SaaS Analytics & Metrics: MRR, Churn, CAC, LTV & Dashboard Guide

The Metrics That Matter

There are hundreds of things you could measure. Focus on these five:

1. MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue)

The heartbeat of your SaaS business. Calculate it as: New MRR + Expansion MRR - Churned MRR. Track each component separately so you know where growth is coming from and where you're leaking revenue.

2. Churn Rate

The percentage of customers who cancel in a given period. Healthy benchmarks vary by segment:

If your churn is above these numbers, fix retention before investing in acquisition.

3. CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost)

Total sales and marketing spend divided by the number of new customers acquired. Include everything: ads, salaries, tools, content production. Know your CAC by channel so you can double down on what works.

4. LTV (Lifetime Value)

How much revenue a customer generates before they churn. Calculate it as: ARPU / Monthly Churn Rate. The golden rule: LTV should be at least 3x your CAC. Below that, you're spending too much to acquire customers or not retaining them long enough.

5. NRR (Net Revenue Retention)

Measures whether your existing customers are spending more or less over time. Above 100% means existing customers are expanding faster than they're churning. Best-in-class SaaS companies achieve 120-140% NRR — they grow even without acquiring new customers.

Setting Up Analytics

You need two categories of analytics:

Product Analytics (How Users Behave)

Business Analytics (How the Business Performs)

For early-stage SaaS: PostHog + Stripe Dashboard is enough. Don't over-invest in analytics tooling before you have meaningful data. Add more sophisticated tools as you scale past your first 100 customers.

Event Tracking

The biggest mistake founders make with analytics is tracking everything. You end up with noise, not signal.

Track These High-Value Events

Skip These

Start with 5-10 key events that map directly to your activation and retention goals. You can always add more later, but you can't retroactively make sense of a firehose of meaningless data.

Building a Metrics Dashboard

Build an internal admin page with six essential tiles:

  1. Current MRR — with month-over-month trend indicator (up/down percentage).
  2. Active Users (30d) — users who performed a meaningful action in the last 30 days.
  3. Churn Rate — monthly churn with a sparkline showing the trend.
  4. New Signups — weekly signups to track top-of-funnel momentum.
  5. Activation Rate — percentage of signups who reach your "aha moment" (signup to active).
  6. LTV:CAC Ratio — target 3:1 or higher.

Build this as an internal admin page in your app, not a separate tool. Use your existing Supabase data combined with Stripe API calls. Keep it simple — a clean page with numbers and trend arrows is more useful than elaborate charts nobody reads.

Data-Driven Decisions

Metrics are only useful if they change your behavior. Here's how to respond to what the numbers tell you:

Vanity Metrics vs Actionable Metrics

A vanity metric makes you feel good but doesn't tell you what to do. An actionable metric points to a specific decision.

The litmus test: If this metric goes up, does it tell you what to do next? If the answer is no, it's a vanity metric. Track it if you want, but don't make decisions based on it.