Healthy indie SaaS
$5,800 starting MRR, 8% growth, 4% churn, 12 months.
Project where MRR lands in 12 months given current growth and churn. The math is brutal: small differences in churn compound into huge revenue gaps. Drop monthly churn from 5% to 3% and 12-month MRR is dramatically higher, even if growth is unchanged.
Adjust the projection horizon up to 60 months and watch the lines move. The chart is the answer to "is my churn problem actually a problem?" Yes, always.
Compare projected MRR against your starting baseline.
Benchmark verdicts use smb thresholds from OpenView SaaS Benchmarks 2024.
4 steps. Same formula every reputable SaaS dashboard uses: ChartMogul, Baremetrics, ProfitWell.
Customers × ARPU at month zero.
MRR_0New customers each month grow MRR by the gross growth rate.
× (1 + g)Same period also loses customers to churn. Compounded effect: net MRR each month = previous × (1 + g) × (1 − c).
× (1 − c)Repeat for each month in the projection horizon (12 default). Plot MRR per month for the line chart.
MRR_n = MRR_{n−1} × (1+g) × (1−c)Raw Growth Projection values vary too much by ICP, pricing tier, and business model to compare across companies. Compare projected MRR against your starting baseline.
Three real scenarios. Inputs in plain English, the formula applied, the answer.
$5,800 starting MRR, 8% growth, 4% churn, 12 months.
Same starting MRR + growth, churn dropped to 2%.
$50K MRR, 10% growth, 2% churn, 24 months.
Everything else worth knowing about SaaS Growth Projection.
Churn compounds. 5% monthly churn means each month you keep 95% of last month. Over 12 months, that’s 0.95^12 ≈ 54% retention without any new growth. Even with 6% monthly growth, the math gets ugly fast. Cutting churn from 5% to 3% can double your 12-month MRR vs. the 5% baseline.
It’s a planning tool, not an oracle. Real SaaS growth has seasonality, channel saturation, and cohort effects this model ignores. Use it to compare scenarios ("what if we cut churn 2 points?") not as a forecast you’d show a board.
The formulas are textbook standard, used by ChartMogul, Baremetrics, OpenView, and most SaaS investors. Your numbers will be accurate to the inputs you provide. Garbage in, garbage out: pull the numbers from your billing system, not your gut.
MRR, ARR, ARPU: monthly. Churn, NRR: monthly with quarterly trend review. CAC, LTV, LTV:CAC, CAC payback: quarterly. They’re lagging and noisy on a monthly basis. Growth projection: refresh quarterly when you change your roadmap.
A 4% monthly churn rate is excellent for bootstrapped indie SaaS but alarming for enterprise SaaS. CAC payback of 18 months is dangerous for SMB but normal for enterprise. Stage-aware benchmarks tell you what good looks like at your size, not at someone else’s.
Yes, with adaptation. For usage-based pricing, normalise to monthly recurring billed amount before computing MRR. For hybrid (base + usage), include the recurring base in MRR and treat overage as expansion in NRR. The formulas don’t change. Only how you measure ARPU does.
Gross = before any offsetting moves. Net = after expansion or other positive flows offset losses. Gross churn ≤ net churn (net can be negative, meaning expansion outpaces loss). NRR includes expansion (net); GRR excludes it (gross). Both are reported in best SaaS dashboards.
No, never. Every metric here is paying-customers-only. Including trials inflates customer counts, deflates ARPU, and breaks comparability against industry benchmarks. Trials become "customers" the moment they convert to paid.
Investors care about: ARR (scale), MRR growth rate (momentum), monthly churn (retention), LTV:CAC (unit economics), and NRR if you have one. Seed: $0-100K ARR with strong growth. Series A: $1M+ ARR, sub-5% monthly churn, LTV:CAC 3x+. Series B: $5-15M ARR, NRR 110%+.
They’re a system. ARPU × customers = MRR. MRR × 12 = ARR. Customers × monthly churn = lost MRR. CAC + LTV + churn = unit economics. NRR + growth rate + churn = trajectory. Track them together. Improving one in isolation can mask trade-offs elsewhere.
Yes. Every tool on this page is free, no signup, no email gate, no upsell to a paid version. They’re built by FoundStep to help indie SaaS founders ship better businesses.
Benchmarks reference 2025-2026 data from ChartMogul Open Benchmarks, Baremetrics Open Benchmarks, OpenView SaaS Benchmarks 2024, and SaaS Capital’s annual report. Citations are linked under each benchmark table. We refresh annually.
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