What is average revenue per user (ARPU)?

How is ARPU calculated?

ARPU = revenue in period ÷ average number of users in period
SaaS (per account): ARPA = MRR ÷ paying accounts

Define the denominator explicitly. ARPU over all users (including free) is very different from ARPPU — average revenue per paying user. B2B SaaS usually reports ARPA, per account, because one account has many seats.

ARPU example

MRR of $12,000 across 400 paying accounts gives ARPA of $30. If you also have 3,600 free users, ARPU over all 4,000 users is $3. A pricing change that moves 50 accounts from $19 to $49 adds $1,500 MRR and lifts ARPA to $33.75 without a single new customer.

Why ARPU matters

ARPU connects pricing to growth. With ARPU, churn and gross margin you can estimate LTV, and LTV sets how much you can spend to acquire a customer. Rising ARPU with flat customer count means expansion and pricing are working; falling ARPU can mean you're winning smaller customers.

Common ARPU pitfalls

• Mixing free and paying users without saying so.
• Using end-of-period user counts in fast-growing months, which understates ARPU.
• Averages hiding a few very large accounts — look at the distribution by plan.
• Comparing ARPU across companies with different user definitions.

ARPU and VisitTrack

VisitTrack reports revenue per visitor rather than per user: total attributed revenue divided by visitors, overall and by source, in the Revenue tab. That's the acquisition-side twin of ARPU — it tells you what a visitor from each channel is worth before they become a user. Calculate it for your own numbers with the revenue per visitor calculator.