Churn Rate Benchmarks
Monthly and annual churn rate benchmarks for subscription and repeat-purchase commerce, segmented by vertical and order cadence — plus how to interpret your number.
Churn Rate Benchmarks
Churn rate benchmarks show the percentage of customers or subscribers that stop buying within a period — typically 5-10% monthly for subscription commerce.
Churn rate is the percentage of customers, subscribers, or revenue lost over a defined period. For subscription brands it's measured monthly against the active base; for repeat-purchase stores it's measured against a rolling 12-month buyer cohort. A 'good' number depends entirely on what you sell and how often customers reorder.
This page collects realistic ranges across the verticals most online stores fall into — replenishable consumables, beauty, apparel, supplements, and curated boxes. It's the inverse view of retention benchmarks: same underlying cohort math, framed by what's leaving instead of what's staying.
Churn is the metric that quietly decides whether paid acquisition is profitable. A 4% monthly churn rate compounds to roughly 39% annual churn; an 8% monthly rate compounds to about 63%. Same CAC, very different LTV — and the spread between those two outcomes is where most subscription brands actually live.
Comparing your number to a benchmark is only useful if the benchmark matches your model. A weekly meal-kit and a quarterly skincare refill are not comparable on monthly churn — the cadence changes what 'lost' even means. Read the segments below by your reorder interval first, then by vertical.
Monthly and annual customer churn rate by vertical (subscription and replenishment commerce)
| Vertical / model | Monthly churn | Annual churn | Typical reorder cadence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Meal kits & prepared food | 10-14% | 70-83% | Weekly |
| Coffee & beverages | 6-9% | 53-68% | Monthly |
| Beauty & personal care (subscription) | 7-10% | 58-72% | Monthly |
| Vitamins & supplements | 5-8% | 46-63% | Monthly |
| Pet food & treats | 4-6% | 39-53% | Monthly |
| Apparel & accessories (repeat buyer) | 8-12% | 63-78% | Quarterly |
| Curated subscription boxes | 9-13% | 67-81% | Monthly |
| Home & cleaning replenishment | 4-7% | 39-58% | 6-8 weeks |
Two patterns stand out. First, the highest-cadence categories (meal kits, weekly coffee) carry the highest churn — frequent billing means more decision moments where customers can leave. Second, utility categories with predictable consumption (pet food, cleaning supplies) churn the slowest because the product literally runs out on a schedule.
Monthly customer churn rate by vertical (midpoint estimate)
How to interpret your churn number
Start by separating voluntary churn (a customer cancels) from involuntary churn (a card declines, a payment fails). For most Shopify subscription brands, involuntary churn accounts for 20-40% of total losses — and it's the cheapest to win back. Dunning sequences and updated-card flows recover most of it without any retention work.
Next, look at cohort churn rather than blended churn. A brand growing fast looks artificially healthy on blended numbers because new customers haven't had time to leave yet. Pull a cohort from 6-12 months ago, follow it forward, and compare the curve against the ranges above. That's the honest read.
The compounding trap
Monthly churn under 5% feels manageable, but it compounds. At 5% monthly you lose 46% of a cohort in the first year and 71% in two years. The brands that win on retention are usually fighting for fractions of a percent — a move from 7% to 6% monthly churn adds roughly 5 months of average customer lifetime.
Where the biggest churn wins come from
The first 90 days do most of the damage. Across the verticals above, roughly half of all churn happens between order one and order three — before the customer has formed a habit. That's where attention belongs: onboarding emails, product-education content, and a frictionless skip-or-swap option on the second billing date.
After the habit forms, churn shifts from product-fit reasons to life reasons — moves, budget cuts, taste fatigue. Those are harder to fix with messaging and easier to fix with flexibility: pause options, gift modes, and SKU swaps. If you don't know your own split between early-stage and late-stage churn, that's the first thing to measure. A retention rate calculator built on cohort exports will tell you in an afternoon.
Churn rate benchmark FAQs
For most monthly subscription categories, 5-7% monthly churn is solid, under 5% is excellent, and over 10% needs urgent work. Meal kits and curated boxes run higher (10-13%) because of their weekly cadence and discovery-driven model.
They're two sides of the same number — if monthly retention is 93%, monthly churn is 7%. Churn benchmarks frame the loss; retention benchmarks frame what stays. Most teams pick one as their primary metric and stick with it to avoid confusion.
Both, but they answer different questions. Customer churn tells you about product fit and onboarding. Revenue churn (which accounts for downgrades and SKU swaps) tells you about pricing and packaging. If they diverge significantly, your highest-value customers are behaving differently from your average.
Divide the number of customers lost during the month by the number of active customers at the start of the month. Exclude new customers acquired during that month from the denominator so growth doesn't mask losses. Then track the same definition consistently — switching formulas mid-year makes trend analysis impossible.
The most common reasons are: aggressive discount acquisition (people who came for the offer leave after it ends), weak onboarding in the first 30 days, and missing dunning for failed payments. Audit those three before assuming you have a product problem.
Yes — total churn includes both voluntary and involuntary. But for diagnosis, split them. Involuntary churn is usually 20-40% of the total and is the easiest to fix with smart dunning, card-update reminders, and retry logic.
Average customer lifetime in months is roughly 1 / monthly churn rate. At 5% churn, the average customer stays ~20 months; at 10% churn, only ~10 months. Halving churn roughly doubles LTV, which is why retention work usually beats acquisition work on margin.
For repeat-purchase stores without a subscription, 60-75% annual buyer churn is typical — meaning 25-40% of last year's buyers reorder this year. Apparel and home goods sit at the higher-churn end; consumables and pet sit at the lower end.
Track your own number monthly, but only benchmark against external data quarterly. Monthly comparisons get noisy because of seasonality, promotions, and cohort timing. Quarterly is enough cadence to spot real movement without overreacting to a single bad month.
Yes, but usually only in utility categories with predictable consumption (pet food, supplements, cleaning) and strong defaults like auto-replenishment. Subscription boxes and discovery-driven categories rarely break 5% monthly because the model itself invites occasional cancellation.
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