Benchmarks 101: Subscriber benchmarks

Optimize your subscription funnel using Recurly's subscriber benchmarks. Compare your acquisition rate and sign-up decline rate to reduce checkout friction and detect fraud.

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Scale • Benchmarks 101

Subscriber benchmarks

Two KPIs that define the top of your subscription funnel — how effectively you're acquiring new paying subscribers, and how often first payments fail.

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Subscriber benchmarks walkthrough

~3 min

A walkthrough of the Subscriber Benchmarks dashboard — Acquisition Rate and Sign-Up Decline Rate explained.

Acquisition Rate

Analytics → Subscriber Management → Subscriber Benchmarks New paying subscribers this month ÷ Total paying subscribers

Measures the percentage of your subscriber base that is newly acquired each month. Only paying subscribers count — trial users are excluded. Your rate is compared against peers in your selected industry.

This metric tells you how fast you're growing relative to your industry. A rate consistently below the median signals a checkout or conversion problem worth investigating. A rate at or above the top quartile means your acquisition engine is outperforming your peer group.

What moves this metric

Acquisition Rate responds to checkout friction, payment method mix, trial offer structure, and the quality of traffic reaching your signup flow. If your rate is lagging benchmark, start by reviewing your sign-up decline rate — a high first-attempt failure rate suppresses acquisition directly.

Sign-Up Decline Rate

Analytics → Subscriber Management → Subscriber Benchmarks Declined first payment attempts at signup ÷ Total signup payment attempts

Tracks the percentage of first payment attempts during signup that are declined. Retries are not included — this measures only the initial transaction your gateway receives. A lower rate means more subscribers are getting through on the first try.

Current month data looks low — that's expected

Sign-up data accumulates throughout the month, so the current month will always show a lower figure than completed months. Don't interpret this as a positive trend — compare completed months only when looking for changes over time.

Beyond the benchmark comparison, Sign-Up Decline Rate is one of your most actionable early-warning signals. Two specific use cases make it worth checking regularly, not just monthly.

Fraud detection

A sudden spike in decline responses — especially fraud or "do not honor" codes — may indicate card testing on your checkout. Catching this early lets you act before chargebacks accumulate and before card networks flag your account.

Gateway comparison

Filter sign-up declines by gateway to compare first-attempt approval rates across processors. If you're evaluating a new gateway or routing strategy, this is where the performance difference shows up first.

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Resources

Recurly Docs: Subscriber benchmarks Recurly Docs: Built-in benchmarks Join Global Office Hours Contact Recurly Support