Churn Rate
01 Definition
Churn Rate meaning: The percentage of customers or revenue lost over a set period.
Churn rate measures the share of customers, subscribers, or revenue lost during a period. You divide the number lost by the number at the start, then multiply by 100. High churn forces a business to win new customers just to stay flat.
Also called
attrition rate
Why it matters
How Churn Rate fits the work
Churn directly limits growth because every lost customer must be replaced before the business can expand, and small changes in the rate compound heavily over time.
In context
A service that starts the month with 2,000 subscribers and loses 100 of them has a monthly churn rate of 5%.
Practical note
Customer churn and revenue churn differ; losing many small accounts can look worse than losing one large one, so track both counts and dollars.