What is MRR?
Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) is the total predictable revenue your subscription business generates in a single month. It normalizes all your subscription plans — monthly, annual, quarterly — into one comparable monthly number.
For indie hackers, MRR is the heartbeat metric. It tells you, at a glance, whether your business is growing, stagnating, or dying — without having to dig into individual transactions.
How to Calculate MRR
The basic formula is straightforward:
MRR = Number of active subscribers × Average revenue per user (ARPU)
But in practice, you need to account for different plan intervals:
- Monthly subscribers: count their monthly charge directly
- Annual subscribers: divide their annual charge by 12
- Quarterly subscribers: divide by 3
Example: You have 10 customers on a $29/month plan and 5 customers on a $290/year plan. Your MRR is:
(10 × $29) + (5 × $290 / 12) = $290 + $120.83 = $410.83 MRR
Why MRR Matters More Than Total Revenue
Total revenue is a vanity metric for subscription businesses. A spike in total revenue could come from a one-time sale, a discount campaign, or an annual plan renewal — none of which tells you if the business is healthy.
MRR strips away the noise. It answers the only question that matters: are people paying you consistently, month after month?
Investors, acquirers, and fellow builders on leaderboards like Makerfolio all use MRR as the benchmark because it's the most honest signal of product-market fit.
MRR Benchmarks for Indie Hackers
| Stage | MRR Range | What it means | |-------|-----------|---------------| | Pre-revenue | $0 | Still validating | | Ramen profitable | $1,000–$3,000 | Can cover basic expenses | | Indie sustainable | $3,000–$10,000 | Full-time independent | | Small SaaS | $10,000–$50,000 | Growing product business | | Mid-market SaaS | $50,000+ | Scaling operations |
MRR vs One-Time Revenue
Not all money is MRR. If you sell lifetime deals (LTDs), those are one-time revenue — they don't count toward MRR even though they're real money in your account.
This is important: a builder who sells 100 LTDs at $99 each has $9,900 in revenue but $0 in MRR. Their business is not recurring yet.
Makerfolio tracks both separately — verified MRR from your Stripe or Polar subscriptions, and total revenue that includes one-time transactions.
Common MRR Mistakes
- Counting trials as MRR: free trials aren't revenue until they convert
- Forgetting failed payments: churned-due-to-payment-failure should be subtracted
- Using gross instead of net: always use net MRR (after refunds and discounts)
- Not normalizing annual plans: divide by 12, always
How Makerfolio Tracks Your MRR
Connect your Stripe or Polar account to Makerfolio with a read-only API key. Makerfolio fetches your active subscriptions, normalizes them to monthly values, and displays your verified MRR on your public builder profile — updating automatically every time you sync.