← Stripe Churn and Cohort Analyzer

This analyzer vs. ChartMogul and Baremetrics for Stripe churn

Connected subscription-analytics products read your billing account and keep a dashboard current. If all you need is MRR, churn and cohort retention from the subscriptions you have, a Stripe CSV export and a local analysis answers it for free, with no account and no read access handed to anyone. Here is where each approach fits.

Side by side

QuestionConnected analytics productThis CSV analyzer
SetupConnect your Stripe account (read access to billing data) and wait for the importExport a CSV from the Stripe Dashboard, drop it in the page or run node cli.mjs
Where your data goesTo the vendor, under its terms and security practicesNowhere. Read in your browser tab or local process; the page makes no network requests with your file
CostCheck each vendor's current pricing pageFree, MIT licensed
MRR, new and churned MRR, logo and revenue churnYesYes, from start and cancel dates and amounts
Cohort retention by start monthYesYes
Expansion and contraction MRR (upgrades, downgrades)Yes, from invoice and event historyNo. Each subscription's MRR is held constant
Discounts, refunds, trials, failed-payment recoveryTypically yesNo. A subscription export does not carry them
Always-current dashboard, alerts, team accessYesNo. You re-export when you want a fresh reading
Price-rise what-if with break-even cancellation shareVaries by productYes, built in, labelled as assumptions rather than a forecast
Scriptable alert when churn passes a limitVaries by productYes: --max-churn exits 1 in a cron or CI job

The right-hand column describes this tool exactly. The middle column describes the general category from the vendors' public descriptions; check a product's own documentation for what it supports today.

When a CSV is enough, and when it is not

A CSV is enough when you are an early-stage founder checking whether churn is concentrated in the first months, comparing plans, sizing a price rise, or preparing a board or investor note once a month and you would rather not give a third party billing access to do it.

Use a connected product when expansion revenue is a large part of your story (seat-based or usage-based pricing), when discounts and refunds distort your real revenue, when several people need a live dashboard, or when you want failed-payment recovery and alerts without lifting a finger. Those need history a subscriptions export does not contain.

Do it in three steps

  1. In the Stripe Dashboard open Billing → Subscriptions and export as CSV.
  2. Drop the file into the analyzer, or run it from a terminal:
    node cli.mjs subscriptions.csv --cohorts
    node cli.mjs subscriptions.csv --max-churn 5   # exit 1 if monthly logo churn > 5%
  3. Read the findings first (early-life churn, rising churn, concentration, plan gaps), then the cohort table.

Export labels in the Stripe Dashboard change over time. The analyzer recognises the common header names and lists any row it cannot read with a line number and reason.

Questions

Is there a free alternative to ChartMogul or Baremetrics for Stripe churn?

For a one-off or monthly look at MRR, churn and cohort retention, yes: export your subscriptions from the Stripe Dashboard as CSV and analyze the file in your browser or with the command-line version. Nothing is uploaded and no account or API key is needed. It reads start and cancel dates and amounts, so it cannot see upgrades, discounts, refunds or failed payments the way a connected product that reads your full billing history can.

What do connected analytics tools do that a CSV analysis cannot?

Products that connect to your billing account can read invoice and event history, so they can report expansion and contraction MRR, discounts, refunds, trials and failed-payment recovery, keep the dashboard current without a monthly export, and join billing data with other sources. A subscriptions export carries only the dates and amounts on each subscription, so this tool holds each subscription's MRR constant and shows new and churned MRR only.

Can I run it automatically every month?

Yes. The command-line version reads a CSV from a file or stdin and can exit with status 1 when monthly logo churn passes a threshold you choose, so a cron job or CI step can flag a spike. You still need to export the CSV from Stripe; it does not connect to your account.

Are these tools affiliated with this one?

No. This project is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by ChartMogul, Baremetrics, Paddle or Stripe. Their names are used only to describe what each kind of tool does.

Free, open source (MIT). Estimates from the dates and amounts in your file; not legal, tax, or financial advice. No warranty. Sponsor.