Active Accounts
Accounts still showing up in the product — the usage signal that leads paying-account churn.
What is it?
Active Accounts is the number of accounts with recent product activity — those that have activated and are still showing up, whether or not they pay. It is the usage counterpart to your paying-accounts count, and it sits upstream of both retention and expansion.
Usage leads revenue. An account that goes quiet rarely renews, so a dip in active accounts is often the earliest warning that paying-account churn is coming a quarter or two later.
How to calculate?
Count the accounts that meet your activity threshold in the period — typically activated accounts that have taken a meaningful action within a recent window. The window and the threshold define the metric, so fix both and hold them constant.
Read it against paying accounts: a widening gap where active is falling but paying is flat means customers are still billed but no longer using the product — future churn hiding in plain sight.