Max MRR Calculator
See where your growth curve bends as rising churn catches up to your new MRR, and how much higher the ceiling moves when you improve retention or add more new revenue.
Based on Jason Cohen’s Max MRR article.
Why Growth Slows
In Jason Cohen's simple model, New MRR stays at $5,000/mo, while churn dollars grow with the size of the business. That means churn rises from $2,500/mo at today's size to $5,000/mo at $100,000 MRR, where growth levels out.
How Max MRR Is Calculated
Max MRR is the revenue level where monthly new revenue is exactly canceled out by monthly churned revenue. In the simple version of the model, Max MRR = New MRR / Monthly Churn Rate. If you add $10,000 in new MRR each month and lose 5% of total MRR to churn, the modeled ceiling is $200,000 MRR.
The reason the curve bends is that new MRR is usually much steadier than churn dollars. Churn is proportional to the size of the business, so as MRR grows, the absolute dollars lost each month grow too. At some point churn becomes the dominant force slowing growth, even if the market still feels large.
In Jason Cohen’s framing, that makes Max MRR a leading indicator. It tells you where growth starts to stall before revenue fully makes that obvious. Small changes in monthly churn can move the ceiling by a surprising amount, which is why retention work often matters more than founders expect.
Why Founders Watch Max MRR
Max MRR is useful because it explains why a business can feel healthy in the moment but still be headed toward a plateau. When current MRR is far below Max MRR, growth feels easy. As current MRR approaches that ceiling, churn starts eating more of every new month of revenue and the curve rounds over.
That makes Max MRR a practical operating metric. You can watch it move monthly, see whether retention or acquisition work is raising the ceiling, and spot when a seemingly small churn change materially alters the future shape of the business.
Acquirers care about the same thing for the same reason: a company operating well below its ceiling has more built-in runway than one already near stall speed. But the founder use-case comes first. This metric is most valuable while you still have time to change it.
Max MRR FAQ
What is max MRR? +
Max MRR is the modeled revenue ceiling where monthly new revenue exactly equals monthly churned revenue. In the simple version of the metric, Max MRR = New MRR / Churn Rate. It matters because it predicts where growth starts flattening before the plateau is obvious in top-line revenue.
How does churn rate determine the revenue ceiling? +
Churn rate is the dominant variable because it scales with the whole business. As MRR grows, the dollar amount of churn grows too. That is why even a small improvement in monthly churn can move the ceiling dramatically: 5% churn implies a much lower future than 4% churn, even when new MRR is unchanged.
What counts as new MRR and churn in this model? +
Following Jason Cohen’s breakdown, new MRR should include new customer MRR, upgrades, and reactivations. Churn should include cancellations and downgrades. The model is most useful when those definitions are applied consistently over time so the ceiling can be compared month to month.
What is a good churn rate for a SaaS preparing to sell? +
For many SaaS businesses, monthly revenue churn below 2% is good and below 1% is excellent. Jason’s broader point is that 6% or 7% monthly churn is precarious even if revenue still appears to be growing, because it forces you to keep finding more and more new MRR just to hold the same shape of growth.
How long does it take to reach the MRR ceiling? +
The trajectory starts steep and then decelerates as churn dollars grow with revenue. Founders usually notice the stall late because the curve bends before it flattens. This calculator is designed to make that bend visible earlier, while you still have time to change it.
Can expansion revenue break through the MRR ceiling? +
Not in the simple way this model assumes. When net revenue retention is above 100%, expansion can outpace churn and the classic Max MRR ceiling stops being the whole story. That does not make the metric useless, but it does mean you should treat it as one lens on growth rather than the complete answer.