Average Churn Rate for Subscription Services: Read the Label

The average churn rate for subscription services depends on whose page you read. For ecommerce subscriptions, published numbers run from 4.25% to 15% a month. Most do not say what they count. Check 3 labels before you compare: period, definition and sample.

Then set your target against your own past months, not someone else's average.

What is the average churn rate for subscription services?

Churn rate is the share of subscribers who stop paying you in a set period. Here is what the pages that rank for this question say about ecommerce. We traced each number back to where it came from.

Source Ecommerce number Period What counts as churn Sample Recurly benchmarks page 4.25% median Says "annual" Cancels and failed payments, split Recurly network, July 2026 data, size not stated Subbly churn report 6.31% median, direct to consumer and refills Not stated Not defined "Thousands of merchants" on Subbly in 2024 Focus Digital 9.1% Monthly Not defined 100+ subscription companies, January to October 2025 Churnkey 10% to 15%, subscription boxes Monthly Not defined No source given

Only 1 of the 4 says what it counts. Only 1 puts a number on its sample. None gives all 3 labels.

So there is no single average. There is a spread, and a spread is still useful. Read it as a rough range, not a target.

Is that number monthly or annual?

This is the label that changes everything. Other pages on this topic, like Zoom's, cite Recurly. And Recurly gives 2 answers.

Its public benchmark page says ecommerce "showed a 4.25% median annual churn rate." Its help docs say the opposite. In their words, "Benchmarks apply only to monthly periods."

Both cannot be true. The gap is huge, because churn compounds. Recurly's page makes the point itself. It says a 2% monthly rate "translates to roughly 22% annual churn, not 24%."

Here is the same math on 4.25%.

• 4.25% a month means you lose about 41% of your subscribers in a year.
• 4.25% a year means you lose about 0.36% a month.

That is the difference between a normal subscription store and a store almost nobody leaves. Every other number in the table is 6% or more, and the 2 that state a period say monthly. So the monthly reading fits the rest of the data better. But Recurly does not say which one is right.

If a page does not say monthly or annual, do not compare to it.

Why do subscription churn benchmarks disagree?

They count different people, in different ways.

What counts as churned. Recurly splits churn into voluntary and involuntary. Voluntary churn is a subscriber who cancels. Involuntary churn is "subscribers lost due to payment issues," like a card that keeps failing. Its docs also leave out "ghost churn," which starts and fixes itself in the same month. Nobody in the table says how they count a pause. A paused subscriber pays you nothing.

Who is in the sample. Recurly's tool counts only subscribers who paid at least 1 invoice. Free trials are out. If your own count includes trials, it will not match.

What kind of store. Subbly's 6.31% is for refill products. Churnkey's 10% to 15% is for boxes. A coffee refill and a surprise box lose people at different rates. One "ecommerce" row hides both.

Our ecommerce retention benchmarks article found the same problem with repeat purchase numbers. Only a few show their data.

What is a good churn rate for an ecommerce subscription?

There is no sourced answer for a DTC brand. Recurly's FAQ says a good rate "typically falls between 3% and 5%" a year. That clashes with every monthly number in the table.

The largest data set we found from a Shopify subscription app reports retention, not churn. Recharge's 2023 report looked at "over 15,000 merchants" in 2022. It reported subscriber retention of 45% after 6 months and 33% after 12.

That gives you a sense of scale. By Recharge's count, most subscribers do not last a year. Do not turn it into a monthly target. Recharge does not say how it counts a pause or a failed card either.

What should your churn target be?

Your own last 3 months. Count them the same way every time.

1. Count churn the way our subscription churn article sets out. Take every subscriber who had a charge due. Anyone who did not pay is churn. Split them by reason: cancelled, card failed, or paused.
2. Write down the rate for each of the last 3 months.
3. Your target is to beat that average next month.
4. Watch each reason on its own. Card failures fall when you fix dunning, the retries and emails after a failed charge. Cancels fall when you fix your cancel flow.

Want a peer check too? Use the one inside your app. Recharge added an "Avg Monthly Churn Rate" benchmark that shows the decile your store ranks in. You need "at least 20 active customers" to be compared. Recurly shows your churn as "a percentile rank within your industry." Both count your store the same way they count the stores around you. No public average can do that.

Read the rate by cohort when you can. A cohort is a group of subscribers who started in the same month. Our customer churn analysis article shows the grid for one-time buyers. For how the pieces fit together, start at the ecommerce customer retention hub.

Lower churn starts before the first charge

Look at who you put on a subscription. A buyer who has finished 1 order knows if they want more. Our guide's subscription conversion flow waits for that. It sends 3 emails at 21, 28 and 35 days after a first order, only for products with a subscription option.

Get the whole system

The subscription conversion flow is 1 of the 12 in the guide, with every send time written out.

12 flows, 37 emails, one job: repeat purchases. Every trigger, every send delay, every exit condition, written out so you can build them this month.