7 Revenue Metrics Every Indie Hacker Should Track

You can drown in dashboards. Stripe alone exposes dozens of charts, and most of them are noise for a solo maker. These are the seven revenue metrics that actually change decisions — the short list worth putting on a home-screen widget and glancing at daily.

1. MRR — the heartbeat

Monthly Recurring Revenue is your baseline: the predictable income the business generates each month. It is the number every other metric orbits, and the one you should be able to recall from memory at any moment. If you only track one thing, track this.

2. MRR growth rate — the momentum

The level of MRR matters less than its direction and speed. Month-over-month growth rate = (this month's MRR - last month's MRR) / last month's MRR. A small business growing 10% a month is far more exciting than a bigger one that has flatlined. Growth rate is what tells you whether you are building or maintaining.

3. Churn rate — the leak

Track both customer churn and revenue churn. Churn caps your growth: at 5% monthly churn, a business tops out around 20x its monthly new revenue no matter how hard you push acquisition, because losses eventually equal gains. You cannot out-market a leaky bucket forever.

4. ARPU — the quality of a customer

Average Revenue Per User (MRR / customers) shows whether you are attracting valuable customers or just volume. Rising ARPU means your mix or pricing is improving; falling ARPU can mean discounts or a stampede into your cheapest tier.

5. Customer lifetime value — the payoff

A simple LTV estimate is ARPU divided by customer churn rate. If ARPU is $12 and monthly churn is 4%, average lifetime value is roughly $12 / 0.04 = $300. LTV tells you how much you can afford to spend to acquire a customer and still come out ahead — the single most important number if you ever spend on ads.

6. Trial-to-paid conversion — the top of the funnel

If you run a free trial or freemium tier, the percentage that converts to paid is where a lot of revenue is won or lost. Small improvements here compound: lifting conversion from 3% to 5% is a 66% increase in new revenue from the exact same traffic. It is often the cheapest lever you have.

7. Quick ratio — growth efficiency

The SaaS quick ratio = (new MRR + expansion MRR) / (churned MRR + contraction MRR). It measures how much revenue you gain for every dollar you lose. Above 4 is strong for early growth; near 1 means you are treading water. It is the one number that captures growth and churn in a single glance.

• Daily: MRR and growth rate — momentum you want to feel.
• Weekly: churn, trial conversion, quick ratio — the levers you can act on.
• Monthly: ARPU and LTV — the slow-moving structural numbers.