Startup MRR Benchmarks 2026: Growth & Churn Rates
Short answer: there is no single “good” MRR. What you can benchmark is the rate: monthly growth compounds, monthly churn compounds against you, and two widely used rules of thumb (T2D3 and the Rule of 40) turn those rates into targets. The tables below are arithmetic you can check, and the two rules link to the people who published them.
About the data: this page does not use ShowMRR leaderboard figures. As of 2026-10-12 ShowMRR does not have enough provider-verified startups to publish statistical benchmarks, and most figures on the leaderboard are self-reported (they are labelled that way). When there is a verified sample worth reporting, it will be added here with its size and date.
Monthly growth: what it compounds to
MRR growth is usually quoted month over month. Because it compounds, small differences in the monthly rate become large differences over a year.
| Monthly MRR growth | MRR after 12 months | Months to double |
|---|---|---|
| 5% | 1.8× | 14.2 |
| 10% | 3.1× | 7.3 |
| 15% | 5.4× | 5.0 |
| 20% | 8.9× | 3.8 |
Formula: MRR after 12 months = MRR × (1 + g)12; months to double = ln 2 / ln(1 + g). Run your own numbers in the MRR calculator.
Monthly churn: what it costs in a year
Churn compounds the other way. A monthly rate that sounds small removes a large share of customers over a year, and it sets how long the average customer stays.
| Monthly churn | Customers left after 12 months | Average lifetime |
|---|---|---|
| 1% | 88.6% | 100 months |
| 2% | 78.5% | 50 months |
| 3% | 69.4% | 33 months |
| 5% | 54.0% | 20 months |
| 10% | 28.2% | 10 months |
Formula: customers left = (1 − c)12; average lifetime ≈ 1 / c months, assuming a constant rate. The churn rate calculator and the CAC and LTV calculator do this with your numbers.
T2D3: the venture-scale growth target
Neeraj Agrawal of Battery Ventures described T2D3 in The SaaS Travel Adventure (TechCrunch, 2015-02-01): once a company reaches about $2M ARR, it triples ARR for two years and then doubles it for three, roughly $2M → $6M → $18M → $36M → $72M → $144M.
In monthly terms, tripling in a year is about 9.6% MRR growth every month, and doubling is about 5.9%. $2M ARR is roughly $167K MRR. T2D3 is a target for venture-backed companies; a bootstrapped product can be healthy far below it.
The Rule of 40: growth and profit together
Brad Feld wrote up The Rule of 40% for a Healthy SaaS Company (2015-02-03): your growth rate plus your profit margin should add up to at least 40%. A company growing 20% a year should earn about 20% profit; one growing 50% can run at a 10% loss. He applies it to SaaS companies at scale and suggests year-over-year MRR growth for the growth side.
How to use these benchmarks
- Benchmark rates, not totals: monthly growth, monthly churn, and the payback on acquisition spend.
- Read growth net of churn. Adding 10% of MRR a month while losing 5% to churn is about 5% net growth, which the first table puts at 1.8× a year, not 3.1×.
- Use T2D3 only if you are raising venture money; use the Rule of 40 once you are profitable or close to it.
- Put your own numbers into the SaaS metrics benchmark tool.
See real startups’ MRR
The ShowMRR leaderboard ranks startups by MRR. A figure gets the verified badge only when ShowMRR reads it from a connected payment provider (LemonSqueezy, Stripe or Polar); figures a founder types in are labelled self-reported, with the date they were entered. How verification works.
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