GLOSSARY · CHURN METRICS
Cohort retention
Cohort retention tracks a group of customers who started in the same period and shows what share is still subscribed, or still paying, in each later month.
Also called Cohort analysis · Retention by cohort · Retention curve
A cohort is a group of customers who share a starting point, usually the month of their first paid subscription. Cohort retention follows each group separately over time, often in a table with one row per cohort and one column per month since signup.
Unlike a single churn rate, cohorts separate the effect of age from the effect of change. You can see whether customers who joined after a pricing change, an onboarding redesign or a new acquisition channel stay longer than earlier groups, and at which month most of them leave.
Retention can be measured in customers or in revenue. Revenue cohorts can rise above 100% when remaining customers upgrade. Small cohorts are noisy, so read their curves with their size in mind before drawing conclusions.
Formula
Customers from the cohort still active in month N ÷ customers in the cohort at the start × 100
Related terms
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Sources
- Recurly Docs: Subscriber retention (cohort analysis) docs.recurly.com
- Stripe Docs: Billing analytics (retention by cohort) docs.stripe.com