Subscriber churn & LTV calculator
Turn your price, churn, and acquisition cost into subscriber lifetime value, the audience size and revenue your growth can sustain, and how fast new subscribers pay back.
Your numbers
Illustrative only: assumes constant churn and steady acquisition. Defaults are examples, not benchmarks for your business.
How the calculator works
With a constant monthly churn rate, the average subscriber stays 1 ÷ churn months. Multiply that by the revenue you keep each month and you have lifetime value. If you add the same number of new subscribers every month, your audience settles where the subscribers you lose each month equal the ones you add.
- Lifetime value = monthly revenue per subscriber × (1 − fees) ÷ monthly churn.
- Steady-state audience = new subscribers per month ÷ monthly churn.
- CAC payback = acquisition cost ÷ net monthly revenue per subscriber.
Churn is the lever that moves everything at once. Read average churn rates for creator subscription platforms for benchmarks, and what a 14% monthly churn actually costs for the cohort math. Owning your platform gives you the subscriber relationship you need to bring churn down: see how Highlife runs your own subscription site.
Frequently asked questions
How do you calculate subscriber lifetime value?
Divide the monthly revenue you keep per subscriber by your monthly churn rate. A subscriber paying $19.99 a month at 12% monthly churn stays about 8.3 months on average, for a lifetime value of roughly $167 before fees.
What is a normal churn rate for creator subscriptions?
Monthly churn on creator subscription platforms usually runs between 12% and 18%. Every point you take off it raises lifetime value and the size of the audience your acquisition can sustain.
What is a good LTV to CAC ratio?
A ratio of 3× or more is a common benchmark for a healthy subscription business: each subscriber returns at least three times what it cost to acquire. Below 1× you lose money on every new subscriber.
What is CAC payback?
The number of months it takes for a new subscriber's net revenue to repay what you spent to acquire them. Shorter payback means you can reinvest in growth faster.
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