Guide · facts checked 3 Nov 2026
What counts as a saved subscriber?
Stripe counts a save when a customer accepts your offer and is still subscribed 7 days later. That number cannot tell you whether the offer changed anything, because some of those customers would have stayed anyway. A holdout group that sees no offer can.
Stripe's definition
In Stripe's retention reporting, a save is a cancellation attempt where an offer was configured, the customer accepted it, and they were still subscribed after 7 days.
- Each subscription is counted once, on its first decision.
- The save is counted at acceptance and reversed if the customer cancels within the 7 days.
- The funnel runs attempt, saw offer, accepted, still subscribed after 7 days. Saved MRR is a running total of the plans kept.
It is a clean, auditable rule, and it is the one worth quoting when you need a definition. It describes what happened after an offer. It does not describe what the offer caused.
Where that definition overcounts
Some people open the cancel page, read the offer, take it and stay. Some of them were never going to cancel: they were checking the price, or they abandoned the cancel flow halfway. The definition counts all of them as saved, and the fee or the dashboard figure built on it rewards the offer for decisions it did not change.
No control group is described in Stripe's retention reporting, so there is no way to separate the two groups from that number alone.
The holdout test
Pick a random share of cancel attempts, typically 10–30%, and show them no offer. They still get the same reason question and the same “Cancel anyway” button; only the offer is missing. Then compare, at the same day count, the share still subscribed in each group.
- Offered rate = offered attempts still subscribed at day N ÷ offered attempts.
- Holdout rate = holdout attempts still subscribed at day N ÷ holdout attempts.
- Lift = offered rate − holdout rate. Real saves = lift × offered attempts.
Illustrative arithmetic, not measured data: 400 attempts, 360 offered and 40 held out. In the offered group 72 accept and are still subscribed after 7 days: 20%, which Stripe's definition reports as a 20% save rate. In the holdout 4 of 40 are still subscribed: 10%. The lift is 10 points, so real saves are 36 of the 72. The same dashboard figure can mean 72 saves or 36, and only the holdout says which.
How many cancel attempts you need
A common rule of thumb for comparing two rates (80% power, 5% significance) is per group ≈ 16 × p × (1 − p) ÷ difference², where p is the midpoint of the two rates. It assumes equal groups; an uneven split needs more attempts in total.
| Offered rate vs holdout rate | Difference | Attempts needed per group |
|---|---|---|
| 30% vs 10% | 20 points | 64 |
| 20% vs 10% | 10 points | 204 |
| 15% vs 10% | 5 points | 700 |
With 40 cancel attempts a month, a holdout of 4 people a month tells you nothing for a quarter. That is not a reason to skip it. Read it quarterly, hold out a larger share while you are learning, and treat a small gap as noise rather than proof.
Check your own numbers
Enter your cancel attempts, how many you held out, and what happened to each group. It runs in your browser; nothing is sent or stored. The defaults are the illustrative example above.
Why the definition matters when a fee depends on it
If you pay a tool per save, the definition is the invoice. Ask which one applies: accepted click, 7 days, a paid renewal. Stayput's pay-per-save fee is 20% of the first renewal a save produces, taken on a renewal Stripe has already collected, so a subscriber who accepted and left before paying costs you nothing.
See an offer and its Stripe change
Run a sample cancel session and check the decision against your own definition of a save.
90 seconds, no sign-up. You play the subscriber; the AI answers, and “Cancel anyway” is always one click away.