What is a good churn rate? Public benchmarks by industry and price point, and how to read them
Churn rate benchmarks by industry and price per customer from Recurly's public data (July 2026), voluntary vs involuntary, and how to compare yours.
By Florian
There is no universal good churn rate. The most complete public dataset we found, Recurly’s churn benchmarks (July 2026 data), puts the median overall churn rate at 3.60% across industries, with SaaS lowest at 3.22% and education highest at 4.99%. The more useful comparison is by price: in the same data, churn falls from 4.29% for customers paying $10 to $25 a month to about 3% above $100, and involuntary churn (failed payments) falls far more steeply than voluntary churn.
This guide collects those figures in tables you can quote, explains what they measure, and shows how to compare your own number without fooling yourself. All benchmark figures come from Recurly’s churn rate benchmarks page, accessed November 7, 2026, which says its figures are updated with July 2026 data from the Recurly network.
Where do churn benchmarks come from?
Public churn data is scarce. Most published benchmarks come from billing or analytics vendors who aggregate their own customers, so each one describes that vendor’s customer base, not the whole market. Recurly’s page is one of the few that publishes medians by industry and by price point, with voluntary and involuntary churn split out. Keep in mind:
- It is one network. Recurly describes its customers as spanning streaming media, software, ecommerce, publishing, education and consumer subscriptions. A different vendor’s customers will give different numbers.
- It is a median. Half the businesses in each group churn more, half less.
- Definitions matter more than decimals. Recurly defines churn rate as the percentage of subscribers who cancel or fail to renew within a period. That is customer churn, not revenue churn.
Churn rate benchmarks by industry
Median churn rates from Recurly network data (July 2026), as published on Recurly’s page:
| Industry | Total churn | Voluntary | Involuntary |
|---|---|---|---|
| SaaS | 3.22% | 2.16% | 1.06% |
| Business and professional services | 3.44% | 2.27% | 1.18% |
| Travel, hospitality and entertainment | 3.91% | 2.63% | 1.28% |
| Digital media and entertainment | 4.14% | 2.55% | 1.59% |
| Ecommerce | 4.25% | 2.87% | 1.38% |
| Education | 4.99% | 3.30% | 1.69% |
| All industries | 3.60% | 2.34% | 1.25% |
Two patterns stand out. Voluntary churn is the larger part in every industry. And digital media has comparatively low voluntary churn but the second-highest involuntary churn, which Recurly reads as a payment recovery gap rather than an intent problem.
One inconsistency to know about: the same page also quotes a median of 3.04% for software businesses, with top-quartile performers at 1.78% or below, next to the 3.22% SaaS figure in the table. The two numbers probably come from slightly different groupings; quote the one that matches your question and name the source.
Churn rate benchmarks by price per customer
Recurly also splits churn by average revenue per customer (ARPC), which is often a better peer group than industry:
| Monthly ARPC | Total churn | Voluntary | Involuntary |
|---|---|---|---|
| $10 to $25 | 4.29% | 2.99% | 1.30% |
| $25 to $50 | 3.84% | 2.73% | 1.11% |
| $50 to $100 | 3.15% | 2.41% | 0.74% |
| $100 to $250 | 2.87% | 2.40% | 0.46% |
| Over $250 | 3.07% | 2.90% | 0.18% |
Involuntary churn drops from 1.30% to 0.18% between the lowest and highest bands, a fall Recurly puts at 87%. Voluntary churn moves much less, and ticks back up above $250. In practice: if you sell a low-priced consumer subscription, failed payments are a large share of your churn and usually the cheapest part to fix; if you sell a high-priced B2B product, most of your churn is customers deciding to leave.
What is a good churn rate for SaaS?
By Recurly’s data, a SaaS business near 3.2% is at the median of its network and one at 1.78% or below is in the top quartile. Recurly’s own reading is that most well-run subscription businesses sit between 2% and 4%, that below 2% is strong, and that above 5% is worth investigating, either for product fit (voluntary) or payment operations (involuntary).
Before you put your number next to these, check three things:
- The period. Recurly’s page describes these figures as median annual churn rates. Annual churn is not 12 times monthly churn: the same page notes that 2% monthly churn is roughly 22% a year, not 24%. Compute your rate over the same period as the benchmark, or convert carefully, before comparing.
- Customers or revenue. These are subscriber counts. MRR churn can be much higher or lower if the customers you lose pay more or less than average. Track both; see how to calculate churn rate.
- Voluntary and involuntary separately. A total that looks fine can hide a high involuntary rate you could fix without touching the product. See involuntary churn.
How do I compare my churn rate with a benchmark?
A short method that avoids most mistakes:
- Pick your peer group by price first, then by industry. A $15/month app and a $500/month B2B tool should not use the same benchmark.
- Use the same formula. Subscribers lost in the period divided by subscribers at the start of the period, times 100. Exclude new subscribers who joined and left inside the period, or count them consistently.
- Split the cause. Count a subscription as involuntary churn when failed payments ended it, voluntary when the customer canceled.
- Compare against your own history. A benchmark tells you roughly where you stand; your trend over the last 6 to 12 months tells you whether what you are doing works. Cohort retention is the best view for that.
- Look at the gap, not the rank. If your involuntary churn is well above the median for your price band, start with failed payment recovery. If voluntary churn is the gap, start with onboarding, the cancel flow and cancellation reasons.
What else does the public data say about reducing churn?
Recurly’s benchmark page also cites its 2026 State of Subscriptions report for two figures worth knowing:
- 38% of consumers prefer pausing over canceling. A pause option is an underused save offer; see pause vs discount vs downgrade.
- Nearly 1 in 4 new subscriptions comes from a previously canceled customer. Voluntary churn is often not final, which is the case for win-back emails.
Treat these as one vendor’s figures for its own network, not as a law of subscriptions.
FAQ
What is the average churn rate for subscription businesses?
Recurly’s July 2026 network data puts the median overall churn rate at 3.60% across industries: 2.34% voluntary and 1.25% involuntary.
Is 5% churn bad?
Against Recurly’s data, 5% is above the median of every industry it lists (education is highest at 4.99%), and Recurly calls anything above 5% worth investigating. Whether it is bad for you depends on your price point, your period and whether the gap is voluntary or involuntary.
Why is involuntary churn lower for expensive plans?
Recurly’s explanation is that higher-value subscribers tend to use better payment methods and are more likely to resolve failed payments themselves.
Are there other public churn benchmarks?
Several billing and analytics vendors publish figures from their own customers, with different definitions and periods. Compare only benchmarks that state their period, their formula and whether they count customers or revenue.
How NoChurn helps
NoChurn works on both sides of the split this guide describes, from your real billing events. Failed payments get smart retries and AI-written recovery emails you review; cancellations go through a reason-based flow with a one-click cancel button always visible; churned customers get win-back emails at 30, 60 and 90 days. Send your own attributes, such as plan, signup source or key usage, and NoChurn shows which ones go with churn, with sample size and confidence. It works with Stripe in one click or any billing through the API, free until $300 MRR. See Custom data & AI and churn score.