ProfitWell Metrics (by Paddle)
Type: tool
Stage: Stage 5: Payment Proof
Difficulty: intermediate
Free subscription analytics covering MRR, ARR, churn, LTV, ARPU, and subscriber count — no credit card, no usage limits, no revenue caps. Benchmarks your metrics against thousands of subscription companies. The best free tool for tracking the numbers that matter at Stage 5.
Overview
ProfitWell Metrics is the best free tool for tracking the numbers that matter at Stage 5. Connect it to your Stripe account and it immediately surfaces MRR, ARR, churn rate, LTV, ARPU, and subscriber count — all in a single dashboard. No credit card. No usage limits. No revenue caps. Free forever. For founders who don't yet have $10k MRR, this is the right analytics tool. It answers the question that matters most right now: is the revenue I'm generating reliable enough to build on?
What it does
Beyond the basic metrics, ProfitWell benchmarks your numbers against its dataset of thousands of subscription companies. You don't just see your churn rate — you see whether it's above or below average for products at your price point and stage. That context changes how you interpret what you're seeing.
The tool also tracks your MRR movements with precision: new MRR (new customers), expansion MRR (upgrades), contraction MRR (downgrades), churned MRR (cancellations), and reactivation MRR (returning customers). These five numbers tell you exactly where your revenue is coming from and where it's leaking.
How to set it up at Stage 5
Create a free ProfitWell account. Connect your Stripe account via API key — this takes under five minutes. ProfitWell will immediately backfill your historical data and begin tracking from that point forward.
Set a Monday morning routine: five minutes reviewing your MRR dashboard. Track week-over-week changes in churn rate and month-one renewal rate. Those two numbers tell you whether you have a product people want to keep paying for.
What to watch
The number to focus on first is cohort retention: of the customers who started in month one, what percentage are still paying in month two? ProfitWell makes this visible without any spreadsheet work. If that number is below 80%, retention is your priority before anything else.