This article was originally published at https://saastools.corenk.com/articles/typical-saas-churn-rate
You closed March at $13,780 MRR. Celebration lasted about twelve hours. On the morning of the 1st, $689 walked out the back door — quiet cancellations, failed card charges, a customer who simply stopped logging in. Nobody screamed. Nobody called. That's the horror of churn you don't benchmark: one month of "average" attrition at 5% looks survivable, but compounded over a year, you've already lost nearly half your customer base before the bleeding even registers on your radar.
I still remember the morning I pulled our own numbers and realized our "healthy" 6.2% monthly churn was quietly vaporizing over $1,100 in MRR every 30 days. At the time, I had no idea whether that was normal or catastrophic because I'd never seen a typical SaaS churn rate broken down in a way that actually applied to a bootstrapped business with no safety net. That ignorance was the most expensive line item on our P&L.;
What Is the Typical SaaS Churn Rate?
Founders waste months searching for a single magic number. There isn't one. The typical SaaS churn rate changes dramatically based on who your customer is. A $9/month B2C habit tracker and a $1,500/month enterprise compliance platform are not operating in the same universe, and pretending they are is how you set yourself up for a panic attack or false confidence.
