Churn MRR
The recurring revenue you lose when customers cancel outright — the single biggest threat to growth.
What is it?
Churn MRR is the recurring revenue you lose when customers cancel their subscription entirely and their payment goes to zero. It is the sharpest form of revenue loss — not a customer paying less, but a customer paying nothing.
It is the counterweight to every gain you make. New and expansion MRR only grow the business to the extent churn does not claw it back, and a business where churn MRR exceeds new plus expansion is shrinking no matter how good the acquisition numbers look.
How to calculate?
Sum the monthly recurring revenue of every customer who fully cancelled in the period. A customer who was paying $99 a month and cancels contributes $99 of churn. A reduction that is not a full cancellation is contraction, not churn — keep the two separate or you will mask which one is actually hurting you.
Churn MRR is one of five MRR movements — new, expansion, contraction, churn and reactivation — and a subtracted term in net new MRR: new plus expansion plus reactivation, minus contraction and churn. Failed payments are not churn until the retries are exhausted and the subscription actually ends.