What is MRR for a Shopify app?

Monthly recurring revenue: the monthly price of every subscription paying today, at each store's current plan, before Shopify's revenue share and fees. Annual plans count for a twelfth, and trials, usage charges and one-time purchases are left out.

What is churn for a Shopify app?

The loss of paying stores or revenue over a period. It takes three forms, uninstalls, cancellations and frozen subscriptions, and is measured as store churn (paying stores lost ÷ paying stores at the start) or revenue churn (MRR lost ÷ MRR at the start).

What is the difference between MRR and earnings?

MRR is the monthly price of active subscriptions, before Shopify's cut, and it moves the day a subscription starts or ends. Earnings are what Shopify pays you after its revenue share and app credits, once merchants have paid, and they include usage and one-time charges.

What does surface_type mean in a Shopify App Store link?

It is a parameter Shopify adds to your listing's address to say which type of App Store page the merchant came from, such as search, search_ad, category or home. With surface_detail, it shows the words typed in a search.

What is a good churn rate for a Shopify app?

Shopify does not publish one, and figures quoted online rarely say how they were measured. Compare your own cohorts month after month instead.

Luseri / Guides

Shopify app metrics glossary

MRR, monthly recurring revenue, is the monthly price of every subscription paying today; churn is the share of paying stores, or of that revenue, lost over a month. Below, every metric a Shopify app developer follows, defined in a sentence or two, with how Luseri calculates or shows it and the guide that goes further.

By Arthur Renard, updated October 21, 2026

Revenue

Revenue for a Shopify app comes in two measures: the recurring price of active plans (MRR), and the money merchants were actually billed (cash collected). They differ in timing, in what they include and sometimes in currency.

Term	What it means	In Luseri
MRR (monthly recurring revenue)	The monthly price of every subscription paying today, at each store's current plan, before Shopify's cut. An annual plan counts for a twelfth; trials, usage charges and one-time purchases are left out.	Rebuilt from Partner API subscription events, in the currency of your plans. See how to calculate MRR.
MRR movements	What changed MRR over a period: new subscribers, upgrades and returning subscribers add to it, downgrades and cancellations take from it.	Shown as gains above the line and losses below, with the net for the period.
ARR (annual recurring revenue)	MRR × 12: what your subscriptions would bring in over a year if nothing changed.	MRR × 12.
Cash collected	What merchants were actually billed for your app: subscriptions, usage charges and one-time purchases, with refunds and adjustments.	The gross amount of each payout read from Shopify, in the currency of your payouts, with Shopify's fees shown apart.
ARPU (average revenue per user)	The average monthly revenue of one paying store.	Cash collected over 30 days ÷ active subscribers, usage charges included.
LTV (lifetime value)	What a paying store brings in on average before it leaves, often estimated as ARPU ÷ monthly churn.	ARPU ÷ share of recurring revenue lost per month. Try your own numbers in the churn and LTV calculator.
Usage charges	Fees billed on top of a subscription, based on what the store uses.	Counted in cash collected, never in MRR.
One-time purchase	A single charge outside any subscription. Shopify App Pricing does not support them; the Billing API does.	Counted in cash collected, never in MRR.
Revenue share	Shopify's cut of your app revenue: 0% on your first 1,000,000 US dollars of lifetime gross app revenue, counted since January 1, 2025, then 15%, for developers registered on the App Store.	Included in Fees taken by Shopify, as Shopify reports it on each payout. See Shopify's app revenue share and its calculator.
Processing fee	2.9% that Shopify charges on all billing, separately from the revenue share.	Included in Fees taken by Shopify.
Earnings and payouts	What Shopify has paid you or will pay you, after its revenue share and app credits. Shopify pays out twice a month, once your balance is above 25 US dollars.	The Revenue page estimates the next payout: gross revenue of the last 15 days minus Shopify's fees.

Subscriptions and trials

A subscriber is a store paying for a plan; a store on a trial or a free plan is not one. Every change in a store's plan moves MRR in one of the ways below.

Term	What it means	In Luseri
Subscriber (paying store)	A store paying for one of your plans.	Active subscribers: stores whose subscription is paying that day.
Free trial	Days during which a store uses a paid plan before its first charge. With Shopify App Pricing, you set trials per plan in the Partner Dashboard.	Inferred from Shopify's events: a charge whose next billing date falls more than 12 hours after its activation is a trial until that date.
Trial conversion	The share of trials that end with a first payment.	Trials turned into subscribers: trials that ended with a first payment ÷ all trials that ended in the period.
New subscriber	A store that starts paying.	In MRR movements, a store's first payment ever; a later one counts as a return. The New subscribers count adds up both, with or without a trial.
Upgrade and downgrade (expansion and contraction)	A paying store moves to a more expensive, or cheaper, plan. Only the price difference changes MRR.	Read when a new charge is activated while the store is paying, including within 10 minutes of a cancellation.
Returning subscriber (reactivation)	A store that had paid before and pays again.	Includes a subscription that Shopify unfreezes.
Cancellation	A subscriber stops paying. The store may keep the app on a free plan, or uninstall it.	Includes the uninstall of a paying store and a frozen subscription.
Frozen subscription	Shopify puts billing on hold when a store does not pay, and unfreezes it when billing resumes.	Counted as lost on the day of the freeze, and as a return if it is unfrozen.
Test charge	A charge created with `test: true`, for example to try your plans on a development store. Nobody pays it.	Ignored everywhere.

Each rule, event by event, is in how Luseri calculates MRR, churn and retention.

Churn and retention

Churn for a Shopify app is the loss of paying stores or of revenue over a period, and it takes three forms: uninstalls, cancellations and frozen subscriptions. Retention looks at the same losses from the other side, cohort by cohort.

Term	What it means	In Luseri
Store churn (logo churn)	Paying stores lost during the month ÷ paying stores at the start of the month.	Subscribers who cancel per month: paying subscribers who stopped paying over 30 days ÷ subscribers 30 days earlier.
Revenue churn (MRR churn)	MRR lost during the month ÷ MRR at the start of the month. Downgrades are often added to the loss.	Share of recurring revenue lost per month: cancellations, uninstalls of paying stores and freezes over 30 days ÷ MRR 30 days earlier. Downgrades are shown apart.
Uninstall rate	Stores that removed the app ÷ stores that had it.	Uninstalls over 30 days ÷ active installs 30 days earlier, paying or not.
Active installs	Stores that have the app right now.	Installed stores minus those Shopify reports as deactivated (closed or paused). Development stores count.
Net installs	Installs minus uninstalls over a period. Below zero, the base is shrinking.	Installs minus uninstalls.
Reinstall	A store that had the app, removed it and installs it again.	Counted as an install; the store stays in the cohort of its first install.
Cohort	The stores that installed during the same month, followed together.	Grouped by the calendar month of their first install, over the last 12 months.
Cohort retention	The share of a cohort that still has the app 1, 2, 3 or more months later.	Checked on the first day of each following month; install retention, paying or not.
Uninstall reason	Since April 23, 2026, merchants must pick one of eight reasons before uninstalling, and may add a comment. The Partner API returns both.	Grouped into plain labels and counted over 365 days. See why merchants uninstall your app.
`scheduled_cancellation`	The uninstall reason Shopify records when a store closure scheduled by the merchant takes effect, according to Shopify staff in April 2026.	Grouped under its own reason, Store closing or pausing, and still counted in uninstalls.

Which events count as churn, and how to compute both rates by hand, is in how to measure churn for a Shopify app.

App Store visibility

Visibility metrics say where merchants find your listing: its rank in its category, its position on searches, and the App Store page each visit came from, which Shopify writes into your listing's address.

Term	What it means	In Luseri
Listing	Your app's public page in the Shopify App Store: name, screenshots, description, pricing, reviews.	Reviews and rating over a year, and a log of changes to its name, plans and categories.
Category rank	Your app's place in the full list of its App Store category, in the order Shopify shows by default.	Recorded every day among the first 192 places, as a signed-out visitor sees the list.
Keyword position (search rank)	Where your listing appears in App Store results for a search.	Your position on up to 20 keywords you choose, and the position of the apps you watch, read every day among the first 192 App Store search results. See Shopify App Store keyword research.
`surface_type`	A parameter Shopify adds to your listing's address: the type of App Store page the merchant came from (`search`, `search_ad`, `category`, `home`, `collection`, `story`, `partners`, `app_details` or `app_group`).	Read from your Google Analytics 4 to split listing views between search, ads, categories and other pages.
`surface_detail`	Details of that page: the words typed for a search, the title of a category or collection.	The searches that brought each visit, by country and language.
`surface_inter_position`, `surface_intra_position`	For a search, a category or a collection: the page of results, then the place within that page.	Turned into a position at 24 apps per page. Ads placed before your listing on that page are counted, and pages beyond the 10th are left out of averages.
Listing conversion	Installs ÷ listing views.	Listing visitors who install: installs from the Partner API ÷ views from your Google Analytics 4.
Built for Shopify	A badge for apps that meet Shopify's highest quality bar: at least 50 net installs from active stores on paid Shopify plans, at least 5 reviews, a minimum rating, and speed and design requirements. Shopify says it raises an app's position in search.	Shown on the Competitors page, for your listing and each app you watch, as the listing displays it. See Built for Shopify.
App Store ads	Paid slots in App Store search results, category pages and the homepage, paid per click, with a daily budget of at least 5 US dollars.	Visits from search ads (`search_ad`) appear apart in the Google Analytics breakdown; tracked keyword positions leave ads out. See Shopify App Store ads.

How to read these parameters in your own property is in App Store search terms in GA4.

Shopify's tools and data

These are the places the numbers come from, and they do not always agree.

Term	What it means	In Luseri
Partner API	Shopify's GraphQL API for a Partner organization: app events, transactions and historical events, at four requests per second per API client.	Luseri's only source for revenue, installs and churn, read with a client that needs "Manage apps" only. See the Shopify Partner API.
Partner Dashboard	Where you manage your apps and listings, and see earnings, payouts, app history and CSV exports.	Luseri does not read it; its earnings differ from MRR in amount and in timing.
Dev Dashboard	Shopify's developer dashboard, which since September 25, 2026 shows installs (development, closed and frozen stores included), revenue after Shopify's deductions, and uninstalls.	Luseri does not read it. Why its counts differ: Dev Dashboard vs Partner Dashboard.
Shopify App Pricing	The default way to bill merchants for new public apps since May 12, 2026, formerly Managed Pricing: plans, prices and trials are set in the Partner Dashboard, with plan prices in US dollars.	Its subscriptions are read from the same Partner API events. See Shopify App Pricing.
Billing API	The older way to create charges from your app's code, which Shopify now calls legacy.	Its charges arrive as the same events and are calculated the same way.
Development store	A store Partners create to build and test apps.	Nothing in the app events tells it apart, so its installs count like any other.
Health score	A score of how actively a store uses your app.	From 0 to 100 over 30 days, with optional in-app tracking: up to 60 points for recency (active today 60, inactive for 30 days 0) and up to 40 for regularity (12 active days or more).

What Luseri can access to compute all this, and what it keeps, is in is Luseri secure and its privacy policy. Who builds it: who makes Luseri.

Questions

What is MRR for a Shopify app?: Monthly recurring revenue: the monthly price of every subscription paying today, at each store's current plan, before Shopify's revenue share and fees. Annual plans count for a twelfth, and trials, usage charges and one-time purchases are left out.
What is churn for a Shopify app?: The loss of paying stores or revenue over a period. It takes three forms, uninstalls, cancellations and frozen subscriptions, and is measured as store churn (paying stores lost ÷ paying stores at the start) or revenue churn (MRR lost ÷ MRR at the start).
What is the difference between MRR and earnings?: MRR is the monthly price of active subscriptions, before Shopify's cut, and it moves the day a subscription starts or ends. Earnings are what Shopify pays you after its revenue share and app credits, once merchants have paid, and they include usage and one-time charges.
What does surface_type mean in a Shopify App Store link?: It is a parameter Shopify adds to your listing's address to say which type of App Store page the merchant came from, such as search, search_ad, category or home. With surface_detail, it shows the words typed in a search.
What is a good churn rate for a Shopify app?: Shopify does not publish one, and figures quoted online rarely say how they were measured. Compare your own cohorts month after month instead.