The subscription metrics worth tracking for an indie iOS app are a short list: monthly recurring revenue, trial conversion, churn, and lifetime value. The one thing that makes the iOS version of these numbers different from generic SaaS advice is that you should measure them in App Store proceeds, what you actually keep after Apple's commission, not the gross price on the paywall. A dashboard full of vanity revenue that ignores the 15% or 30% Apple takes will consistently overstate how your business is doing.
This post defines each metric, gives the simple formula, ties it to the App Store realities that distort it (commission, trials, failed renewals), and points to where you can actually see the numbers without building analytics yourself.
On this page
- Measure proceeds, not revenue
- MRR: your recurring baseline
- Trial conversion rate
- Churn: voluntary and involuntary
- Lifetime value
- Where to see these numbers
- FAQ
Measure proceeds, not revenue
Every metric below should be built on proceeds, not the sticker price. If your subscription is $10 per month, your proceeds are $8.50 at the 15% Small Business Program rate or $7 at the standard 30% rate. That gap is the difference between a healthy month and a break-even one, and it compounds through every downstream number: MRR, ARPU, and LTV are all wrong by the commission rate if you use gross prices.
The practical consequences are two. First, enrolling in the App Store Small Business Program to get the 15% rate is the single highest-leverage move on this whole list, because it raises proceeds on every metric at once. Second, when you compare markets, remember that both the price and the commission shape what you keep, which is why proceeds, not headline price, should drive your pricing strategy.
MRR: your recurring baseline
Monthly recurring revenue is the normalized monthly proceeds from all active subscriptions. Normalizing is the only subtlety: an annual plan does not contribute its whole price in the month it is bought, it contributes one twelfth per month.
MRR = sum over active subscriptions of (monthly-normalized proceeds)
annual plan -> yearly proceeds / 12
monthly plan -> monthly proceedsMRR is the number to watch week over week, because it smooths out the lumpiness of annual purchases and tells you whether the business is actually growing. A big annual-plan day looks great in raw revenue but only moves MRR by a twelfth, which is the honest picture.
Trial conversion rate
If you offer a free trial, trial conversion is the metric that decides whether the trial is helping. It is the share of trial starts that become paid subscriptions:
Trial conversion = paid conversions / trial startsWatch it as a rate, not a count, and give it time, since a trial started today does not resolve until the trial length has passed. A low conversion rate usually means one of three things: the trial is attracting the wrong users, the paywall is not setting the post-trial expectation clearly, or the product has not delivered value before the trial ends. The mechanics of setting the trial up are in how to add a free trial; the conversion number tells you whether it is working.
Churn: voluntary and involuntary
Churn is the share of active subscribers you lose in a period:
Monthly churn = subscriptions lost in month / active at start of monthThe distinction that matters for iOS is why they left, because the two causes have different fixes:
- Voluntary churn is customers actively cancelling. You address it with product value, retention offers, and promotional win-back offers.
- Involuntary churn is subscriptions lost to failed renewal payments, not decisions. It is often a large and completely recoverable slice, and the fix is enabling the billing grace period and letting billing retry work rather than locking customers out the moment a card fails.
If you only track a single blended churn number, you cannot tell how much of it is a product problem versus a payments problem. Split them, because chasing the wrong one wastes effort.
Lifetime value
Lifetime value estimates the total proceeds an average subscriber generates before they churn. A common simplified form ties it directly to churn:
LTV = ARPU / monthly churn rate
ARPU = average monthly proceeds per subscriberThe intuition: if the average subscriber pays $8.50 in proceeds per month and 5% of subscribers churn monthly, the average lifetime is 20 months and LTV is about $170. LTV is what tells you how much you can afford to spend acquiring a customer, so it is the bridge between these subscription metrics and any paid marketing. Treat it as an estimate that improves as you accumulate real retention data, not a precise figure on day one.
Where to see these numbers
You do not need to build an analytics pipeline to track any of this. Two sources cover almost everything:
- App Store Connect reports proceeds, sales, and subscription events, though with a reporting delay and in its own aggregations. It is the source of truth for what Apple actually paid you.
- RevenueCat, if you use it for subscriptions, surfaces MRR, active subscriptions, trial conversions, churn, and LTV as prebuilt charts with no extra code, because it already sees every purchase, renewal, and cancellation. For most indie apps this is the fastest way to get a real subscription dashboard, and it is one reason to route subscriptions through it, as covered in adding subscriptions with RevenueCat.
The goal is not a custom dashboard, it is knowing these five numbers and, crucially, reading them in proceeds so the picture is honest.
FAQ
What subscription metrics should an indie iOS app track?
MRR, trial conversion rate, churn (split into voluntary and involuntary), and lifetime value. Measure all of them in App Store proceeds, the amount you keep after Apple's commission, rather than the gross paywall price.
Should I use revenue or proceeds for these metrics?
Proceeds. Apple takes 15% or 30%, so gross revenue overstates every downstream metric by the commission rate. Building MRR, ARPU, and LTV on proceeds keeps the numbers honest.
How do I calculate MRR with annual plans?
Normalize each subscription to a monthly figure: an annual plan contributes one twelfth of its yearly proceeds per month, a monthly plan contributes its monthly proceeds. MRR is the sum of those normalized amounts across active subscriptions.
What is a good trial conversion rate?
It varies too much by category and trial length to name a single target, so track your own trend rather than a benchmark. What matters is whether it is improving as you refine the paywall, the trial length, and how quickly the product delivers value.
What is the difference between voluntary and involuntary churn?
Voluntary churn is customers choosing to cancel; involuntary churn is subscriptions lost to failed renewal payments. Involuntary churn is often recoverable by enabling the billing grace period and letting the App Store retry the charge, so it is worth tracking separately.
Do I need my own analytics to track these?
No. App Store Connect reports proceeds and subscription events, and RevenueCat provides MRR, churn, trials, and LTV as ready-made charts if you route subscriptions through it, which is enough for almost every indie app.
Every number here assumes you already have subscribers, and getting the subscription itself set up correctly, priced in proceeds you can live on, and wired to a paywall, is the part that stalls most indie apps before a single metric exists. Spaceport handles that groundwork: it creates and prices your subscription products in App Store Connect through the API, matches them in RevenueCat (where these metrics then appear as charts automatically), and generates a SwiftUI project with the paywall, purchase, and restore flow already wired in. And before you have anyone to measure, our sister tool Lighthouse helps you line up a waitlist and your first users.
From an indie iOS dev, for indie iOS devs.