SaaS Subscription Revenue Calculator
Turn subscription plans into a clear revenue forecast. Compare retention with acquisition and see what it takes to reach your next MRR goal.
Interactive controls require JavaScript. If the controls remain disabled on your published page, the script has not run. Formula: MRR = monthly subscriptions + annual subscription value ÷ 12; ARR = MRR × 12.
Your revenue outlook
Retention vs acquisition
Compare the same starting business under three sets of assumptions.
Chart shows monthly recurring revenue. Exact values are in the comparison and forecast tables.
| Scenario | Month-12 MRR | 12-month revenue | MRR change vs baseline | Target month* |
|---|
*First target crossing within the selected forecast. Modeled revenue is neither cash collected nor profit.
Your goal, translated into customers
Acquisition mix used for the goal calculations
Month-by-month forecast
Baseline scenario| Month | MRR | ARR run rate | Cumulative revenue | Net MRR change |
|---|
How this forecast works
Current MRR: monthly customers × monthly price, plus annual customers × annual price ÷ 12. ARR: MRR × 12.
For each plan, next-month MRR = opening MRR × (1 − churn − contraction + expansion) + new recurring revenue. All rates are monthly and applied to opening MRR. New customers do not churn in their joining month.
Changes are modeled at the beginning of each month; the resulting MRR supplies that full modeled month’s subscription revenue. Forecast assumptions stay constant. Annual plans are smoothed, not tracked by renewal date. Fractional forecast customers are expected values. Trials, one-time fees, tax, costs, refunds, usage overages and cash timing are excluded. This is a planning estimate, not accounting revenue recognition.
Example: 100 customers at $50/month, 10 new customers per month and 5% monthly churn produce $5,250 MRR in month 1.
Use the SaaS Subscription Revenue Calculator above to calculate monthly recurring revenue (MRR), annual recurring revenue (ARR), and a 12-, 24-, or 36-month forecast. You can start with one average subscription price or enter up to five plans with monthly and annual customers. Then compare your baseline with lower churn and higher customer acquisition.
A subscription business can add customers every month and still grow more slowly than expected. Cancellations reduce its existing revenue, annual discounts change its average monthly value, and new customers arrive at different price points. Looking at subscriber count alone misses these differences.
Direct answer: Calculate SaaS MRR by adding monthly subscription revenue to annual subscription value divided by 12. Multiply MRR by 12 for ARR. To forecast growth, update the recurring revenue balance each month for customer additions, churn, expansion and contraction. ARR is an annualized run rate; it is not automatically the revenue or cash you will collect during the next year.
How to use the SaaS subscription revenue calculator
Choose Quick estimate if your business can be represented by one average monthly price. Enter your current paying customers, average monthly revenue per account, gross new customers per month and monthly customer churn rate. Gross additions means customers joining before cancellations are deducted. Entering net additions would count churn twice.
Choose Subscription plans when you need to separate pricing tiers or billing periods. For each plan, enter monthly and annual customer counts, their actual recurring prices, and the new accounts expected each month. An annual price is the amount charged for the whole year, after any recurring discount.
Next, choose your forecast period and target MRR. Set a churn reduction in percentage points and an acquisition increase in percent. Reducing 5% churn by one percentage point produces 4% churn. Increasing 10 new customers by 25% produces 12.5 expected monthly additions.
Click Calculate revenue forecast. Results show your starting run rate, forecast ending run rate, cumulative modeled revenue and target timing. After editing an input, calculate again. You can copy a summary, print the results or download a CSV containing all three scenarios and their assumptions. Currency selection changes display labels only; it does not convert your inputs.
What MRR and ARR tell you
MRR expresses recurring subscription value on a monthly basis. ARR expresses that same run rate on an annual basis. Neither metric deducts operating expenses.
| Metric | Calculation | Question it answers |
| Current MRR | Sum of monthly-normalized subscription values | What is the business’s recurring monthly run rate now? |
| Current ARR | Current MRR × 12 | What is that current run rate annualized? |
| Forecast ending MRR | Recurring balance after the selected forecast period | Where could recurring revenue finish under these assumptions? |
| Forecast ending ARR | Ending MRR × 12 | What annualized run rate could the business reach? |
| Modeled subscription revenue | Sum of the forecast monthly revenue values | How much subscription revenue does this simplified model accumulate? |
A business with $5,000 MRR has $60,000 ARR at that moment. If it grows during the year, its final ARR and modeled revenue over the year will differ. Do not use December’s MRR multiplied by 12 as though it were the sum of January through December revenue.
Monthly and annual subscription plans: a worked example
Suppose you have 100 monthly customers paying $29 and 20 annual customers paying $290 per year.
| Subscription group | Calculation | MRR contribution |
| Monthly customers | 100 × $29 | $2,900.00 |
| Annual customers | 20 × $290 ÷ 12 | $483.33 |
| Total | Monthly contribution + annual contribution | $3,383.33 |
The resulting ARR is $40,600, calculated from the unrounded MRR. The annual customers contribute $5,800 to that annualized value, even though their payments may arrive at different times.
Stripe’s MRR explanation uses the same normalization principle: a $1,200 annual subscription contributes $100 MRR. This makes different billing periods comparable.
Use the annual price customers actually pay. If a $29 monthly plan is sold for $290 annually, do not enter $348 as its annual price. That would ignore the discount and overstate recurring revenue.
How the SaaS revenue forecast works
Quick mode assumes customers share a fixed average monthly price:
Next month’s customers = current customers × (1 − monthly churn) + gross new customers
Multiply the resulting customer count by the average price to obtain the next month’s MRR. Forecast customer counts can be fractional because they represent expected values, rather than a claim that a fraction of a person will subscribe.
Subscription-plan mode uses a revenue-based calculation for each plan:
Next month’s MRR = opening MRR × (1 − churn − contraction + expansion) + new MRR
All rates in this formula are monthly decimals. New MRR includes new monthly accounts at their monthly price and new annual accounts at one-twelfth of their annual price. Churn, contraction and expansion each use opening MRR as their base. The calculator repeats the process for the selected horizon and adds the plans together.
Changes are modeled at the beginning of each forecast month, so the resulting MRR supplies that full month’s modeled subscription revenue. This timing convention simplifies planning. It does not implement accounting revenue recognition, prorated invoices or an annual-renewal calendar.
A 12-month micro-SaaS revenue example
Consider a product with these Quick estimate inputs:
- 100 current paying customers
- $50 average monthly revenue per account
- 10 gross new customers each month
- 5% monthly customer churn
- A 12-month forecast
Starting MRR is $5,000. In month one, the model retains 95 existing customers and adds 10, producing 105 expected customers and $5,250 MRR.
By month 12, the forecast reaches approximately $7,298.20 MRR. Its ending ARR is $87,578.39, while the sum of its 12 modeled monthly revenue amounts is $76,334.21. These totals answer different questions; neither is a cash-flow forecast.
This example also shows why fixed acquisition does not create a fixed amount of net growth. Ten new customers keep adding $500 of MRR each month, but a 5% loss applies to an increasingly large existing revenue base.
Should you improve retention or acquire more customers?
The comparison panel models these choices separately. Using the same example, lower churn changes the monthly churn assumption from 5% to 4%. More acquisition increases new customers by 25%, from 10 to 12.5 expected accounts per month.
| Scenario | Month-12 MRR | 12-month modeled revenue |
| Baseline | $7,298.20 | $76,334.21 |
| Lower churn: 4% | $7,904.68 | $80,287.76 |
| More acquisition: 12.5/month | $8,447.30 | $84,501.31 |
Acquisition produces the larger revenue result in this particular comparison. That does not establish it as the better business decision. You would still need to compare advertising, sales, onboarding, support and product-development costs, as well as the likelihood of achieving either change.
The retention-to-acquisition equivalent translates the lower-churn result into additional monthly customers at baseline churn. In this example, approximately 1.32 extra customers per month would match the lower-churn scenario’s month-12 MRR; two is the rounded-up planning target. This is a revenue comparison, not a cost-benefit conclusion.
In plan mode, additional accounts follow the mix of new monthly and annual accounts you entered. If no new-account mix exists, the calculator explains why it cannot translate a revenue goal into accounts. A percentage acquisition increase on zero additions also remains zero.
How many customers do you need for $10,000 MRR?
At a fixed $50 monthly price, a snapshot of $10,000 MRR represents 200 active paying customers. But reaching that snapshot by a deadline also depends on your starting base and churn.
The goal panel estimates the total gross new accounts needed every month to finish the selected period at or above your target. It is not simply the difference between today’s customers and the desired customer count. In Quick estimate mode, a business starting at 100 customers, charging $50, and losing 5% monthly needs approximately 15.88 gross additions per month to finish month 12 at $10,000 MRR. The rounded-up planning target is 16.
For multiple plans, the estimate preserves your entered new-account mix. Rounded totals remain a planning guide: actual customers must be allocated across plans as whole accounts.
Why subscription revenue can plateau
With a fixed $500 of new MRR each month and 5% monthly revenue churn, without expansion or contraction, the long-run equilibrium is:
$500 ÷ 0.05 = $10,000 MRR
Starting below this amount, the model approaches it gradually. It does not reach exactly $10,000 in a finite month under those assumptions. Continuing the same acquisition rate does not remove that limitation.
The calculator shows an equilibrium when all entered plans have a positive net decay rate. Mixed plans can follow different paths, so their combined equilibrium should not be treated as a universal ceiling. If a plan’s expansion offsets or exceeds its losses, the tool does not display a finite decay-based equilibrium.
“Not reached” in the target result means the target was not crossed within your selected forecast. It does not, by itself, mean the target can never be reached.
Customer churn is different from revenue churn
Quick mode uses customer churn with a fixed average price. Subscription-plan mode uses revenue churn because accounts can have different monthly values.
Losing one large account can remove more revenue than losing several small accounts. ChartMogul’s revenue churn guide explains this distinction and separates losses from cancellations and downgrades from gains through expansion.
In this calculator, enter cancellations under churn, downgrades under contraction, and recurring increases from existing accounts under expansion. Do not enter a combined loss percentage under churn and then enter the same downgrade losses again under contraction. Churn plus contraction cannot exceed 100% of opening MRR.
Revenue is only one part of your SaaS plan
This tool excludes hosting, salaries, payment-processing fees, customer acquisition expenses and taxes. A rising revenue forecast can still leave a business unprofitable.
For an AI-powered product, use the AI API Token Cost Calculator to explore model usage costs separately. The AI Tool Usage Cost Calculator can support a separate review of software spending. Those costs are not automatically deducted from this revenue forecast.
Use recent business data when available, and rerun the model with less favorable assumptions. Constant acquisition and churn rates are useful for comparing scenarios, but they do not predict seasonality, changing prices, concentrated customer losses or shifting demand.
Frequently asked questions: SaaS Subscription Revenue Calculator
Are free trials and one-time setup fees included in MRR?
This calculator models recurring paid subscriptions. Exclude free trials, setup charges and other one-time payments from its recurring revenue inputs. Track those items separately.
Does ARR mean the cash I will collect this year?
No. ARR annualizes a recurring revenue snapshot. Cash receipts depend on billing dates, annual prepayments, payment failures and other events this calculator does not model.
Should I enter monthly or annual churn?
Enter monthly churn. Do not paste an annual percentage into a monthly field. If you only have an annual rate, convert it using an appropriate retention assumption before entering it; actual monthly data is preferable when available.
Does the forecast cancel annual contracts every month?
It uses a smoothed monthly revenue-loss assumption rather than individual renewal events. Use it for scenario planning, not to predict the exact cash or renewal schedule of annual contracts.
Why does the scenario table always show month 12?
A shared 12-month comparison makes the revenue impact of each change easy to compare. The chart, baseline monthly table, goal deadline and main forecast cards use your selected 12-, 24-, or 36-month horizon.
Can I calculate profit or customer lifetime value here?
No. The tool calculates recurring revenue and acquisition requirements. It does not calculate profit, customer lifetime value, valuation, tax or cash runway.
Are the example churn rates recommended benchmarks?
No. The defaults demonstrate the calculation. Use rates relevant to your own customer base and test a range of plausible outcomes.
Methodology and sources
This guide matches the calculator’s implemented constant-rate planning model, reviewed September 27, 2026. Examples retain full precision during calculations and round displayed currency to two decimal places. The calculator processes its inputs in your browser without sending them to a calculation API; the surrounding website may use its own analytics or advertising services.
Metric references: Stripe: understanding MRR and ARR and ChartMogul: revenue churn. Forecast timing, scenario comparisons and acquisition-goal calculations are the assumptions of this tool, not guarantees from those sources.