Cohort Retention Calculator — M1 / M3 / M6 / M12 Survival

Retention tells you where your product actually stands

A team launches with 100 customers. Six months later, 52 are still active — the rest churn quietly. That 52% looks tolerable in isolation, but if you compare it to the SaaS benchmark of 80% for enterprise or 40% for SMB, you now have a concrete gap to close. Without retention snapshots, that early churn stays invisible until the revenue problem shows up months later.

Survivors and milestones, not tables

This calculator takes your raw survivor counts at each milestone (M1, M3, M6, M12) and converts them to retention percentages using a simple formula: (survivors / cohort size) × 100. It then flags M12 retention against the SaaS benchmarks: ≥ 40% for SMB, ≥ 80% for enterprise. A 100-person cohort with 40 survivors at M12 shows 40% retention — exactly the SMB minimum; at 20 survivors, you fall below the warning zone at 20%.

A snapshot, not a prediction

This tool shows you where a single cohort stands right now at fixed milestones. It does not build a full cohort table across months, does not forecast future churn, and does not adjust for seasonality or product changes mid-cohort. If retention dipped at M3 but climbed back by M6, the tool shows you both numbers separately — the interpretation is yours. For tracking multiple cohorts or predicting churn rates, you'll need to run the snapshots monthly and maintain your own trend line.

Compare against LTV math

The M12 retention number directly drives LTV. A 40% M12 retention and a 2% monthly churn rate are mathematically related; if your snapshots don't match your churn math, something in the data collection is off. Use LTV Calculator to validate that the retention curve you're seeing aligns with your lifetime value estimates.