# How much revenue do failed subscription payments cost you?

> Source: https://zubs.app/tools/failed-payment-calculator
> Title: Failed Payment Calculator for Subscriptions — Zubs
> Published: 2026-10-02
> Updated: 2026-10-07
> Language: en

## Short answer

Failed payments cost you renewals × failure rate × (1 − recovery rate) × average order value every month. With 2,000 renewals a month at €35, an 8% failure rate and a 60% recovery rate, 96 of 160 failed renewals are recovered (€3,360 a month) and 64 are lost: €2,240 a month, €26,880 a year.

## What are failed payments costing your store?

Enter your own numbers. The calculator starts on the worked example further down this page.

*Failed-payment calculator: enter your own numbers on [the page](https://zubs.app/tools/failed-payment-calculator). The worked example below uses the values the calculator starts with.*

All results are estimates from your inputs, not figures from your store.

## How does the failed-payment calculator work?

- **Failed renewals** = renewal orders per month × payment failure rate.
- **Recovered renewals** = failed renewals × recovery rate: the ones paid on a retry or after the customer updated their card.
- **Lost renewals** = failed renewals − recovered renewals.
- **Revenue recovered** and **revenue lost** = the number of renewals × average order value, per month and × 12 per year.

The yearly figures assume the same month twelve times over.

## What does an 8% failure rate cost in a year?

**Example (made-up numbers):** 2,000 renewal orders a month, an average order value of €35, a payment failure rate of 8% and a recovery rate of 60%.

| Result                       | Calculation | Value   |
| ---------------------------- | ----------- | ------- |
| Failed renewals per month    | 2,000 × 8%  | 160     |
| Renewals recovered per month | 160 × 60%   | 96      |
| Renewals lost per month      | 160 − 96    | 64      |
| Revenue recovered per month  | 96 × €35    | €3,360  |
| Revenue lost per month       | 64 × €35    | €2,240  |
| Revenue recovered per year   | €3,360 × 12 | €40,320 |
| Revenue lost per year        | €2,240 × 12 | €26,880 |

Raising the recovery rate from 60% to 70% in this example recovers 16 more renewals a month: €560 a month, €6,720 a year.

## What does the estimate leave out?

- **The subscriptions that end.** The calculator counts the value of the order that failed, not the future orders of a subscription that ends because of it. That loss is [involuntary churn](https://zubs.app/glossary/involuntary-churn), and the [churn calculator](https://zubs.app/tools/churn-calculator) estimates what it costs over a year.
- **Months that differ.** Failure and recovery rates move over the year, for example when many cards expire at once.

## What should you do with your result?

Bring the lost revenue down before you spend more on winning new subscribers. These customers already chose you and still want the product, so they are the easiest revenue to win back. The [failed-payments playbook](https://zubs.app/playbooks/recover-failed-payments) shows what to change first.

## How does Zubs recover failed payments?

Zubs retries a failed renewal on your schedule, emails the customer after each failed attempt and lets them update their payment method in the customer portal. You decide whether the subscription stays or ends when the retries run out. See how it works in [dunning in Zubs](https://zubs.app/features/dunning).

## Bottom line

Failed payments cost renewals × failure rate × (1 − recovery rate) × order value each month. The recovery rate is the part you control, and every point you add comes straight back as revenue.

## Frequently asked questions

### What counts as a recovered payment?

A renewal whose first charge failed and that was paid on a later retry, or after the customer updated their payment method.

### Does a lost payment mean a lost subscriber?

Only if your dunning ends by cancelling the subscription. In Zubs you decide what happens after the last retry, so the subscription can stay and bill again later.

### Where do my failure and recovery rates come from?

The failure rate is the share of renewal charges that fail, from your payment provider's data. Once you run Zubs, its analytics shows how many failed payments were recovered.

### Is my data stored or sent anywhere?

No. The calculation runs in your browser, and nothing you enter leaves the page.

## Related

- [Feature: how Zubs handles failed payments](https://zubs.app/features/dunning)
- [Playbook: recover failed subscription payments](https://zubs.app/playbooks/recover-failed-payments)
- [Glossary: involuntary churn](https://zubs.app/glossary/involuntary-churn)
- [Glossary: dunning](https://zubs.app/glossary/dunning)
- [Calculator: what churn costs you](https://zubs.app/tools/churn-calculator)
- [Help center: payment failure handling](https://help.zubs.app/docs/subscription-management/automation/payment-failures/)