Freemium unit economics calculator
See what your free users cost each paying user, and the contribution, lifetime value and acquisition payback left after that. Find the paying share you need to cover your free users.
Up to 1,000,000,000 free users and 1 to 1,000,000,000 paying users. Revenue per paying user up to 1,000,000, and costs per user and acquisition cost up to 1,000,000 with four decimal places. Fees from 0 to 100 percent, churn from 0.01 to 100 percent and sign-up conversion from 0.001 to 100 percent. Calculated on your device. Download a JSON report and CSV files. Up to 1,000,000 characters. Review the settings before running.
Your result
How to use Freemium unit economics calculator
- Enter your active free users, paying users and average revenue per paying user each month.
- Enter payment fees and the monthly cost to serve a paying user and a free user.
- Enter monthly churn, acquisition cost per sign-up and the share of sign-ups who pay.
- Calculate, review contribution, lifetime value and payback, then download the report.
Useful next steps
Contribution per paying user
Each paying user contributes their monthly revenue after payment and app store fees, minus the cost to serve them: 12.00 less 5% less 1.40 is 10.00 in the example. All free users together cost the cost to serve one free user times their number, 48,000 times 0.18, or 8,640.00 a month. Shared across 1,900 paying users that is 4.55 each, which leaves 5.45 of contribution per paying user. Vineet Kumar describes this link between free-user costs and paying users in Making Freemium Work (Harvard Business Review, May 2014).
Break-even paying share
Free users are covered when the paying share times the paid contribution equals the free share times the free-user cost. Solving that gives a break-even paying share of the free-user cost divided by the sum of the paid contribution and the free-user cost: 0.18 divided by 10.18 is 1.77%. The example has 3.81% paying, so its free users are covered. One paying user can carry up to the paid contribution divided by the free-user cost, here 55.56 free users.
Lifetime and payback
Expected paid lifetime is one divided by monthly churn, the average lifetime formula for a constant retention rate in Marketing Metrics by Farris, Bendle, Pfeifer and Reibstein (2nd edition, Pearson, 2010): 4% churn gives 25 months. Lifetime contribution multiplies that by the contribution after free users and is not discounted. Acquisition cost per paying user is the cost per sign-up divided by the share of sign-ups who pay, 1.10 divided by 3.5%, or 31.43, and payback is that cost divided by the monthly contribution, 5.76 months. Fixed costs such as salaries and development are not included.