Stripe Analytics for Indie Hackers — Why You Don't Need Baremetrics

The Problem: You're Being Taxed for Being Small

Here's the thing about Stripe analytics tools: they were built for Series A companies with $500K ARR and then ported down to indie hackers who haven't hit $10K MRR yet. Baremetrics starts at $108/month. ChartMogul starts at $127/month. ProfitWell — once a viable option — was acquired by Paddle and the product has gone quiet.

These tools have feature sets designed for businesses that have multiple data sources, dedicated ops people, and SaaS metrics dashboards that track things like Net Revenue Retention and Magic Number. If you're a solo founder at $3K MRR with 60 customers and one Stripe integration, you need exactly three things: MRR, churn rate, and LTV. You do not need dunning automation, cohort analysis, or a CRM integration.

But because those are the only tools in the category, indie hackers pay $108-127/month to get 3 numbers. That's $1,300/year — more than the revenue of some of your customers — to see basic metrics.

What Metrics Actually Matter at Pre-$10K MRR

Here's a clean breakdown of the metrics worth tracking at early stage — and what to ignore until you're bigger.

MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue)

This is your north star. It's the normalized, recurring portion of your revenue expressed as a monthly figure. Not invoiced revenue. Not cash collected. The predictable base of your business. How to calculate it correctly from Stripe is its own guide — but the key is handling annual plans (divide by 12), excluding trials ($0 until paid), and applying coupon discounts.

Churn Rate (30-day)

What percentage of your MRR walked out the door in the last 30 days? Churn is the most important lagging indicator of product-market fit. A 5% monthly churn means you're losing half your customers in a year — that changes how you think about growth. At pre-$10K MRR, you want to be below 4%. Below 2% and you're in good territory.

Customer LTV (Lifetime Value)

How much revenue does each customer generate before they leave? Simple LTV = ARPU / churn rate. If your average customer pays $80/month and you lose 3% per month, LTV = $80 / 0.03 = $2,667. This number tells you how much you can spend to acquire a customer profitably. The LTV:CAC ratio is the single most important business health metric, and it all starts with LTV.

ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue)

MRR × 12. That's it. This is the number investors ask for, and it's the cleanest way to express your company's annual revenue run rate. If you're raising, this is the number that matters in your deck.

What to skip for now

Net Revenue Retention (NRR), Magic Number, expansion revenue breakdown, cohort retention curves — these are Series B metrics. At $10K MRR with under 200 customers, you don't have enough cohort data for cohort analysis to be meaningful. Track them later. Right now you need MRR, churn, and LTV.

What You Actually Pay For with Baremetrics and ChartMogul

Let's be specific about what you're buying at $108-127/month from the incumbents.

Baremetrics ($108+/month)

Baremetrics has solid MRR and churn tracking. It also has: recover (dunning automation), signals (usage alerts), and a bunch of other modules that are genuinely useful at scale but feel like noise when you're doing your first $5K MRR. You're paying for all of it whether you use it or not. Their pricing is also MRR-tiered — as your revenue grows, so does your bill. You start at $108, but the moment you cross $25K MRR you're at a higher tier. It's designed to scale, which means you pay a premium for early-stage features you won't touch.

ChartMogul ($127+/month)

ChartMogul is built for agencies and consulting companies managing multiple clients' SaaS metrics. That's a different product. It has multi-source data aggregation, CRM integration, and a bunch of enterprise features that solo founders pay for but never use. It also has a reputation for data reconciliation errors when aggregating from multiple sources — which is exactly what happens when you use it for your own single-Stripe business: you're paying enterprise complexity for a feature set you'll use 20% of.

ProfitWell (now Paddle)

ProfitWell was the budget option before it got acquired by Paddle in 2022. The product has gone quiet — no major updates, no new features, uncertain roadmap. If you're using it now, you're on borrowed time. New owners tend to reprice or sunset acquired products.

The Comparison Table

Here's the honest breakdown across the four things that matter for an indie hacker at pre-$10K MRR.

How RevScope Is Different

RevScope was built with one principle: track the metrics that matter when you're building, not when you're operating. At pre-$10K MRR, your job is to understand if customers are staying, if revenue is growing, and how much each customer is worth. That's it.

Connect Stripe via a read-only restricted key — RevScope never touches your payments or subscriptions. Then get MRR, churn rate, customer LTV, ARR, and a 6-month revenue forecast on one page. Annual plans normalized. Trials excluded. Coupons applied. Past-due accounts filtered. Done.

At $19/month, RevScope costs less than a fractional COO consultant per day and gives you the numbers you need to run the business.

Related reading: How to calculate MRR from Stripe  ·  MRR Formula & Calculation Guide  ·  Full feature comparison vs Baremetrics and ChartMogul  ·  Free MRR calculator →