What is Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA)?

ARPA (average revenue per account) is the average recurring revenue a company earns from each paying customer account in a period, usually calculated monthly as MRR divided by the number of active accounts.

At a glance

• Formula: ARPA = MRR ÷ number of active paying accounts. Use ARR instead of MRR for an annual figure.
• ARPA vs ARPU: ARPA divides by companies, ARPU by individual users. They only match when every account has one user.
• In finance and SaaS, ARPA means this metric. It has nothing to do with the government research agencies that share the acronym.
• ChartMogul also tracks new-business ARPA: new MRR ÷ new customers in the period, which shows what you’re selling now rather than the history of the base.
• Rising ARPA usually means bigger accounts, price increases or expansion. Falling ARPA can mean a move down market or discounting.

How to calculate ARPA

Take total MRR at the end of the month and divide by the number of accounts paying you at the end of the month. Count accounts, not contracts or users: a customer with three subscriptions is one account. Leave out free and trial accounts, or ARPA drops for reasons that have nothing to do with revenue.

Example (illustrative): you have $250,000 of MRR across 400 paying accounts, so ARPA is $625 a month, or $7,500 a year. Last quarter’s new customers came in at an average of $900 a month. New-business ARPA running well above the base means the newer deals are larger, which is a sign the sales motion is moving up market.

Why ARPA matters

ARPA connects pricing and segment to everything downstream. It tells you how much a sales team can spend to win an account: a $7,500-a-year account can’t carry the same CAC as a $75,000 one. It also shapes the motion. Low ARPA points to self-serve or high-volume inside sales; high ARPA can support field sales and a long sales cycle.

Price point also tracks with retention. SaaS Capital’s 2025 survey of private SaaS companies found that higher contract values go with higher net revenue retention.

Common ARPA mistakes

• Using one average for a mixed base. If a few large accounts sit next to hundreds of small ones, the average describes nobody. Report ARPA by segment, or use the median.
• Counting one-time fees. Only recurring revenue goes in.
• Celebrating ARPA growth from churn. If small accounts leave, ARPA rises even though revenue fell.
• Confusing it with ACV. ACV is per contract and often for new deals; ARPA covers the whole active base.

How ARPA shows up in a revenue system

ARPA by segment is one of the first numbers to check when deciding who to sell to and how. It’s built from billing and CRM data recorded the same way for every account, which is part of the RevOps work we run inside partners’ systems. See how we run RevOps.

Terms that sit next to ARPA

ARPA multiplied by the number of accounts gets you back to MRR, and multiplied by 12, to ARR.