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Every subscription program lives or dies on a handful of numbers: how many shoppers subscribe, how long they stay, how many payments go through, and what each subscriber is worth over time. This guide covers the 10 subscription KPIs that track those outcomes. For each one, it shows the revenue at stake and the Loop features that move it.
How to use it: scan the table, pick the KPI you want to improve, and jump to its section. Each section covers the revenue at stake, what good looks like and the Loop features to use. Every figure comes from Loop's own data, playbooks, help center or published merchant case studies. Results vary by brand.
Where to start: first split subscriber churn into voluntary and involuntary churn. Voluntary churn is subscribers who choose to cancel. Involuntary churn is subscribers lost to failed payments. If your store pauses subscriptions after the final payment retry, count those dunning-paused subscribers as involuntary churn, because they won't show up as cancellations.
The question: when a shopper buys for the first time, do they choose subscribe-and-save or a one-time purchase?
Revenue at stake: each point of acquisition rate turns a one-time buyer into recurring revenue from the first order. Cart and post-purchase offers are the two biggest unlocks here. A post-purchase offer runs after the payment is captured, so it converts one-time buyers into subscribers and lifts AOV with no risk to storefront or checkout conversion.
How Loop measures it: acquired subscribers ÷ non-subscribed customers × 100, shown for each order number (Order #1, #2, #3 and beyond). This tells you whether shoppers subscribe on their first purchase or on a repeat order (analytics FAQs).
What good looks like: a rising trend. At NutriPaw, first-time orders on subscription moved from 4% to 18–20% after it made "Subscribe and Save" the default option. Live Bearded made subscriptions the default on its product pages and saw 130% growth in subscription conversions with no impact on site conversion.
Loop features that move it:
Proof point: on its product pages, Good Protein offers bigger discounts for longer commitments: 10% off for 1 month, 15% for 3 months and 20% for 6 months. 60% of its customers subscribe at the product page itself.
Read more: Subscription acquisition best practices
Loop splits subscription revenue into two parts:
Both count as subscription revenue. Track the split in subscriber analytics to see how much of it comes from subscribers who stay past their first order, and watch subscription revenue as a share of total store revenue to see how much of the business is becoming predictable.
What good looks like: a rising share over time. NutriPaw saw subscriptions grow to 28.6% of total revenue, up from 5%, over 9 months. At Live Bearded, subscription revenue grew from 5% to 20% of total revenue in nine months.
The question: how much monthly recurring revenue do your active subscriptions bring in?
Revenue at stake: the recurring revenue your active subscriptions are scheduled to bill. Loop reports Active MRR as normalised monthly revenue: total expected annual revenue ÷ 12, so subscriptions on longer billing intervals are converted to a monthly value. MRR counts scheduled recurring billing only. First subscription orders placed at checkout are part of subscription revenue, not MRR.
Every other KPI in this guide adds to MRR or takes from it: acquisition adds new subscriptions, 0-day and subscriber churn remove them, and save and recovery rates decide how much you keep.
See whether MRR is growing, flat or declining. Active MRR used to be a point-in-time number, so spotting a trend meant checking the card day after day. Loop now shows an Active MRR trend chart under Subscribers > Analytics > Overview, so you can read the direction of travel in one place.
What good looks like: Active MRR trending up month over month, with churned MRR falling as a share of it. Pair the trend chart with churned and saved MRR in cancellation analytics to see whether growth is coming from new subscribers or from keeping the ones you have.
Loop features that move it: the subscription widget, selling plans, cart upgrades, checkout upgrades and post-purchase offers bring in new subscribers. Checkout links in reorder emails turn existing one-time buyers into subscribers. Every retention feature in sections 3 to 8 protects MRR by keeping those subscribers active.
The question: are new subscribers staying, or did they subscribe just for the first-order discount?
Revenue at stake: every order after the first. A subscriber who cancels immediately takes all their future revenue with them.
Loop's subscriber analytics uses 0-day churn to measure the quality of new subscribers by how many cancel immediately. A high rate means your subscription discount is attracting discount seekers: it buys you one order instead of winning a subscriber. Churn after the first order shows up separately, in Order-wise cancellations.
What good looks like: a falling 0-day churn rate. Track it alongside your second-order rate, which is a related but separate problem with its own fixes (see section 7).
Loop features that move it:
Minimum-charge requirements can't be used as a barrier to cancellation in US states with auto-renewal laws, including California and Colorado. Loop's default is "no restrictions", and it recommends allowing cancellation even when minimum orders aren't complete (US auto-renewal laws).
Proof point: Livingood Daily measured a 9% increase in the proportion of subscribers completing 5–10 orders after setting up a reward system in Loop Flows.
The question: how many subscribers are we losing each month?
Revenue at stake: churned MRR, the recurring revenue that leaves with each lost subscriber.
How Loop measures it: cancellations in the month ÷ (subscribers active at the start of the month + subscribers created in the month) × 100. Track subscribers, not subscriptions: one subscriber can hold several subscriptions, and Loop counts a subscriber as churned only when they cancel all of them.
What good looks like: a rate that falls quarter over quarter, split into voluntary and involuntary churn, because each needs a different fix. If your store pauses subscriptions after the final payment retry, add those dunning-paused subscribers to involuntary churn. For reference:
Loop features that move it:
Read more: The complete guide to reducing subscription churn
The question: when subscribers try to cancel, how many are we able to save, and do they go on to place more orders?
This is the KPI for voluntary churn, which happens when a subscriber chooses to cancel. Every cancellation attempt is a chance to offer a better fit: a pause, a swap, a different frequency or an offer.
Revenue at stake: saved MRR, plus what saved subscribers spend on later orders. A save only pays off if the subscriber keeps ordering, so track the revenue after the save as well as the rate.
What good looks like: across 441K+ cancel attempts at 87 DTC brands (Cancellation Flow playbook):
At the final offer stage (Cancellation Offers playbook):
These rates cover the offer stage only, from the Cancellation Offers playbook (485K+ attempts, 50+ eight-figure brands). Expect lower save rates in US states covered by auto-renewal laws, such as California and Colorado, where subscribers can cancel without completing the full flow.
Build a separate flow for brand-new subscribers. Someone cancelling a day or two after signing up is not the same as someone cancelling at order 8. They are usually a discount hunter, someone who subscribed by mistake, or someone treating the first order as a trial, so "too much product" is not a relevant reason for them. Use the Days since subscription creation condition in cancellation profiles to target a short window after signup, then map reasons and treatments to the real intent:
Loop's help center frames this segment the same way: a subscriber who cancels within the first 7 days may not have understood the product's value, or may have joined for an introductory discount. To cut these cancellations off earlier, set minimum orders criteria in cancellation preferences alongside the flow.
Loop features that move it:
Proof point: Four Sigmatic raised its offer save rate from 4.84% to 9.55% in four months by showing three offers at once: a discount, a free product and free merch.
Read more: Best cancellation flows for Shopify subscription brands
The question: when a subscription payment fails, how much of that revenue do we win back?
This is the KPI for involuntary churn, which happens when a subscriber is lost to a failed payment rather than a decision to leave.
Start with your first-attempt success rate: the share of renewals that go through on the first try. Everything that fails here enters your dunning pool, and the larger the pool, the more critical your dunning setup becomes. If the success rate is dropping, the problem is likely your checkout flow or payment processor, not your dunning setup. Your recovery rate then shows how much of the failed revenue you get back.
Revenue at stake: recovered revenue, the money dunning brings back from failed renewals.
What good looks like: across 1.5M+ subscription billing orders at 50 Loop brands (Payment Recovery playbook):
Loop features that move it:
Proof point: Lumin's move to Loop added 17% to its quarterly subscription revenue. That includes a 12.6% revenue boost from enhanced payment recovery in just 3 months.
Read more: The complete Shopify dunning management guide
The question: how much scheduled revenue do we lose before orders ship, through reschedules, skips, pauses, cancellations and failed payments?
Revenue at stake: leakage, the revenue lost at each stage between a scheduled order and a shipped one. The funnel shows which stage is losing the most, so you know where to act first. In Loop:
What good looks like: less leakage at each stage over time. 70% of customer portal visits lead to a cancel, skip or pause, so every portal visit is a chance to save the order (Mystery Rewards playbook).
Early orders are where the leak concentrates. Loop's help center notes that only 50–60% of second orders are attempted (Streaks). The Streaks playbook finds that 60% of subscription revenue leaks in orders 2–5, the window where acquisition cost is still being paid back. Across 305K+ subscriptions and 36K+ completed streaks, Streaks delivered 62% second-order retention and 2× 90-day subscriber LTV.
Loop features that move it:
Proof point: at order #5, Good Protein's mystery rewards journey raised order attempts by 8% and cut cancellation attempts by 17%.
The question: can we bring cancelled, expired or paused subscribers back?
Revenue at stake: reactivated revenue. Lapsed subscribers are a group you already know, and one you can work on to win back extra revenue.
What good looks like: NutriPaw built targeted win-back campaigns using Loop's Klaviyo integration and Quick Action URLs for one-click reactivation. Its internal tracking logged a 40% reactivation completion rate from these campaigns.
Loop features that move it:
The question: is each subscription order getting bigger?
Revenue at stake: upsell revenue added to orders that were already scheduled.
What good looks like: a growing share of revenue from upsells, with no rise in churn. Good Protein earns 18% of subscription revenue from upsells in a regular month and 25% in its BFCM month. OSEA Malibu increased upsell revenue from 4.5% to 6.8%.
Loop features that move it:
Proof point: Primal Queen built 10+ personalized upsell profiles, each with a different offer for a different subscriber segment. It uses them to launch new products to existing subscribers at zero acquisition cost.
Read more: Subscription growth best practices
The question: is a subscriber worth more than a one-time buyer, and is that gap growing with each new cohort?
Revenue at stake: lifetime revenue per subscriber. Every other KPI in this guide adds up here.
What good looks like: subscriber LTV clearly above non-subscriber LTV, and rising with each new cohort. Loop's LTV dashboard compares the two directly. It also breaks subscribers down by the order at which they subscribed, from Order #1 to Order #3+. LTV grows mainly through retention: lower 0-day and subscriber churn, higher save and payment recovery rates, and less order leakage. While churn is high, prioritize LTV over AOV.
Loop features that move it:
Proof point: Primal Queen scaled subscription revenue from $2M to $100M+ with upsells in the portal, spend-based rewards built in Loop Flows and segmented cancellation flows.
Loop's plans (pricing):
Paid plans have no flat per-order fee, bill month-to-month and come with a 14-day free trial. The following are available on Pro and above:
Migration is white-glove and included on every paid plan. Every migration includes a dedicated migration manager, a shared Slack channel, a pre-migration test environment and post-launch hypercare. 1,100+ brands have migrated to Loop, including 400+ from Recharge (Loop vs. Recharge).
What are the most important subscription metrics?
Subscriber acquisition rate, MRR, 0-day churn, subscriber churn rate, cancellation save rate, payment recovery rate, order funnel, win-back rate, AOV and LTV.
What is MRR in Loop?
Active MRR is normalised monthly revenue from active subscriptions: total expected annual revenue ÷ 12. It counts scheduled recurring billing, so first subscription orders placed at checkout sit in subscription revenue rather than MRR. Loop shows Active MRR as a card and as a trend chart under Subscribers > Analytics > Overview.
What is 0-day churn?
It measures the quality of new subscribers by how many cancel immediately. A high rate usually means shoppers are subscribing for the discount. Tiered discounts and minimum billing cycles help fix it.
How do I convert one-time buyers into subscribers?
Offer the switch at three points: a "switch to subscription" option on one-time items in the cart, a one-click upgrade at checkout, and a post-purchase offer after payment succeeds. The post-purchase offer carries no risk to storefront or checkout conversion, because it runs after the payment is captured.
Why track subscriber churn instead of subscription churn?
One subscriber can hold several subscriptions. Subscriber churn counts the people you've actually lost.
What is the difference between voluntary and involuntary churn?
Voluntary churn is a subscriber choosing to cancel, and cancellation save rate tracks it. Involuntary churn is a subscriber lost to a failed payment, and payment recovery rate tracks it. Voluntary churn is fixed with cancellation flows and portal flexibility. Involuntary churn is fixed with dunning and card updates.
What is a good cancellation save rate?
A generic discount saves 6%, a structured three-stage flow can save 15%, and a benefits page alone saves 20%. Also track what saved subscribers spend afterwards.
What is a good payment recovery rate?
The Loop average is 45% and the median is about 52%. The top 10 brands recover 74–87%. Below 40%, review your dunning setup.
Which KPI should I fix first?
Split your churn, counting dunning-paused subscribers as involuntary. If more than 30% is involuntary, start with payment recovery. If 70% or more is voluntary, start with cancellation save rate and 0-day churn.
Which Loop features need the Pro plan?
Streaks, mystery rewards, subscriber reward journeys, automation flows (Loop Flows), personalized cancellation profiles, targeted campaigns, and prepaid and gifting.
