Comparison · last checked 30 August 2026

Churntide vs Churnkey

Churnkey is the established name in cancel flows: AI offer selection, session recordings, SOC 2, and a State of Retention report built on more than 3M cancel sessions. Its Starter plan is $250/mo billed yearly (about $300 month-to-month) and is gated to companies churning under $5k/mo.

Churntide does the same core job — cancel flow, failed-payment recovery, win-back — from $29/mo, self-serve, on Stripe or Paddle. If you're a small SaaS, the question is whether Churnkey's extra depth is worth roughly 3–8× the price at your size.

Side by side

FeatureChurnkeyChurntide
Entry price & billingStarter $250/mo billed yearly (about $300 month-to-month). Core, Intelligence and Enterprise are quote-only.$29/mo Starter · $79 Growth · $199 Scale. Annual = 2 months free.
Pricing modelTiered. Starter is gated to under $5k/mo in churned revenue; above that you're on a quoted plan.Flat plans by cancel sessions (500 / 3,000 / unlimited). Soft quota — we never block a save.
Self-serve or salesStarter is self-serve; the other tiers go through sales.Self-serve. No sales call at any tier.
Free trial14 days, no card.14 days at Growth level, no card.
Billing systemsStripe (full support) plus Chargebee, Paddle, Braintree and Maxio. Payment recovery is Stripe-only.Stripe and Paddle auto-apply outcomes via a restricted key. Anything else through the REST API and webhooks (you apply the outcome).
Cancel flowYes. Also a free MIT-licensed React cancel-flow SDK.Yes, every plan. Hosted page or embed.
Failed-payment recoveryYes — on Stripe only.Yes, every plan: retries, dunning emails, in-app banner.
Win-back emailsNot verified on their public pages.Yes, every plan.
A/B testingYes.Yes, on Growth and above.
Offer targeting by reason / plan / MRRYes — AI offer selection picks the offer per customer.Yes — by cancel reason, plan and MRR range.
Pause offersNot verified on their public pages.Yes. Pause, discount, downgrade or talk-to-us.
Test / preview modeStripe sandbox support since April 2026.Yes — preview mode records no sessions.
White-labelNot verified on their public pages.Remove branding on Scale.
API & webhooksFree MIT React SDK. API and webhook details not verified on their public pages.REST API + signed webhooks, every plan.
Best forTeams that want AI offer selection, session recordings, SOC 2 and a wide billing-platform list, and can budget $250+/mo for it.SaaS under roughly $50k MRR that wants cancel flow, recovery and win-back on one flat bill.

Churnkey facts come from their public pricing and documentation pages as of 30 August 2026. "Not verified" means we couldn't confirm it there — check with them before you decide. Spotted something wrong? Tell us and we'll fix it.

Where Churnkey wins

  • Enterprise features. SOC 2, session recordings and quote-based tiers that scale with a real procurement process. If security review is part of buying software at your company, Churnkey has done that work and we haven't yet.
  • AI offer selection. Churnkey chooses the offer per customer from what it has learned across its customer base. Churntide targets by rule — reason, plan, MRR range — which is transparent but takes more of your judgment.
  • Data. Their State of Retention report covers 3M+ cancel sessions and reports a 34% average save rate. That's a benchmark set we can't match at one month old.
  • Integrations and reputation. Five billing platforms, years of customers, and a free MIT React SDK if you want to build your own flow on their rails.

Where Churntide wins

  • Price at small scale. $29 or $79 a month against $250 billed yearly. At $4k MRR that's the difference between a tool that pays for itself on the first save and one that needs four.
  • Everything on every plan. Cancel flow, recovery and win-back are all included from Starter. Churnkey's payment recovery is Stripe-only; ours also applies on Paddle.
  • No gating by churn size and no sales call. You don't get moved to a quote when you grow past a threshold — you move to Scale at $199 yourself.
  • A 60-day guarantee: one save in your first 60 days or that period is free. And a soft quota — if you blow past your session limit mid-month we still show the offer.
  • Honest weaknesses: Churntide launched in August 2026, has no logos to show you, no AI offer selection, no Chargebee/Recurly/Shopify, and no SOC 2. If any of those is a hard requirement, Churnkey is the right call.

Pricing maths: a SaaS at $4k MRR

Say you have ~80 customers at ~$50/mo and lose 6 a month. That's $300/mo of churned revenue — well under Churnkey's $5k gate, so their Starter is available to you at $250/mo billed yearly.

A well-targeted flow saves 15–35% of the people who enter it. At 25%, that's 1.5 saves a month. If a saved customer stays another 8 months on average, each save is worth about $400, so the flow recovers roughly $600/mo in expectation.

On Churnkey Starter that nets $600 − $250 = $350/mo. On Churntide Starter it's $600 − $29 = $571/mo; on Growth (A/B testing, unlimited flows) $521/mo. Put another way: Churnkey needs to be responsible for about four extra saves a year, on top of what a $29 tool would get, to break even at this size.

At $40k MRR the fee gap is noise and Churnkey's AI and data may well earn it. The gap matters most exactly where Churnkey's Starter is aimed — under $5k/mo churned.

Plug in your own numbers with the churn calculator.

Questions people ask

Is Churntide a Churnkey alternative for small SaaS?

Yes — that's the target. Same job (cancel flow, failed-payment recovery, win-back), self-serve, from $29/mo. What you give up is Churnkey's AI offer selection, session recordings, SOC 2 and the longer billing-platform list.

Does Churnkey have a free plan?

Not as of our last check. There's a 14-day trial with no card, and a free MIT-licensed React SDK for building your own cancel flow, but the hosted product starts at $250/mo billed yearly.

Can I switch from Churnkey to Churntide without changing my billing setup?

If you're on Stripe or Paddle, yes — connect a restricted key and Churntide applies discounts, pauses, downgrades and cancellations directly. On other billing platforms you'd apply outcomes yourself from the webhook payload.

Try Churntide free for 14 days

Growth-level trial, no card. Cancel flow, failed-payment recovery and win-back from $29/mo after that — and if you don't save a single customer in your first 60 days, that period is free.

Or see the live demo →