MRR Breakdown by Plan: How to Segment Revenue in Stripe

Two SaaS businesses both report $85,000 MRR. Both have similar total churn rates. But their futures look very different.

Business A has 70% of its MRR on a $29/month entry plan that churns at 6% monthly. Business B has 70% of its MRR on a $299/month professional plan that churns at 1% monthly. At identical acquisition rates, Business A will be shrinking in two years while Business B compounds upward.

You cannot see this difference in total MRR. You cannot see it in blended churn rate. You see it only when you break MRR down by plan and track each plan's retention and growth trajectory separately.

This guide explains how to calculate MRR breakdown by plan from Stripe, what the segmentation reveals, and how to use it to make better pricing and growth decisions.

What MRR Breakdown by Plan Shows

MRR breakdown by plan segments your total MRR into the contribution from each subscription plan or pricing tier. For a business with three plans — Starter, Pro, Business — it shows:

• How much MRR each plan contributes in absolute terms
• Each plan's percentage of total MRR
• How each plan's MRR is trending over time — growing, stable, or declining
• How many customers are on each plan and their average MRR

Combined with churn analysis per plan, it answers the questions that blended metrics cannot:

• Which plan has the highest lifetime value per customer?
• Where are customers entering the product and where are they going?
• Is the revenue mix shifting toward higher or lower value plans over time?
• Which plan is responsible for the majority of Churned MRR?

How to Calculate MRR Breakdown by Plan from Stripe

Step 1: Pull all active subscriptions

Export all subscriptions with active or trialing status from Stripe. Exclude past_due and unpaid — these are revenue at risk, not clean MRR.

Step 2: Tag each subscription with its plan

In Stripe, each subscription has a price object that references a product. The product name or price nickname is your plan name. Map each subscription to its plan using the price ID or product ID.

Watch for edge cases: customers on legacy prices that no longer exist as active plans, custom prices created for specific customers, and subscriptions with multiple line items (multiple prices in one subscription).

Step 3: Normalize to monthly value per plan

For each subscription, calculate the normalized monthly value:

Annual subscriptions on a plan divide by 12. Quarterly divide by 3. Monthly stay as-is.

Step 4: Sum by plan

Step 5: Validate the total

Sum all plan MRR values — the result should equal your total clean MRR. If it does not, there are subscriptions with unrecognized plan tags (custom prices, legacy plans) that need to be accounted for separately.

A Worked Example

A SaaS business with three plans — Starter ($49/month), Pro ($149/month), Business ($399/month) — plus some annual variants:

Immediately visible: 54% of customers are on Starter but contribute only 24% of MRR. Business plan customers are 8% of the customer base but 30% of MRR. Average MRR per customer ($112) is significantly lower than the Pro plan price ($149) — indicating many customers are on the lower-price Starter plan or annual Pro variants at a discount.

Churn Rate by Plan

The most valuable output of plan-level MRR analysis is churn rate per plan. Different plans almost always have materially different churn rates:

The LTV difference is dramatic: a Business plan customer generates 67x the lifetime revenue of a Starter plan customer. Without plan-level churn analysis, the blended churn rate of ~3.5% obscures this reality. The business may be making acquisition decisions based on blended CAC:LTV ratios that undervalue Business plan customers and overvalue the economics of Starter plan acquisition.

This analysis also reveals that the Starter plan has a 5.8% monthly churn rate — above the healthy range for any segment. The natural question is: is this a deliberate entry-level plan with expected high churn, or is it a product/onboarding problem that could be addressed?

MRR Concentration Risk

Plan-level MRR breakdown immediately surfaces concentration risk — the degree to which revenue is dependent on a specific plan, customer segment, or pricing tier.

Common concentration risk patterns:

• Single plan dominance. If one plan represents more than 60% of MRR and has above-average churn, any pricing change to that plan — price increase, feature removal, competitive alternative — has outsized impact on the total business.
• Customer count vs revenue mismatch. If your entry plan has 70% of customers but 25% of revenue, you have a large customer base that is relatively low-value. This is not necessarily a problem but it shapes how you prioritize support, development, and customer success resources.
• Rapid mix shift. If the percentage of MRR from your highest-value plan is declining quarter over quarter — even as total MRR grows — it suggests customers are entering or staying on lower tiers rather than upgrading. This predicts future NRR deterioration.

How Plan Mix Affects NRR

NRR is a blended metric that aggregates expansion, contraction, and churn across all plans. But plan mix significantly affects where NRR lands — even when per-plan retention rates are unchanged.

If your revenue mix shifts toward higher-churn, lower-expansion plans over time, NRR will decline even with no change in product quality or customer satisfaction. This happens when:

• New customers disproportionately enter on entry-tier plans and do not upgrade
• Existing customers downgrade more than they upgrade
• High-value customers on premium plans churn at higher rates than usual

Tracking plan mix over time — the percentage of MRR from each plan month over month — gives early warning of NRR trend changes before they appear in the headline NRR number. See the complete NRR guide and GRR guide for how these metrics connect.

Using Plan Breakdown for Pricing Decisions

Plan-level MRR analysis is the foundation of any data-driven pricing decision. Before changing pricing, the analysis should answer:

• Where is value actually being delivered? If Business plan customers have 67x the LTV of Starter customers, the Business plan features create dramatically more value. Pricing changes that make Business more accessible or Starter less of a dead end accelerate customers toward higher-value plans.
• Is the entry plan a stepping stone or a trap? If customers on the Starter plan almost never upgrade (cohort upgrade rate below 5% at 12 months), the plan structure is not creating a natural path to higher plans. This suggests either a missing mid-tier or a value delivery problem at the entry level.
• What is the revenue impact of a price change? If you increase the Pro plan price by 20%, the revenue impact on existing customers is Plan MRR × 20% for those who stay. The risk is the percentage who downgrade or churn in response — plan-level churn analysis gives you the baseline to model this.
• Which plan should receive the most investment? Business plan customers at 67x LTV deserve proportionally more product investment, customer success resources, and retention attention than Starter plan customers.

What Dnoise Shows You

Dnoise segments MRR by Stripe product and price automatically — every plan's contribution to total MRR, with customer count, churn rate, and NRR calculated per plan.

• Plan MRR breakdown. Absolute MRR, percentage of total, customer count, and average MRR per customer for each Stripe product and price in your account.
• Plan-level churn rate. Voluntary and involuntary churn separated per plan — so you know whether high Starter churn is a product problem or a payment infrastructure problem.
• Plan mix trend. The percentage of total MRR from each plan over time — early warning of mix shifts before they affect blended NRR.
• MRR waterfall per plan. New, Expansion, Contraction, and Churned MRR broken down by plan — showing which plans are growing through expansion and which are shrinking through churn.

See also: ARR vs MRR guide, NRR guide, churn benchmarks, and MRR in the Metrics Library.

Summary

• MRR breakdown by plan segments total MRR into the contribution from each pricing tier — revealing which plans drive revenue, which have high churn, and how mix is shifting.
• Calculate by grouping active Stripe subscriptions by price or product ID and summing normalized monthly values per group.
• Churn rate by plan is the most valuable output — different plans almost always have materially different retention economics that blended metrics hide.
• MRR concentration risk is visible only at the plan level — if one plan dominates revenue and has high churn, the business is fragile.
• Plan mix shifts predict future NRR changes before they appear in headline metrics.
• Plan-level LTV differences often justify dramatically different CAC investments per acquisition channel based on which plan new customers typically enter and upgrade to.

Frequently Asked Questions