# Subscription Metrics
We work on a lot of products that have a monthly or yearly subscription business model. There are some classic metrics we know we want to track for these products, such as:
- Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)
- Active subscriptions
- Lifetime Value (LTV (opens new window))
- Churn per-plan, monthly and annually
Since we use Stripe for payments, we've found Baremetrics (opens new window) is the fastest and easiest way to track these metrics.
If our clients want to raise money from investors, the following numbers are generally considered investment-ready:
- LTV is 3x-5x greater than Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) (opens new window)
- 10-30% month-over-month growth in MRR (opens new window)
- 5-7% annual churn (opens new window)
Churn is particularly critical when fundraising. Small changes in churn can drastically improve valuation (opens new window).
Calculating CAC is a manual spreadsheet exercise. It requires adding employee overhead costs and direct marketing costs together, then dividing by the number of new customers for that month.