How to Track MRR with Stripe

Stripe is the payment processor of choice for most indie hackers and SaaS founders. But Stripe's native MRR tracking is a starting point — not the whole picture. Here's how to get the number right, using the Stripe API or a tool built on top of it.

How Stripe calculates MRR (and why it's not always right)

Stripe derives MRR by summing active subscriptions and normalizing to monthly. For simple monthly plans, this is accurate. For everything else, there are caveats:

Annual plans: Stripe counts annual_price / 12 as MRR each month. That's correct for recognized revenue, but some founders prefer to only count months as they pass.
Trials: Active trials appear in subscription lists with status: trialing. Stripe may include them in MRR even though no money has changed hands.
Paused subscriptions: On Stripe Billing, subscriptions can be paused. These still appear in the subscription list.
Free tiers / $0 plans: If you have a Stripe product with a $0 price, it shows up as a subscription with zero contribution.

The fix is to query Stripe yourself, with the right filters.

Option 1: Use the Stripe API

Here's a minimal script to calculate accurate MRR:

const Stripe = require('stripe');
const stripe = Stripe(process.env.STRIPE_SECRET_KEY);

async function calculateMRR() {
  let mrr = 0;
  let hasMore = true;
  let startingAfter = undefined;

  while (hasMore) {
    const { data, has_more } = await stripe.subscriptions.list({
      status: 'active',
      limit: 100,
      starting_after: startingAfter,
      expand: ['data.items.data.price'],
    });

    for (const sub of data) {
      for (const item of sub.items.data) {
        const price = item.price;
        const amount = (price.unit_amount / 100) * item.quantity;

        if (price.recurring.interval === 'month') {
          mrr += amount;
        } else if (price.recurring.interval === 'year') {
          mrr += amount / 12;
        }
      }
    }

    hasMore = has_more;
    startingAfter = data[data.length - 1]?.id;
  }

  return mrr;
}

Key filters to add depending on your setup:

Skip trialing subscriptions: change status: 'active' to also exclude trial_end > Date.now()
Skip $0 prices: add if (price.unit_amount === 0) continue

Option 2: Stripe Sigma

If you're on Stripe Sigma (available on paid plans), you can write SQL directly against your Stripe data:

select
  round(sum(
    case
      when p.interval = 'month' then si.quantity * p.unit_amount / 100.0
      when p.interval = 'year'  then si.quantity * p.unit_amount / 100.0 / 12
    end
  ), 2) as mrr
from subscriptions s
join subscription_items si on s.id = si.subscription_id
join prices p on si.price = p.id
where s.status = 'active'
  and p.unit_amount > 0

This gives you a single MRR figure without the edge cases. You can extend it to add filters by product, plan, or date.

Option 3: Automate it with Stripe Connect

If you want Stripe MRR tracking without writing code, mrr.fyi connects via Stripe Connect with read-only access. It reads your active subscriptions, calculates your verified MRR, and displays it on a public profile with a Verified badge.

The process:

Sign up at mrr.fyi
Go to your profile settings → Connect Stripe
Authorize read-only access via Stripe Connect
Your MRR is calculated, verified, and displayed publicly

The Verified badge matters because anyone can self-report MRR. A Stripe-connected profile shows your number is pulled directly from live subscription data — not entered by hand.

Why track MRR at all?

MRR is the heartbeat metric for any subscription business. It tells you:

Whether you're growing month-over-month
How much revenue you can count on next month
Whether churn is eating your growth

A weekly habit of checking your Stripe MRR — whether via the dashboard, a script, or a tool like mrr.fyi — is the minimum viable analytics setup for any indie SaaS founder.

Start there. Layer on churn rate and expansion MRR once your subscription count makes it worth tracking.

Ready to track your MRR automatically? Connect Stripe on mrr.fyi →