What is Voluntary Churn?
- Khushi Lunkad
- 7 days ago
- 2 min read
Updated: 1 day ago
This article is a part of my Churn Combat Kit. Read the rest of the chapters here.
We know that churn is made up of voluntary and involuntary churn.
Voluntary churn occurs when people raise their hand and wave goodbye. Involuntary is due to payment failures.
Voluntary is typically more common than involuntary churn. These users churn via a cancel flow or by asking your CS team to cancel their subscription.
Voluntary churn benchmarks for newly founded companies
Typical split between younger companies is 80-20 for voluntary and involuntary churn.
(Per month) | Good Voluntary Churn | Great Voluntary Churn |
B2C SaaS | 2.5% to 4% | Less than 1.6% |
B2B SMB and Mid-Market | 2% to 4% | Less than 1.2% |
B2B Enterprise | 0.8% to 1.6% | Less than 0.4% |
Voluntary churn benchmarks for older, mature companies
For mature companies, it isn't uncommon to see a 60-40 split between voluntary and involuntary churn.
(Per month) | Good Voluntary Churn | Great Voluntary Churn |
B2C SaaS | 1.8% to 3% | Less than 1.2% |
B2B SMB and Mid-Market | 1.5% to 3% | Less than 0.9% |
B2B Enterprise | 0.6% to 1.2% | Less than 0.3% |
If you're churn numbers are measured annually, convert them to monthly using this calculator.
The data shows that for every 1% increase in voluntary churn, you lose around 5-12% of your customers in a given year.
To predict upcoming cancellations most reliably, you can monitor a drop in usage in your core action metrics or when auto-renew is turned off.
There are three ways to prevent voluntary churn
At the point of cancellation (pause walls, dunning, trial extensions, plan switchers)
Prior to cancellation (acquisition, activation, monetization)
Changing the core product (adding or removing features)
Next steps for you
Look through your data and try to answer these questions.
What percentage of your revenue churn is voluntary?
What is the split between early churners and late churners? Eg, people that churn in Month 1 vs Month 9.
What's the split between annual churn vs monthly churners?
These metrics will help you better understand which tactics to apply. And what KPIs to measure.
Soon, you'll be able to answer questions like
What offer works better: discount vs pauses?
How should we A/B test a pause plan versus a downgrade flow?
Are check‑ins at day 7 or day 30 more effective for preventing cancellations?
How can we forecast voluntary churn 12 months out using cohort data?
and more..
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