annually.
Sources
Typically, churn rates are published by subscription management platforms, SaaS companies, or market research firms. For example, reports from Statista, Zuora, and Recurly often provide detailed benchmarks for subscription businesses across industries.
But Averages Are Not Very Helpful
- They overlook geographical nuances.
- They ignore demographic trends (some age groups retain customers better than others).
- They fail to consider macroeconomic conditions.
- Unlike medians, averages skew heavily on companies that aren't winners. For example, Netflix is at 2% monthly churn. And far better than the industry average of 7%.
- Some industries have invested billions of dollars into retaining users. Telecom industry was one of the first industries to reduce churn. They developed their own churn modelling systems and hired professors/universities to develop solutions.
How Churnkey Can Help
For a precise audit, we invite you to explore Churnkey's Churn Metrics. It's free and based on your actual data.
If you're ready to take action, Churnkey can help tackle both involuntary and voluntary churn for you. To get started, sign up for Churnkey or book a demo.
We also have helpful guides on how to read decline codes, retention cohorts, retention curves, involuntary vs voluntary churn, gross vs net churn if you want to learn more about churn before you decide on a course of action.
