Logo churn and revenue churn measure the same problem from two different angles. Logo churn (also called customer churn) counts how many customers you lost. Revenue churn counts how much MRR those lost customers represented.
When the two numbers move together, you're getting a consistent picture. When they diverge - and they often do - one of them is hiding something important.
What Is Logo Churn?
Logo churn is the percentage of customers who cancelled in a given period, regardless of how much they were paying.
Logo Churn Rate = (Customers Lost in Period ÷ Customers at Start of Period) × 100
Example: You start the month with 400 customers and 12 cancel.
12 ÷ 400 × 100 = 3% logo churn rate
Logo churn treats every customer as equal - a $29/mo customer and a $2,900/mo customer each count as one logo. This is the metric's core limitation, and also its value: it tells you how broadly churn is spreading across your customer base, independent of their size.
What Is Revenue Churn?
Revenue churn (also called MRR churn or gross MRR churn) measures the percentage of MRR you lost from cancellations and downgrades.
Gross MRR Churn Rate = (MRR Lost to Cancellations + Downgrades) ÷ MRR at Start of Period × 100
Example: You start the month with $80,000 MRR. The 12 cancellations above represent $6,400 in lost MRR. Downgrades add another $1,200.
($6,400 + $1,200) ÷ $80,000 × 100 = 9.5% gross MRR churn rate
The same month. 3% logo churn. 9.5% revenue churn. Very different picture.
🧒 Explained simply Imagine you run a pizza subscription. You have 10 subscribers: nine pay $10/mo and one pays $910/mo (they love pizza). If that one big subscriber cancels, you've lost 10% of your customers (logo churn). But you've lost 50% of your revenue (revenue churn). If you only tracked customer count, you'd think things were mostly fine. They are not.
When Logo Churn and Revenue Churn Diverge
The divergence between logo churn and revenue churn is where the real insight lives. There are three patterns to watch for:
High logo churn, low revenue churn
Many customers are leaving, but they're mostly small accounts. Your revenue base is more concentrated in larger customers who are staying.
What it signals: Your SMB or low-tier segment may not be a good fit for the product. High logo churn at the bottom of the market is often a product-market fit problem for that segment specifically - not a retention problem across the board.
Risk: If the large accounts eventually churn too, the revenue cliff is steep. Concentrated revenue creates fragility.
Low logo churn, high revenue churn
Few customers are leaving, but the ones who do are large. Or: customers are staying but downgrading, which counts in revenue churn but not logo churn.
What it signals: Either your largest accounts are at structural risk (contract renewals, competitive displacement, budget cuts), or contraction - customers staying but paying less - is eroding MRR without appearing in logo churn at all.
Risk: This pattern is the most dangerous because it looks fine until it isn't. A 2% logo churn rate sounds healthy. A 12% MRR churn rate is a serious problem.
Both are high
Churn is broad and concentrated. This is the clearest signal of a systemic problem - usually product-market fit, pricing, or a structural onboarding failure - and requires the most urgent attention.
Net Revenue Retention: The Metric That Completes the Picture
Logo churn and revenue churn are both gross measures - they only count what you lost. Neither tells you whether expansion from existing customers is compensating for the losses.
Net Revenue Retention (NRR) completes the picture:
NRR = (Starting MRR + Expansion MRR − Contraction MRR − Churned MRR) ÷ Starting MRR × 100
A company can have 5% MRR churn and 115% NRR - meaning expansion from existing customers more than offsets the churn. Or it can have 2% MRR churn and 88% NRR - because expansion is nearly zero and contraction is dragging the base down.
The combination of gross MRR churn rate and NRR tells you everything:
| Gross MRR Churn | NRR | Situation |
|---|---|---|
| Low | High | Ideal - strong retention and growth from existing base |
| Low | Low | Customers staying but not expanding; flat base |
| High | High | Strong expansion barely compensating for real churn problem |
| High | Low | Serious problem - base shrinking fast |
Which One Should You Optimize For?
Both, but they require different interventions and different teams own them.
Logo churn is primarily a product, onboarding, and customer success problem. When too many customers are leaving, the causes are usually: wrong customers being acquired, activation failures, or a product that doesn't fit a segment well enough.
Revenue churn is also a pricing, contract, and expansion problem. When MRR churn is running high relative to logo churn, you often have a customer mix issue (too much revenue concentrated in accounts that are structurally risky) or a contraction problem (customers finding ways to pay less without cancelling).
In practice: most early-stage SaaS teams should focus on logo churn first, because fixing the product and onboarding problems that drive it also reduces revenue churn. As the business matures and average contract values increase, revenue churn and NRR become the primary retention metrics because individual account risk starts to matter more than aggregate customer count.
Benchmarks
| ARR Stage | Acceptable Monthly Logo Churn | Acceptable Monthly MRR Churn |
|---|---|---|
| $0–$1M ARR | 4–8% | 4–8% |
| $1–$5M ARR | 2–5% | 3–7% |
| $5–$20M ARR | 1–3% | 2–5% |
| $20M+ ARR | < 1.5% | < 3% |
Revenue churn often runs slightly higher than logo churn because it captures contraction (downgrades) in addition to full cancellations. If your revenue churn is running more than 3–4 percentage points above your logo churn, you have a contraction problem worth investigating separately.
How to Track Both in Chartsy
Chartsy calculates both logo churn and MRR churn from your Stripe or Paddle data, and shows you the breakdown of cancellations vs downgrades driving each. You can ask:
- "What is my logo churn rate vs MRR churn rate this quarter?"
- "Show me churned MRR by plan this month"
- "Which customer segments have the highest cancellation rate?"
- "How much MRR did I lose to downgrades vs full cancellations last month?"
- "What is my net revenue retention over the last 12 months?"
Connect Stripe and track churn →
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between logo churn and revenue churn? Logo churn counts the percentage of customers who cancelled. Revenue churn counts the percentage of MRR lost from cancellations and downgrades. They use different denominators and tell different stories. A small number of large account cancellations can produce low logo churn and high revenue churn simultaneously.
Which churn metric do investors care about more? At early stages, both matter and investors typically want to see both. As ARR grows and average contract value increases, NRR and gross MRR churn become the primary signals because they capture economic retention - not just headcount. A 120% NRR tells investors your existing base is growing; a 3% monthly logo churn rate alone doesn't.
What does it mean when revenue churn is much higher than logo churn? It means either your large accounts are churning disproportionately, or contraction (downgrades) is significant. Customers can lower their plan tier without cancelling - this shows up in revenue churn but not logo churn. If MRR churn is running significantly higher than logo churn, break out your contraction MRR separately to understand how much of the gap is downgrades vs pure cancellation losses from large accounts.
Can logo churn be low and still signal a serious problem? Yes. Low logo churn combined with low NRR means you're retaining customers in headcount but they're not growing in value - and may even be contracting. This is common in SMB-focused products where customers stay for years on the lowest plan without expanding. Low logo churn with 85% NRR is a worse long-term position than moderate logo churn with 110% NRR.
What is a good logo churn rate? For SMB-focused SaaS: 3–5% monthly is typical, with best-in-class below 2%. For mid-market: 1–2%. For enterprise: below 1%. Monthly churn compounds aggressively - 5% monthly means losing roughly half your customer base in a year. The goal is always lower, and world-class SaaS at scale is usually under 1% monthly across all segments.
Related: What Is Churn Rate? · What Is Net Revenue Retention (NRR)? · What Is Expansion MRR?
Written by
Chartsy TeamThe Chartsy Team writes guides, product updates, and resources to help SaaS and eCommerce founders make sense of their metrics, without SQL or spreadsheets.
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