Benchmarks
Directional ranges for 20 indie SaaS funnel metrics.
Every range below is sourced, dated, and labeled as directional – not as the universal industry average. The CTA on every page is the free diagnostic: paste your live URL and see where your page actually falls.
landing page conversion rate →
For indie SaaS landing pages on cold traffic, a healthy conversion rate sits between 1% and 5%. Below 1% almost always points to a Wrong Person problem (the traffic doesn't match the offer). Above 5% …
Cold-traffic checkout completion for indie SaaS (the conversion from 'Buy' click to payment success) sits between 40% and 70%. Below 40% almost always means the offer is being relitigated at checkout …
Cold-traffic tripwire conversion for indie SaaS sits between 3% and 12% for tripwires priced under $10. Below 3% means the offer feels like a trap (the math doesn't add up to the buyer). Above 12% usu…
Engaged-list open rates for indie SaaS founder emails sit between 30% and 55%. Below 30% is almost always a deliverability issue (SPF/DKIM/DMARC alignment or sending to a disengaged tail), not a subje…
Click-through rates for indie SaaS founder emails sit between 3% and 12% of opens. Below 3% almost always means the CTA isn't tied to a specific reader outcome. Above 12% usually means warm cohort (pa…
Trial-to-paid conversion for indie SaaS sits between 8% and 25% for free trials and between 30% and 60% for $1 trials (where the user already entered a card). The dominant driver is the activation mom…
Monthly churn for indie SaaS sits between 5% and 12% for SMB-focused products and 3% to 7% for B2B mid-market. The headline number is almost always misleading – cohort breakdown (paid vs free trial, m…
Live webinar show-up rates for indie SaaS sit between 25% and 50% of registrations. Below 25% usually means the registration page over-promised relative to the actual content. Above 50% almost always …
Monthly MRR growth for indie SaaS sits at 5% to 15% during the $1K-$10K stage, 3% to 8% during $10K-$100K, and 1% to 4% above $100K MRR. The deceleration is structural – the same number of new custome…
Indie SaaS subscription AOV sits between $9 and $99 monthly for self-serve products and $99 to $999 for sales-assisted tiers. Info product AOV sits between $27 and $497 for one-time purchases. The Sta…
customer acquisition cost (CAC) →
Customer acquisition cost for indie SaaS sits between $30 and $300 for self-serve products and $500 to $3,000 for sales-assisted tiers. The absolute CAC matters less than the LTV:CAC ratio (target 3:1…
customer lifetime value (LTV) →
Indie SaaS lifetime value sits between $200 and $2,000 for SMB self-serve products and between $5,000 and $50,000 for B2B mid-market tiers. The LTV calculation is extremely sensitive to the churn rate…
Free-to-paid conversion for freemium SaaS sits between 1% and 4% for broad freemium models and 5% to 15% for narrow product-led models (where the free tier is gated to a specific use case). The gap is…
Indie SaaS refund rates within the guarantee window sit between 2% and 8% of purchases. Below 2% usually means the guarantee isn't being used as a sales tool (it should be visible and prominent enough…
Cold email reply rates for founder-grade outreach sit between 5% and 15% for tightly-targeted sends (Dream 100 style). Below 5% almost always means generic copy or generic targeting. Above 15% usually…
Optimal trial length is 7 to 14 days for self-serve SaaS, 14 to 30 days for moderate complexity products, and 30 days or more only for enterprise tools. Longer trials counterintuitively reduce activat…
Healthy time-to-interactive for indie SaaS marketing pages is under 3.5 seconds on mobile (mid-range device, 4G connection). Beyond 5 seconds, conversion rate drops 5 to 15% per additional second. Goo…
Indie SaaS marketing page bounce rates sit between 40% and 70% on cold traffic. Below 40% on cold traffic usually means scroll-tracking or engagement events are firing falsely (inflating session quali…
time to first paying customer →
Time from launch to first paying customer for indie SaaS sits between 3 and 16 weeks. Faster than 3 weeks almost always means the customer came from the founder's warm network, not cold acquisition. S…
Optimal annual-vs-monthly discount for indie SaaS sits between 15% and 25%. Shallower (under 10%) doesn't shift purchasing behavior toward annual; deeper (over 35%) attracts price-shoppers who treat t…