Shopify Subscription Metrics Every Merchant Should Track

Most Shopify merchants judge their subscription programme by monthly recurring revenue. MRR matters, but it only shows where the business is today. Two stores can both earn £100,000 a month from subscriptions while one keeps its subscribers for years and the other is quietly losing them. The metrics in this guide show which store you are, early enough to act.

They also expose the most common strategic mistake we see. When we onboard new clients that offer subscriptions, we usually find a failure in strategy: they have been spending too much of their time on acquisition and not enough on retention. Retention metrics make that imbalance visible in a way a revenue chart never will.

Quick Answer

Track seven subscription metrics every month: monthly recurring revenue, churn rate, customer lifetime value, subscription lifetime, failed payment recovery rate, subscription conversion rate and cancellation reasons. MRR shows the size of the programme; the other six explain whether it will grow. Calculate lifetime value on gross margin rather than revenue, look at median as well as average lifetime, split churn into voluntary and involuntary, and compare yourself with your own trend before any published benchmark.

Key Takeaways

• MRR is a lagging indicator; churn, recovery, conversion and cancellation reasons tell you what happens next.
• Small churn differences compound: from 1,000 subscribers, 613 remain after a year at 4% monthly churn but only 476 at 6%.
• Calculate lifetime value on gross margin, or you will overestimate what you can spend on acquisition.
• At 5% monthly churn the average subscriber lasts 20 months, but half have gone by around month 14.
• Failed payments make up about a third of ecommerce churn in Recurly's benchmarks, and much of it is recoverable.
• When we onboard new clients that offer subscriptions, we usually find a failure in strategy: they have been spending too much of their time on acquisition and not enough on retention.

Table of Contents

• Why MRR Is Not Enough
• The Seven Core Metrics
• Metric 1: Monthly Recurring Revenue
• Metric 2: Churn Rate
• Metric 3: Customer Lifetime Value
• Metric 4: Subscription Lifetime
• Metric 5: Failed Payment Recovery Rate
• Metric 6: Subscription Conversion Rate
• Metric 7: Cancellation Reasons
• Secondary Metrics Worth Tracking
• How to Build a Subscription Dashboard
• Benchmarks: Use Them with Care
• Why Matters Perspective
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Final Thoughts
• Related Articles

Why MRR Is Not Enough

MRR is a lagging indicator: it records the result of everything that has already happened. If churn starts rising today, MRR can keep growing for months while acquisition covers the losses. By the time it falls, the retention problem has usually been there for a long time.

Leading indicators, such as churn, subscription lifetime, failed payment recovery, subscription conversion and cancellation reasons, show problems while they are still small and cheap to fix. They are also connected: lower churn lengthens subscription lifetime, which raises lifetime value, which lets you spend more on acquisition profitably. Improving one usually lifts the others.

The Seven Core Metrics

Metric 1: Monthly Recurring Revenue

MRR is your predictable monthly subscription income: active subscribers multiplied by the average monthly subscription value. For example, 2,500 subscribers paying an average of £32 a month gives an MRR of £80,000. For subscriptions that renew every two or three months, convert each to its monthly equivalent first.

As the programme grows, break MRR into its movements so you can see what is driving the total:

Winning £15,000 of new MRR in a month looks impressive until you see £12,000 of churned MRR beside it. Net new MRR tells the real story.

Metric 2: Churn Rate

Churn rate is the percentage of subscribers who cancel in a period, usually a month: subscribers lost during the month, divided by subscribers at the start of the month, times 100. If you start with 1,500 subscribers and lose 75, monthly churn is 5%. Every subscriber you keep keeps paying without new acquisition cost, and every one you lose has to be replaced just to stand still.

Split churn in two. Voluntary churn is a customer choosing to cancel, usually because of too much product, cost or dissatisfaction. Involuntary churn happens when a payment fails and is not recovered. In Recurly's July 2026 ecommerce benchmarks, involuntary churn was 1.38 points of a 4.25% total, about a third. Recurly labels those figures annual, although its own worked example treats a similar rate as monthly, so use the shape rather than the level. The fixes differ: voluntary churn needs a better experience and more flexibility, while involuntary churn needs payment retries and recovery emails.

Small differences compound quickly, as the chart shows:

If churn is higher than you would like, find out when and why subscribers leave before changing anything. Our guide to the biggest Shopify subscription mistakes covers the usual causes.

Metric 3: Customer Lifetime Value

Customer lifetime value is what a subscriber is worth over the whole relationship, and it sets how much you can afford to spend acquiring one. Calculate it on gross margin, not revenue: average order value, times gross margin, times the expected number of orders.

Take a £35 monthly subscription that lasts 14 orders on average. Revenue based CLV is £490, but at a 60% gross margin the subscriber is worth £294. Setting an acquisition budget against £490 would overspend by almost £200 per subscriber. Because each extra month adds another order, CLV rises automatically as churn falls: at £30 a month, a subscriber who stays 14 months brings in £420 against £240 for one who stays eight.

Klaviyo can predict lifetime value per customer, but its predictive analytics need at least 500 customers with orders, 180 days of order history including orders in the last 30 days, and some customers with three or more orders. Smaller brands should use the simple calculation above.

Metric 4: Subscription Lifetime

Subscription lifetime measures how long subscribers stay: total subscription months divided by the number of subscribers for the mean, and the point at which half have cancelled for the median. Track both, because a few very loyal subscribers can make the average look far better than the typical experience.

If 90 subscribers stay six months and 10 stay 48 months, the mean is 10.2 months but the median is six. Churn has the same effect: at a steady 5% monthly churn the mean lifetime is 20 months, yet half of subscribers have gone by around month 14.

Look at when cancellations happen, too. If most leave after the second or third order, your acquisition is working but your onboarding is not building the habit. Cohort reports, which follow each month's new subscribers over time, make this easy to see.

Metric 5: Failed Payment Recovery Rate

Failed payment recovery rate is recovered payments divided by failed payments, times 100. If 250 payments fail in a month and 175 are recovered, the rate is 70%. Expired cards, replacement cards and bank declines all cause failures, and these subscribers usually still want your product, which makes this some of the easiest revenue to protect. Track the rate monthly and improve it with payment retries and a short sequence of clear emails; our guide to the Klaviyo flows every Shopify subscription brand should build sets out the recovery flow.

Metric 6: Subscription Conversion Rate

Subscription conversion rate is subscription orders divided by orders of subscription eligible products, times 100. If 500 of 2,000 eligible orders are subscriptions, the rate is 25%. It grows recurring revenue without extra traffic, and it responds to how clearly the saving is shown, where the subscription option sits, how well the benefits are explained and how much flexibility you offer. Our guide to Shopify product page design covers the purchase area in detail.

Be careful about raising it by preselecting the subscription option. Customers who did not notice they subscribed tend to cancel and complain, so watch early churn alongside conversion whenever you change the default.

Metric 7: Cancellation Reasons

Numbers show what is happening; cancellation reasons show why. Recharge's cancellation flow asks subscribers why they are leaving, and reviewing those answers monthly turns churn from a percentage into a to do list:

Many of these problems are not solved by discounts. Use the reasons in your win back emails too, so a subscriber who had too much product hears about pausing rather than receiving a generic offer.

Secondary Metrics Worth Tracking

As your programme grows, these metrics explain why the core seven are moving:

• Pause rate and pause to resume rate. Recurly's 2026 State of Subscriptions report found that where merchants offered a pause before cancellation, pause usage rose by 337%, and three in four paused subscribers returned.
• Skip rate. Rising skips often signal too much product or a frequency that is too short.
• Product swap rate. A healthy sign that subscribers are adapting the subscription rather than leaving it.
• Reactivation rate. Recurly found that nearly one in four new sign ups comes from a former subscriber, so track how many come back.
• Orders per subscriber and subscription order value. These drive lifetime value alongside churn.
• Prepaid and annual plan share. Recurly found that annual plans deliver 50% to 60% more revenue per user.
• Discount dependency. The share of subscribers who joined on your deepest offers, and how their churn compares.

How to Build a Subscription Dashboard

Shopify covers part of this. According to the Shopify Help Center, Shopify Subscriptions shows analytics for active, paused and cancelled subscriptions, Shopify's sales reports can be split by subscription or one time purchase, and the customer cohort analysis report can filter first orders by subscription. Deeper churn, recovery and cancellation reason data usually sits in your subscription app, and engagement in Klaviyo, so bring the seven core metrics into one monthly view. A simple dashboard might look like this example:

Review it monthly as a team, look at trends rather than single months, and note what changed so you can connect results to the work behind them. Weekly checks of churn, failed payments and subscription conversion catch problems between reviews.

Benchmarks: Use Them with Care

Published benchmarks vary by category, price, delivery frequency and how each source defines churn, and many figures in circulation have no traceable source. Recurly's ecommerce benchmark, with a total churn of 4.25% of which 1.38 points were involuntary, is a useful reference, but check its period before comparing it with your own monthly numbers.

The most useful benchmark is your own history. Is churn lower than three months ago? Is median lifetime rising? Are more failed payments recovered? Is subscription conversion climbing without early churn rising with it? Improving on last quarter matters more than matching someone else's number.

Why Matters Perspective

When we onboard new clients that offer subscriptions, we usually find a failure in strategy: they have been spending too much of their time on acquisition and not enough on retention. The metrics in this guide are how we show clients where that imbalance is costing them, and churn is usually where we start, because almost every other number improves when it falls.

Churn and subscription lifetime value are the two figures we report first. For a nappy subscription brand we work with, churn fell by 23% within three months and subscription lifetime value rose by 45% within five months.

We are a Recharge and Klaviyo partner, and our Shopify subscriptions service includes setting up this reporting.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the most important subscription metric?

Churn rate, because lowering it also raises monthly recurring revenue, subscription lifetime and customer lifetime value. Track it alongside the other six core metrics rather than on its own.

How do I calculate subscription churn rate?

Divide the subscribers lost during a month by the subscribers you had at the start of that month, then multiply by 100. Starting with 1,500 subscribers and losing 75 gives a monthly churn rate of 5%.

How should I calculate customer lifetime value?

Multiply average order value by gross margin and by the expected number of orders. A £35 subscription lasting 14 orders at a 60% gross margin is worth £294, not the £490 a revenue based calculation suggests.

Why track median subscription lifetime as well as the average?

A few very loyal subscribers can inflate the average. At 5% monthly churn the average subscriber lasts 20 months, but half have already cancelled by around month 14.

What is a good subscription churn rate?

It depends on your category and how churn is defined. Recurly's ecommerce benchmark shows total churn of 4.25%, about a third of it involuntary, but check its period before comparing, and judge yourself mainly against your own trend.

How often should I review subscription metrics?

Review all seven core metrics monthly, and check churn, failed payments and subscription conversion weekly so problems are caught between reviews.

Can Shopify report these metrics on its own?

Partly. Shopify Subscriptions shows active, paused and cancelled subscriptions, Shopify's sales reports can be split by subscription or one time purchase, and the customer cohort analysis report can filter first orders by subscription. Deeper churn, payment recovery and cancellation reason reporting usually comes from an app such as Recharge.

Final Thoughts

A subscription business is not built by watching one revenue chart. Track the seven core metrics monthly, calculate lifetime value on margin, split churn by type, read your cancellation reasons and compare yourself with your own trend. The brands that do this find their biggest opportunities in data they already have.

If you would like help setting up subscription reporting or finding where your programme is leaking, email us at info@whymatters.co.uk.

Related Articles

• The Biggest Shopify Subscription Mistakes Brands Make and How to Avoid Them
• Klaviyo Flows Every Shopify Subscription Brand Should Build
• Recharge vs Shopify Subscriptions: Which Is Right for Your Store?
• The Best Shopify Subscription Apps: A Complete Comparison Guide
• How to Add Subscriptions to Shopify: A Complete Guide for Store Owners
• How to Get Shopify Repeat Customers: A Practical Implementation Guide
• Customer Lifetime Value for Shopify Stores: How to Calculate and Grow It