Baremetrics Alternatives for Indie Founders: What to Use at Half the Price

Domenico Logozzo — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 13:42:42 +0000

Baremetrics is a solid product. Clean UI, good metrics, reliable data. But at $75/month ($49/month if you pay annually) for their starter plan — and it goes up from there based on your MRR — it's hard to justify when you're at $500 MRR and trying to keep costs down.

I've been in that exact position. Here's what I found when looking for alternatives.

What You Actually Need

Before comparing tools, ask yourself what you're actually trying to solve:

Do I just need MRR tracking? Stripe's built-in dashboard shows basic revenue metrics for free.
Do I need customer-level insights? That's where dedicated tools become valuable — knowing which customers are at risk, who's growing, who might churn.
Do I need AI-powered analysis? Newer tools are adding churn prediction and automated insights that Baremetrics doesn't offer.

The Options

Stripe Dashboard (Free)

If you just want to see your revenue numbers, Stripe's built-in analytics might be enough. You get MRR, subscriber counts, and basic charts. The limitation: no customer health scoring, no churn prediction, no cross-platform support.

Best for: Solo founders under $1K MRR who only use Stripe.

ChartMogul (Free up to $10K MRR, then $99/mo)

ChartMogul is the most full-featured Baremetrics alternative. Great cohort analysis, solid integrations, and their free tier is generous. The downside: once you pass $10K MRR, you're paying $99/month — more than Baremetrics.

Best for: Funded startups who need deep analytics and will grow past $10K MRR quickly.

ProfitWell / Paddle (Free metrics, paid for retention features)

ProfitWell was acquired by Paddle and is being folded into their platform. The free metrics tool still works but the future is uncertain. If you're already on Paddle for payments, it's a natural fit.

Best for: Teams already using Paddle as their merchant of record.

RevPane ($19/mo launch, $29/mo standard)

Full disclosure — I built this one. RevPane connects to Stripe and gives you MRR tracking, customer health scores (0-100 for every customer), AI-powered churn risk alerts, cohort retention, and an AI chat where you can ask questions about your finances.

The pitch: everything Baremetrics charges $75/mo for, plus AI features they don't offer, at a fraction of the price. The trade-off: it's newer and currently Stripe-only (PayPal, Gumroad, LemonSqueezy coming soon).

Best for: Indie founders and small SaaS teams who want customer intelligence without the enterprise price tag.

Spreadsheets (Free)

Honestly? If you have fewer than 10 customers, a spreadsheet works fine. Export your Stripe data monthly, calculate MRR manually, track churn in a column. It breaks down around 20-30 customers when the maintenance becomes a time sink.

Best for: Very early stage, pre-product-market-fit.

The Real Question

The tool matters less than whether you're tracking these numbers at all. Most indie founders I've talked to don't know their churn rate, their MRR growth rate, or which customers are at risk. Any tool — even a spreadsheet — is better than guessing.

Pick the one that fits your budget and actually use it. The data is only useful if you look at it.

Want to try RevPane? Start free — connect Stripe in minutes, no credit card required.

What Is MRR and Why Every SaaS Founder Should Track It

Domenico Logozzo — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 16:06:59 +0000

If you run a SaaS business and you're not tracking MRR, you're flying blind.

Monthly Recurring Revenue is the single number that tells you whether your business is growing, stalling, or dying. It strips away one-time payments, refunds, and noise to give you the clearest picture of your subscription revenue.

How to Calculate MRR

The basic formula is simple:

MRR = Number of active subscribers x Average revenue per subscriber

But in practice, you need to account for several components:

New MRR — Revenue from customers who subscribed this month
Expansion MRR — Existing customers who upgraded
Contraction MRR — Existing customers who downgraded
Churned MRR — Revenue lost from cancellations

Your net new MRR is: New + Expansion - Contraction - Churned.

Why MRR Matters More Than Total Revenue

Total revenue can be misleading. If you sell a $500 lifetime deal, your revenue spikes — but your recurring revenue didn't change at all. Next month, that spike disappears and you're back to baseline.

MRR tells you what you can count on every month. It's what investors look at, what determines your valuation, and what tells you if you have a real business or a series of one-time sales.

Common MRR Mistakes

1. Including one-time payments. Setup fees, consulting hours, and lifetime deals are not MRR. Keep them separate.

2. Not tracking MRR movements. Knowing your total MRR is good. Knowing how much came from new customers vs. expansion vs. churn is 10x more useful. A MRR waterfall chart breaks this down visually.

3. Ignoring contraction. If 5 customers downgraded from your $99 plan to your $29 plan, that's $350/mo in contraction MRR. It doesn't show up in your churn numbers but it's eating your growth.

4. Annual subscriptions. If someone pays $588/year, their MRR contribution is $49/month — not $588 in the month they paid.

What Good MRR Growth Looks Like

For early-stage SaaS (under $10K MRR), 15-20% month-over-month growth is strong. As you scale, that rate naturally slows — 5-10% monthly growth at $50K+ MRR is excellent.

The number that matters most isn't your growth rate in isolation — it's your growth rate relative to your churn. If you're growing 10% but churning 8%, your real growth is only 2%.

Track It Automatically

You can calculate MRR in a spreadsheet, but it gets tedious fast. RevPane connects to Stripe and automatically tracks your MRR, MRR movements, and growth rate — so you can focus on building your product instead of maintaining spreadsheets.

Try RevPane free — connect Stripe in minutes.

DEV Community: Domenico Logozzo