Understanding Your Substack Subscriber Report
Your Substack Subscriber Report provides valuable insights into the health of your paid subscriptions and overall audience engagement. This guide explains the key metrics available in the report.
Note: Audience Insights are now part of the Subscriber Report.
The Subscriber Report (link to report) includes:
These metrics help you understand subscriber growth, retention rates, and geographic distribution. Free publications will only see Audience Insights.
Performance indicators (plus sign, minus sign, or checkmark) show how your publication performs compared to similar publications.
Note: Subscriber Retention and Paid Growth Rate dashboards require payments enabled and at least 100 paid subscribers in your publication's lifetime. It may take up to 30 days after your first paid subscriber for the dashboards to appear.
Subscriber Retention
This dashboard shows the percentage of paid subscribers still subscribed after 30 days, 6 months, and 1 year.
What is Paid Subscriber Retention?
It's the percentage of paying subscribers who remain subscribed for a specific period (excluding gifted/comped subscriptions). It helps you understand your ability to retain your audience.
Understanding the Retention Graph:
The retention chart breaks down retention by subscriber cohorts (grouped by their subscription start month).
- Month: When subscribers started their subscription.
- New Subscribers: Number of subscriptions started that month.
- Numbered Columns: Percentage of subscribers still active after a certain number of months.
For example, 97% of the 1,800 subscribers who joined in February 2022 were still subscribed after one month.
Analyzing the percentages across columns reveals how retention changes as subscribers stay longer. Analyzing down rows shows how retention trends change over time (comparing newer vs. older subscribers).
Note: A slight decline in retention over time is normal, especially around the one-year mark due to annual subscription renewals.
Paid Growth Rate
This metric shows the percentage change in total paid subscribers over the past 30 days.
Note: Comped and group subscriptions are excluded from this metric.
Understanding the Growth Graph:
Hover over data points to see specific numbers for:
- Free readers upgraded to paid
- New paid subscribers
- Trials started
- Unsubscribes initiated
- Subscriptions expired
Unsubscribe Initiated vs. Expired:
- Unsubscribe Initiated: A subscriber cancels their renewal but retains paid access until the current subscription period ends.
- Expired: The subscription period ends for a previously unsubscribed user, resulting in either conversion to free or complete churn.
Audience Insights
This section shows your subscribers' geographic distribution and audience overlap with other publications.
Filter by:
- Time Period: 30 days, 90 days, all time
- Location: US map or world map
- Subscriber Type: All subscribers or paid subscribers