MRR vs Last 30 Days Revenue: Which to Show

When you show your revenue publicly, the first question is which number. Two are common: MRR and the last 30 days of revenue. They answer different questions, and picking the wrong one can make an honest business look inflated or a healthy one look small.

MRR: what you will probably earn next month

MRR adds up every active subscription, converted to a monthly amount. It is a snapshot of recurring income.

• Good for: SaaS, memberships, paid newsletters, anything with subscriptions.
• Strength: stable and forward looking. A good week of one-off sales does not move it.
• Watch out for: yearly plans paid up front. A $1,200 yearly plan is $100 of MRR, not $1,200, even though you got $1,200 this month.

Last 30 days: what actually came in

A rolling 30-day total of sales, net of refunds, counts every payment that landed in the last 30 days.

• Good for: stores, digital products, one-off sales, services, and anything without subscriptions.
• Strength: simple and directly tied to cash.
• Watch out for: spikes. A launch week or a big order makes the next 30 days look better than a typical month.

Which one to show

• Mostly subscriptions? Show MRR.
• Mostly one-off sales? Show last 30 days, net of refunds.
• A mix? Show MRR for the subscription product and last 30 days for the rest, as separate projects.

What you should not do is show the bigger of the two each month. Pick a method and keep it.

How makerhandle decides

makerhandle uses exactly this rule:

• Stripe with active subscriptions shows MRR, with yearly plans divided into months and active discounts applied.
• Stripe without subscriptions shows the last 30 days of charges, net of refunds.
• Shopify shows the last 30 days of orders, net of refunds, excluding canceled and test orders.

The public leaderboard ranks by that "monthly revenue" so subscription and non-subscription products sit on one list. See verified revenue.

Things that inflate either number

• counting free trials as paying
• ignoring refunds and chargebacks
• counting test orders or your own purchases
• annualizing one great month and calling it ARR

A verified, read-only connection avoids most of these by reading from the source with a fixed method. Read how to show verified MRR for the Stripe setup.