Churn
What does Churn mean?
Customer churn is the loss of customers over a specified period. A customer churn rate expresses those losses as a percentage of a defined starting customer base.
A common calculation is customers lost during the period divided by customers at the start, multiplied by 100. State the period and what counts as lost: cancellation, non-renewal, or inactivity can produce different measures. Subscription tools can also use their own reporting conventions, so check the denominator before comparing dashboards.
Illustrative workplace example
A service starts a month with 400 customers and loses 12 of those customers during the month. Using the starting-base formula, monthly customer churn is 12 / 400 × 100 = 3%. New customers acquired during the month are tracked separately in this calculation.
How it differs from related ideas
Customer churn counts customers; revenue churn measures lost recurring revenue. Losing one large account can matter more financially than losing several small ones. Employee churn refers to staff departures and needs its own workforce definition. These measures are not interchangeable.
Say it in plain English
How many customers did we lose, over what period, and why?
Original dictionary entry
The rate at which employees or customers leave a business.
Sources and further reading
Expanded November 2, 2026. Examples are illustrative, not accounts of specific companies.
Satirical usage
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