CalculatorTrader churn cost calculator
Four numbers. Thirty seconds. See what trader churn is really costing you.
Churn Cost Calculator
Discentra working estimate: 8 to 15% by segment
$200 to $2,000 is our working range
$1,200 to $3,500 a year is our working range
Enter your numbers above to see results
Why these numbers don't move
Traders don't leave because of your platform. They leave because of emotional mistakes. Tilt, revenge trading, overleveraging. And no one intervenes. Discentra does: a phone call to the trader within 5 seconds.
How the maths works
The calculator runs a compound churn model on four inputs. It takes your active trader count, your monthly churn rate, your acquisition cost per trader, and an estimated lifetime value, then compounds the monthly rate over twelve months:
Annual traders lost = active traders × (1 − (1 − monthly churn)12). Compounding matters: at 12% monthly churn that is 78% of your book in a year, where a naive ×12 would claim an impossible 144%. Multiply lost traders by acquisition cost for wasted spend, add lost lifetime value for the full figure.
The default figures are Discentra working ranges from our own research, not published industry figures: monthly churn of 8% to 15%, acquisition cost of $200 to $2,000 per trader, and lifetime value between $1,200 and $3,500 a year. Your own cohort numbers will be sharper. The saving line models what a behavioural intervention recovers at a given churn reduction, because most trader churn is behavioural rather than operational. Coaching, not financial advice.
Frequently asked questions
The calculator compounds your monthly churn rate over twelve months to get traders lost per year: active traders multiplied by one minus the twelfth power of the monthly survival rate. Compounding is the honest method. At 12% monthly churn it gives 78% of your book lost in a year, where a naive multiply-by-twelve would claim an impossible 144%. Lost traders are then multiplied by your acquisition cost for the wasted-acquisition figure, and the lifetime value those traders would have produced is added on top.
Monthly churn at brokerages and prop firms runs roughly 8% to 15% depending on segment and geography. The headline figure most firms cite is that ~75% of retail traders quit within 90 days. No single regulator publishes a churn rate, so the right number to use is your own cohort data when you have it.
On our working range, customer acquisition cost runs $200 to $2,000 per trader across influencer deals, paid ads, affiliate commissions, and free trials, depending on channel and market. On our working assumption, trader lifetime value runs $1,200 to $3,500 a year. A trader who quits inside the first 90 days delivers only a fraction of that lifetime value, so the acquisition spend is mostly wasted.
Most trader churn is behavioural: tilt, revenge trading, and overleveraging that a real-time intervention can interrupt. The calculator models an 8% reduction as the conservative case, 15% as the expected case and 25% as the upside, so you can see the range. A pilot's own targets are agreed in writing before it starts, with the size of each group stated. Coaching, not financial advice.