- Subscription Economy Size Statistics
- Subscription Churn Rate Statistics
This guide covers 35 subscription billing statistics every founder, finance lead, or product manager should know in 2026. Each figure links to a current public source. Where vendor research is the only available data, we say so explicitly.
How we verified this We cross-referenced the Zuora Subscription Economy Index, the Recurly Churn and State of Subscriptions research, Paddle/ProfitWell metrics, ChartMogul SaaS benchmarks, and C+R Research consumer subscription studies. Where individual vendor studies are the only available source, we note it.
Subscription content is unusually noisy. "The subscription economy is USD1.5 trillion" gets repeated across thousands of blogs without specifying that the original UBS forecast was for 2025 and used a particular sub-segment definition. Churn benchmarks get quoted as global averages when they come from a single vendor's customer base. This page is the cleaner version.
Key Takeaways
- The Zuora 2025 Subscription Economy Index found SEI companies grew 11% faster than the S&P 500 over the prior two years and added 25% more unique subscribers in that period.
- Over the prior decade, SEI revenue grew at about a 17.5% CAGR versus 3.8% for the S&P 500, per Zuora.
- The 2025 Recurly Churn Report put the median B2B SaaS churn rate at 3.5%, split into 2.6% voluntary and 0.8% involuntary.
- Across more than 1,500 subscription sites, Recurly puts overall monthly churn at about 3.27% (about 2.41% voluntary and 0.86% involuntary).
- Per Paddle and ProfitWell research, failed payments account for roughly 20% to 40% of total churn across subscription businesses.
- About 10% of recurring subscription payments fail on the first attempt, per ProfitWell summarized industry data.
- UBS forecasts the subscription economy at USD1.5 trillion by 2025 per Zuora coverage of UBS research.
- Per C+R Research, the average American actually spends about USD273 per month on subscriptions, while thinking they spend about USD111 (a roughly 2.5x gap).
Subscription Economy Size Statistics
The most-cited primary source for subscription economy growth is the Zuora Subscription Economy Index (SEI). It tracks a benchmark of public companies running subscription models.
According to the Zuora 2025 SEI release, covering the 12 months ending 31 December 2024:
- SEI companies grew revenue 11% faster than the broader S&P 500 over the prior two years.
- SEI companies added 25% more unique subscribers over the prior two years.
- Over the prior decade, SEI revenue grew at about a 17.5% CAGR against about 3.8% for the S&P 500.
- That decade-long performance gap is roughly 4.6x faster growth for subscription companies.
The market size figure that gets quoted most often is from UBS Wealth Management. Per Zuora's UBS coverage, UBS forecasts the subscription economy reaching USD1.5 trillion by 2025, roughly double its 2020 baseline.
Other market research firms publish higher headline numbers, but they typically use broader category definitions (everything from streaming and gaming subscriptions to subscription boxes, SaaS, and recurring B2B services). Treat any "subscription market" headline above USD1.5 trillion as a definition difference rather than a contradiction.
Subscription Churn Rate Statistics
The strongest cross-vertical primary source for churn rates is the Recurly Churn Benchmarks research, updated annually.
According to the 2025 Recurly Churn Report:
- Median monthly churn across 1,500+ subscription sites is about 3.27%.
- That breaks down into about 2.41% voluntary churn (customer cancellations) and 0.86% involuntary churn (payment failures and billing issues).
- B2B SaaS median monthly churn sits at about 3.5%, split into 2.6% voluntary and 0.8% involuntary.
- B2B Software and Business and Professional Services have an average churn rate of about 3.8%.
- Anything below 5% annual churn is generally considered healthy for B2B SaaS.
- Anything above 7% annual churn signals serious underlying retention problems.
According to ChartMogul's SaaS benchmarks and the related growth levers report:
- Median SaaS net MRR churn is about 2.3% for companies above USD1 million in ARR.
- Median gross MRR churn for the same cohort is about 5.3%.
- Median net revenue retention (NRR) for venture-backed SaaS is about 106% across roughly 2,100 ChartMogul benchmarked companies.
- Enterprise SaaS NRR typically lands at 115% to 125%.
- SMB SaaS NRR typically lands at 90% to 105%.
- Best-in-class SaaS NRR is around 110% or higher.
Failed Payment and Involuntary Churn Statistics
The single most actionable category in subscription billing is involuntary churn, since it does not depend on persuading anyone to come back. According to Paddle's payment failure briefing and ProfitWell's research summarized by FlyCode:
- 20% to 40% of all subscription churn is involuntary.
- About 10% of recurring subscription payments fail on the first attempt.
- Average payment failure rates across subscription verticals reach about 7.9%, with some sectors as high as 14.7%.
- The average subscription business loses about 10% of annual recurring revenue to failed payments each year.
Involuntary churn rates by vertical look roughly like this in current vendor research:
| Vertical | Share of total churn that is involuntary |
|---|---|
| Subscription boxes | 25% to 35% |
| SaaS B2C | 20% to 30% |
| SaaS B2B | 15% to 25% |
| Health and wellness | 25% to 35% |
| Food and beverage | 30% to 40% |
| Beauty and personal care | 20% to 30% |
| Digital media and streaming | 20% to 30% |
Dunning and Payment Recovery Statistics
Dunning is the workflow of retrying failed payments and prompting customers to update billing info. According to Paddle's payment recovery briefing and aggregated vendor data:
- Paddle reports its dunning system recovers roughly 48% of initially failed payments.
- ProfitWell reports recovery rates above 50% using tactical retries and multiple payment options.
- Stripe's built-in retry logic is commonly cited in 35% to 40% recovery rate range.
- Churn Buster reports that an optimized retry strategy can recover 45% to 70% of initially failed payments.
- Top-performing SaaS subscription businesses (per Chargebee research) recover 75% to 85% through sophisticated retry logic and communication.
Paddle-specific operational results worth noting:
- Adding three extra retries within the standard dunning window lifted failed payment recoveries by about 20.2% in Paddle data.
- Retrying cards 24 hours after the initial failure (rather than the standard 2 hours) improved failed payment recovery by about 6.5%.
These are vendor figures, and they reflect each vendor's specific retry logic. The directional message is consistent across sources: well-designed dunning routinely lifts recovery rates above 45%, and best-in-class workflows push the rate past 70%.
MRR and ARR Benchmark Statistics
For private SaaS growth rates, the most-cited primary source is the KeyBanc Capital Markets annual SaaS survey. According to coverage of the 2024 survey:
- Median ARR growth for surveyed private SaaS companies was about 19% to 21% in 2024.
- Median surveyed company size in that cohort was about USD26 million in ARR.
- Companies with USD15 million to USD30 million ARR are now seeing about 40% of their growth from expansion, versus 30% in early 2021, per SaaStr commentary.
- Top quartile public SaaS companies typically run 80% or higher revenue growth in early stages, 75% or higher annual retention, and 84% or higher annual NRR, per ChartMogul reporting.
These benchmarks are best read as orientation, not as targets. The biggest swing factor between cohorts in current data is ACV (annual contract value) and segment (enterprise versus SMB), not any single product or pricing decision.
Freemium and Free Trial Conversion Statistics
Per First Page Sage's 2026 freemium conversion report and ProfitWell's SaaS Monetization Index summarized by getmonetizely.com:
- Most SaaS freemium products convert at 2% to 5% organically.
- A 3% to 5% organic conversion is considered good for self-serve freemium products.
- 8% to 12% is considered great.
- Sales-assisted freemium products typically convert at 5% to 7%, with top performers reaching 10% to 15%.
- ProfitWell's 2026 SaaS Monetization Index, based on 6,800 freemium products, found an average organic freemium-to-paid conversion rate of about 2.6%.
- Companies implementing role-based feature gating lifted freemium conversion to about 5.1% in the same dataset.
- Visitor-to-signup conversion is much higher for freemium than free trials, at about 12% (median), which is roughly 140% higher than free trial conversion.
Translation for product and pricing teams: 2% to 5% organic freemium conversion is a normal baseline. Anything claiming much above that range almost always involves sales-assisted onboarding, role-based gating, or a tightly defined ICP.
Subscription Payment Method Statistics
Subscription billing payment method mix is one of the noisier areas of public data. The trustworthy pattern across Paddle, Recurly, and ChartMogul reporting is that:
- Credit and debit cards still dominate subscription billing by transaction count globally.
- Bank-debit methods (ACH in the US, SEPA Direct Debit in the EU, BACS in the UK) have lower involuntary churn rates than card payments, because they do not expire and have lower decline rates.
- Digital wallets (Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal) are a growing share of subscription signup, especially in consumer subscriptions and on mobile.
The most-cited specific stat in this category is from GoCardless and similar bank-debit providers: bank-debit subscriptions typically show involuntary churn roughly half that of card subscriptions. We have not found a single primary survey that quantifies the U.S. card-versus-bank split cleanly across verticals, so we are not publishing a single headline number here.
Consumer Subscription Spend Statistics
The most-cited primary source for U.S. consumer subscription spend is C+R Research. According to its most recent study:
- The average American actually spends about USD273 per month on subscriptions.
- The average American thinks they spend about USD111 per month, a roughly 2.5x perception gap.
- That gap translates to roughly USD3,200 per year in "blind spot" spend per household.
- About 74% of consumers say it is easy to forget about recurring monthly subscription charges.
- About 42% of consumers report having forgotten about at least one subscription they are still paying for.
- About 32% of consumers say subscriptions now represent more than half of their discretionary spending.
Spend varies sharply by generation per C+R and supporting market research:
- Gen Z averages about USD377 per month.
- Millennials average about USD276 per month.
- The average household pays for about 4.5 streaming platforms at a combined USD69 per month.
Subscription Growth Statistics (Long-Term)
Per Swell's subscription commerce statistics roundup referencing UBS, Zuora, and Subscribed Institute research:
- Subscription businesses have grown about 435% over the last decade (Subscribed Institute reporting).
- The subscription economy is projected at about USD1.5 trillion by 2025 per UBS.
- Subscription billing vendors themselves (per The Paypers data summarized by Stax Bill) are growing about 30% to 50% annually.
These are long-horizon market figures rather than current-year operating benchmarks. They are useful as context for board decks and investor narratives, less useful as forward-looking targets.
What These Subscription Billing Statistics Mean
Three patterns show up across every credible primary source.
Subscription is outgrowing the broader market, but the gap is narrowing. Zuora's SEI still outperforms the S&P 500, but by less than it did in earlier editions. The decade-long 4.6x growth gap reflects an earlier period of rapid subscription expansion that is now maturing.
Most of your "churn problem" is probably a payment problem. With involuntary churn at about 0.8% to 0.86% monthly in Recurly data and failed payments responsible for 20% to 40% of total churn in Paddle and ProfitWell research, dunning workflow design is the single highest-ROI lever in most subscription businesses.
The biggest lever in freemium pricing is not the headline conversion rate. It is whether you have role-based gating, sales-assisted onboarding, or both. Organic conversion baselines cluster between 2% and 5%. The companies hitting 5%+ to 12%+ are doing structural pricing and onboarding work, not just tweaking the upgrade page.
If you only do three things from this page, do these:
- Track voluntary and involuntary churn separately. If you only report one number, you are hiding your single most addressable retention lever.
- Audit your dunning workflow end to end. A 10 to 20 percentage point recovery rate improvement is achievable in most subscription businesses just by tightening retry timing and adding multiple payment methods.
- Benchmark NRR alongside churn. Median venture-backed SaaS NRR is about 106%. If yours is below 100%, expansion is not covering churn and growth will stall.
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When this guide isn't for you
These statistics are aggregated subscription benchmarks. They are not a substitute for your own cohort data. If you operate in a high-ticket enterprise SaaS context with long sales cycles and seven-figure ACVs, the SMB-focused Recurly and ChartMogul benchmarks will not apply. If you operate in subscription boxes, food, or beauty, the SaaS-heavy NRR benchmarks above will overstate what is normal in your category. Always cohort by ACV, vertical, and motion (self-serve, sales-assisted, enterprise) before using these numbers as targets.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the average churn rate for a subscription business?
Across more than 1,500 subscription sites tracked by Recurly, median monthly churn is about 3.27%, split into about 2.41% voluntary and 0.86% involuntary. For B2B SaaS specifically, median monthly churn is about 3.5%, split into 2.6% voluntary and 0.8% involuntary.
How much does the average person pay in subscriptions?
According to C+R Research, the average American actually spends about USD273 per month on subscriptions, while estimating that they spend about USD111. Gen Z averages about USD377 per month and Millennials about USD276 per month.
What is a good failed payment recovery rate?
Vendor data clusters as follows: Stripe's built-in retry logic recovers about 35% to 40% of failed payments. Paddle and ProfitWell report 45% to 50%+ with optimized retry logic. Top-performing SaaS subscription businesses recover 75% to 85% using sophisticated retry and communication workflows.
What is a good freemium conversion rate?
Per First Page Sage and ProfitWell, 3% to 5% organic freemium-to-paid conversion is good for self-serve SaaS. 8% to 12% is great. Sales-assisted freemium typically converts at 5% to 7% with top performers in the 10% to 15% range.
How big is the subscription economy?
UBS Wealth Management forecasts the subscription economy at about USD1.5 trillion by 2025 per Zuora's UBS coverage. Broader market research firms publish higher numbers using wider definitions. The Zuora SEI tracks the public-company performance of subscription businesses and is the most-cited primary index.