The full numbers
Monthly churn is the headline, but the retention curve underneath it is the number that decides whether the business compounds. Both are below.
| Metric | Typical | Top quartile |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly churn (B2C consumer goods) | 6.5% | — |
| Monthly churn (DTC panel) | 7.1% | — |
| Of which: voluntary | 4.1% | — |
| Of which: involuntary | 3.0% | — |
| 12-month retention, monthly billing | ~28% | — |
| 12-month retention, annual billing | ~62% | — |
| 12-month retention, overall | ~42% median | 65%+ |
Sources: Recurly Consumer Goods Churn Benchmark, Recharge DTC consumer panel. An em dash means we hold no sourced figure for that cell — we do not estimate one to fill the table.
Where these numbers come from
Two published benchmarks, both reporting across a billing platform’s own merchant base rather than a survey. Neither is Pointerflow client data.
| Source | What we cite it for | Population | Sample size |
|---|---|---|---|
| Recurly Consumer Goods Churn Benchmark | 6.5% typical monthly churn | B2C consumer-goods subscriptions | — |
| Recharge DTC consumer panel | 7.1% monthly churn, its voluntary and involuntary split, and the 12-month retention curves | DTC consumer subscription merchants | — |
- Recurly Consumer Goods Churn Benchmark — monthly churn for B2C consumer-goods subscriptions.
- Recharge DTC consumer panel — the DTC churn split and the 12-month retention curves.
Neither figure reaches us with a verifiable sample size, so those cells are em dashes. Both are population-level: a DTC subscription brand sits inside them, but no vertical — supplements, skincare, apparel, household goods — is broken out individually in either source, and neither is broken out by revenue band. When we publish narrower numbers they will be our own, and they will say so.
One definitional note that changes how you read every churn benchmark: monthly churn on a monthly-billed subscription and monthly churn on an annually-billed one are not the same measurement. The retention rows below the churn rows exist because of exactly that.
What counts as a good number?
Typical monthly churn for a consumer-goods subscription is 6.5%, and a DTC panel puts it slightly higher at 7.1%. If you are meaningfully above that, the gap is almost never product quality. If you are below it, the next question is which half you have solved — the panel splits its 7.1% into 4.1% voluntary and 3.0% involuntary, so roughly two-fifths of the churn in that sample was never a decision anyone made.
The twelve-month number is the one to judge yourself on. Median 12-month retention is around 42%; the top quartile holds 65% or more. That distance is the whole opportunity, and it is mostly infrastructure — billing, cancel logic and timing — rather than the thing in the box.
Billing cadence moves it more than almost any campaign will. Twelve-month retention runs about 28% on monthly billing against about 62% on annual: roughly double, for the same product. If you have no prepaid or annual path, that is the first place to look, not the last.
What moves it
- A cancel flow built as an interface, not a setting. Reason capture first, then a save offer matched to the reason. “Too much product” gets a cadence change, not a discount. Discounting everyone trains churn.
- Pause, skip and swap made obvious. A pause is worth vastly more than a cancel, and most brands hide the button.
- Quantity and cadence self-service. Households change what they need constantly — another person on the plan, a smaller size, a month away — and a customer who cannot resize a subscription cancels it instead.
- Prepaid and annual upgrade paths, offered as a flow at the moment of highest satisfaction rather than sitting on the pricing page.
- A replenishment timing model built from real consumption per SKU, so the reorder prompt lands before the box is empty.
- Cohort and NRR reporting that separates voluntary from involuntary, because the two have entirely different fixes.
The voluntary half of that list is subscription retention. The involuntary half — the 3.0% that was a declined card rather than a decision — is payment recovery, and it is usually the cheaper of the two to fix. For how this plays out when you bill on a schedule, see subscription brands and brands scaling past $3M.