What Is Churn?

The standard churn definition in business is: the proportion of customers, subscribers, or users who stop doing business with you in a given period (month, quarter, year). It’s usually expressed as a percentage of the customers you had at the start of that period.

In analytics, churn meaning is tied directly to retention: churn rate shows how many people left; retention rate shows how many stayed. Together, they tell you if your user base is growing, stagnating, or slowly leaking away.

Churn for apps: what does churn mean here?

For apps, churn usually means one of two things:

• User churn: users stop using the app (no sessions in a chosen time window).
• Customer churn: paying users cancel a subscription or stop generating revenue.

A typical churn rate for apps is the percentage of users who were active or paying at the start of the period and are no longer active or paying by the end. Recent benchmarks show how brutal this can be: most apps see 89.3–98.7% of users churn within 30 days of install.

So when you ask what does churn mean for your app, the practical answer is: how fast your users disappear after you’ve worked (and paid) to acquire them.

Why is the churn rate important?

Churn rate matters because it quietly controls everything: growth, revenue, and the cost of staying alive.

• Churn defines your growth ceiling.
  To grow, your new users/revenue must outpace what you lose. If churn is high, you’re running on a treadmill: adding users at the front while losing them at the back. That’s why churn rate is a core health metric in SaaS and subscription businesses. Investopedia+1
• App churn is extreme by default.
  Multiple studies show 30-day retention for many app categories sits in the 1–10% range, which implies 90%+ churn by D30. Keewano+2clevertap.com+2
  If you’re not watching churn, you can be fooled by downloads while your active base quietly collapses.
• Churn is where CAC and LTV meet.
  Customer acquisition cost (CAC) only makes sense against lifetime value (LTV). High churn compresses lifetime and slashes LTV, which means even “cheap” users become unprofitable. Benchmarks for mobile apps show D30 churn of 89–99%, so even small improvements in churn compound heavily in LTV. Userpilot+1
• Churn is a map of product problems.
  Spike in churn after a release? Onboarding step? Pricing change? That’s your signal. Churn patterns (by cohort, device, channel, plan) tell you where users give up so you know what to fix. clevertap.com+1

Short version: high churn makes growth expensive. Low churn lets every marketing dollar travel further.

How to calculate churn rate

At a high level, churn rate answers: “Of the customers we had at the start of this period, what percentage are gone by the end?”

The standard churn rate formula is:

Churn rate (%) = (Number of customers lost during period ÷ Customers at start of period) × 100

“Customers lost” means customers who were active at the beginning and are no longer customers at the end (they cancelled, lapsed, or stopped using the service), usually excluding brand-new customers acquired during the period.

You can calculate churn:

• By customers (customer churn)
• By revenue (revenue churn)
• By users (for free apps)

For a mobile app, a simple monthly user churn calculation could look like this:

1. Pick your period: e.g., one calendar month.
2. Define who counts as a “user”: e.g., anyone who opened the app at least once in the previous 30 days.
3. Measure:
   • Users at the start of the month
   • Users at the end of the month
   • New users acquired during the month
4. Calculate users lost from your existing base: Users lost = Users at start + New users – Users at end

1. Then apply the churn formula: User churn rate (%) = (Users lost ÷ Users at start) × 100

For example, imagine a subscription meditation app:

• Users at the start of the month: 10,000
• Users at the end of the month: 11,200
• New users acquired during the month: 3,000

First, find how many users you lost:

• Users lost = 10,000 (start) + 3,000 (new) – 11,200 (end)
• Users lost = 1,800

Now calculate churn:

• Churn rate = 1,800 ÷ 10,000 × 100
• Churn rate = 18% for the month

So even though your total user count grew from 10,000 → 11,200, you actually lost 1,800 users from your starting base – an 18% monthly churn.

What is a good churn rate?

There is no single “good” churn rate. It depends on your business model, audience, and category. But there are benchmarks you can sanity-check against.

• If your 30-day churn is in the 80–85% range (15–20% D30 retention), you’re already ahead of many peers.
• If you can push D30 retention above 25–30% for a subscription or high-engagement product, you’re playing in a top tier.

In practice, a “good” churn rate is one that’s:

1. Lower than your category norms, and
2. Low enough that your growth + monetization comfortably beat the leakage.

The important thing isn’t to chase someone else’s number. It’s to define churn clearly, track it consistently, and push it down over time so every new user you win has a real chance to become long-term value.